Hardy boys

Marks & Spencer has always been a useful seam for this blog to mine. It now carries a galaxy of own-brand beers, most of which I've never tried but I feel secure that there's always a post on the shelves there, should I need one. These days it also carries a selection of imports that nobody else brings to Ireland. Today's beers are two such, coming from the Hardywood brewery of Richmond, Virginia.

I begin with Hardywood Pils, a "German-style" pilsner. It's a lot hazier than I'd expect from any bottled pils from Germany, pouring a translucent gold colour. The flavour is deliciously crisp: fresh-mown grass is a style cliché, but it tastes like that in the best way possible. The opening is damp and succulent, before tailing off into a dry and slightly metallic tang. 5.2% ABV means lots of substance to boost the hops, but there's no distracting malt sweetness; no cake or golden syrup like you'd find in a helles or světlý ležák; this is pils to its bones. Needless to say I like it a lot. It doesn't tip over into the strong vegetable taste that many of this type, including authentically German examples, too often do for my liking. The only ding I can give it is that the 355ml bottle is inappropriate. Gimme a halbe. Then another one.

Instead, I switch to something more typically American, VIPA, a pale ale at the same strength but even cloudier. It looks like a witbier in the glass, that slightly sickly hazy yellow. From sickly to sticky: it's a dense and sugary fellow, with a rock candy or boiled sweet feel. There's a quite intense lemon flavour tacked on to this, turning harshly astringent at the end. This isn't a subtle beer, and a million miles from the modern soft and fluffy pale ales. Here is where I'd put in the line about how refreshing it is to find a '90s throwback like this, but it's not a good example. There's not enough of a snap from the hops, the palate-clogging barley sugar calling the shots all the way through.

Two very different beers, then. You'd have thought the expertise that good lager requires would result in better pale ale: it usually does when German brewers try out American styles. Something to analyse over another bottle of that pils.

Lightweights!

What happened to those palate-pounding Thornbridge beers like St Petersburg, and to making yourself Jaipoorly? The Derbyshire stalwart seems to be represented over here by much lighter fare of late, including these four examples.

First up is Bliss Point, strongest of the lot at a whopping 5% ABV.  The can claims it's a "hazy American pale ale" then backpedals on the details saying it's only a "slight haziness", and indeed it is -- a pale misty yellow. The texture is unforgivably thin for the strength, while the flavour is a mix of dry chalky minerals, herbal bathsalts and old-fashioned lemonade. While there's no malt character to speak of, the hops are muted too, lacking the platform they need to do their job. I kept thinking of diluted lemon barley water, where it needs topping up with a bit more concentrate from the bottle. This is inoffensive fare but verges a little too much on vapid and bland. Lift the finishing gravity, raise the IBUs, do something, please!

Next, on a dismal weekday evening, California Sun: a "west coast session IPA" of 4.5% ABV. It's the right amber-gold colour and has a lovely hard, almost metallic, bitterness, as a west-coaster should. This softens after a moment into fruit chews before finishing on harder resins: a concentrated bitterness, like biting a hop pellet. Though it is lightly textured, there's a proper base of oat cookie and light toffee to carry the flavour. It's nearly easy-drinking; only that rough resinous finish keeps me from chugging it down quickly. While there's plenty going on flavourwise -- it's definitely not bland -- I found it just a little too severe. Maybe all those fruity vanilla IPAs have ruined my palate after all.

So inevitably it's on to the funny ingredients. Satzuma is another session IPA at the same strength with, of course, satsuma peel. We're still in the clear, and this time the colour is a pale and bright golden. The peel is a big part of the flavour: a sudden jolt of real orange right at the front and building, exploding, outwards from there. For a change, there's actual beer perceptible underneath this. Any hop flavour is either drowned (Cascade, First Gold) or subsumed (Mandarina Bavaria) into the citrus foretaste. But there's a gentle snap of dry and lagery pale malt which brings an understated cleanness. Maybe I drank mine too warm, but I didn't get the spritzy refreshment I think the brewers were going for. It's still quite a heavy beer and again the flavours are too loud and intense for the session.

And so to the fruity vanilla IPA. Fresa also includes strawberry and lactose, with the ABV rocketing to 4.8%. Fourpure was the collaborator so it's probably all their fault. It's a pale yellow colour and shows some haze at last. The aroma is innocently fruity; somewhat tropical, perhaps because of actual hops. There are no hops in the flavour, though. There's the sticky ice cream or vanilla effect, sweet and gummy. And the strawberry is of the artificial sort: a a concentrated chemical syrup effect. And that's it. All the gimmicks and no underlying class. A novelty should at least go bananas with the silliness but this one is just bland.

While there are some good features in this set, these are not the sort of beers on which Thornbridge's reputation was built. The young'uns will be wondering why we ever made a fuss about it.

Drouth in Venice

The trip rounded off with a couple of days in Venice, one of my favourite cities despite the bad rap it gets from people who did it wrong. The beer scene here has expanded somewhat since my last visit and there were a number of new bars to try.

Handy for the hotel was the long strip of bars and restaurants on Fondamenta dei Ormesini. On the first evening we called in at Pub da Aldo, aka "Birre Da Tutto Il Mondo" -- well, there's no point being modest. The layout is odd, even by Venetian standards, with a handful of draft beers being sold through a hatch at the front and then fridges packed with bottles and cans on a self-service basis inside.

I went straight for the first grape ale I saw: Space Frontier, from BrewFist in collaboration with To Øl. Trendy craft breweries tend not to go in for this style much, and this attempt at doing it as an IPA may be an illustration of why. It's a very different beer to "proper" grape ale, being extremely dry with a sesame seed sharpness. A kick of US-hop grapefruit is as close to actual grapes it ends up tasting, with a tannic astringency and an almost vomit-like acidity. While not undrinkable it was very disappointing.

An imperial stout from Hammer goes with that: Daarbulah, version 2 of it at 10.5% ABV. There are no fancy ingredients here, beyond oatmeal, but the complexity achieved is amazing. Lots of rich cocoa in the aroma and flavour, backed by floral rosewater notes and a sprinkling of dried coconut. Though it's thick and heavy, it doesn't cloy, with a dry bitter roast putting a neat full stop on the whole performance. This is masterfully constructed; a thumper with a great sense of balance.

Not far from here is Venice's top beer location Il Santo Bevitore. Inside the bar is cramped -- Venice: whaddya gonna do? -- but they've occupied a mini piazza around the side with tables for al fresco drinking. There are 21 taps to choose from, almost all Italian, and lots of information on each.

Obviously I identified the grape ales straight away and began on Samos from Birrificio Sagrin. This is brewed with Muscat grapes and really channels their flavour well, showing a thick and sweet perfume effect. Though only 5.5% ABV and a pale yellow colour it's very heavy, to the point of turning cloying. A briney salty tang helps offset that a little, but not enough. Disappointingly there's no sourness here at all. I think adding a sharp edge would have improved it. Maybe a few months of quiet time in a barrel would suit it.

My non-grape-ale-enthusiast companion went for Il Barone, a barley wine from Lombardian brewery The Wall. It's 8.5% ABV and an appropriate mahogany red colour. The aroma is toffee and autumnal berries while the flavour brings surprise notes of cedar and incense. There's a big American-hop character, akin to Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, but without the intense bitterness. Instead it's smooth, warming, clean and genteel. A real class act.

Back to the grape for round two, and Liga Ambrata by Birra Salento. This is a red one, using Primitivo, and 7% ABV. The funky oakish aroma was promising. Although it's strangely watery, there's a powerful farmhouse-Brett flavour, which is an odd combination of taste and texture. A sweetness follows, like cherry compote or raspberryade. And that's all it does really. It's fine but could really use some livening up; extra sourness or spice or something.

The corresponding dark beer this time was Confine, a 6% ABV porter from a brewery called BI-DU. This stuff is seriously bitter, exploding onto the palate with a mix of tar and herbs, clearing the sinuses like a Fisherman's Friend. There's some balancing chocolate and caramel in amongst the aniseed and green cabbage, though the texture is a little thin to support everything that's going on. I loved it though: the sort of powerful grown-up porter that eats cocopop stouts for breakfast.

The following day, our last, Il Santo Bevatore opened the three-day Venice Beer Fest, of which it was the sole host venue. Some extra portable taps were set up in the outdoor area and instead of simply ordering and paying for a beer, there was the extra thrill of having to pay a deposit on a glass and buy a beer token from a separate counter before asking at the bar for a beer. Exciting!

A sizeable crowd had gathered by the time we arrived: maybe as many as thirty people. I began with the Berliner Weisse from local brewery Borderline. This was the pale green colour of a perry and had a slight pear flavour too. Otherwise it's extremely plain: crisp grain and an all-but-invisible sour tang. It's thirst-quenching, I suppose, and a reasonable 4.2% ABV, just not a very interesting example of the style.

The next round brought a scotch ale from LuckyBrews called Winternest. This 7.5%-er is rich and floral with an added coating of dark chocolate, like a Raspberry Ruffle bar. It's mostly quite sweet, without going overboard, and could maybe have stood to introduce some extra complexity given the style and strength. It's fine, though. Solid.

Nigredo from Birrificio Italiano is described in no more detail than "black ale" though the brewery goes into rather more detail in their description. Broadly, it's a schwarzbier, but hopped like a black IPA with German varieties. Out of that combination comes a lavender aroma and a clean and sharp red cabbage bitterness. The spicing and some greasy esters definitely say black IPA to me, though tamed by the lager elements. Regardless of the technicals, it's highly enjoyable, mellow yet stimulating, and interesting throughout.

Venice claims its own beer brand with Birrificio Del Doge, although it's brewed on the mainland, about 20 kilometres to the north. I tried one of them at Birraria La Corte on Campo San Polo, a spacious square out of the general Venice daytime rat race. Doge IPA is 5.8% ABV and a hazy dark yellow colour. Spicy resins on the nose are followed by a hard lime bitterness and a greasy coconut buzz on tasting. The malt contributes to the texture, leaving the hops to do all the talking in the flavour. This is simple but stimulating; seemingly a reliable and rock-solid local beer. If we'd stayed longer I would have explored the line-up further.

Just one beer found its way to the hotel room. Io is part of a Freudian trilogy (Es, Io, Super-Io) and is a pilsner. The brewer is a farm owned by the Sfoggia family, as far as I can make out. Though 5.1% ABV it's very pale. The abiding characteristic is sweetness: a combination of honey and candied popcorn. There's the very faintest herbal bitterness in the background, but nothing close to what I'd like for a pils. It may be ever so artigianale, but this may as well be a half-arsed industrial eurolager. I wasn't rushing back to try the other two in the range.

Heineken's Ichnusa we get at home, but happy hours we don't, so while it was cheap, I indulged. Ostensibly this is a lager, and I got the 5% ABV non-filtered version. Unfiltered doesn't usually mean "tastes like a weissbier" but this does, having a strong bang of candied banana about it, as well as a buzz of butane. There's a cleaner crispness in the finish, but no real character to go along with that, just wateriness. Hops do not feature. My avoidance of it so far was entirely justified, it turns out.

The last lap brought us by the local Irish bar, which has a house lager called L'Ultima. This is another sweet one, smooth and quite heavy, even at just 4.9% ABV. There's more than a touch of diacetyl about it, and a worty pure-malt character. While it has its charms, and I think is deliberate in all of its flavour elements, it failed to offer the refreshment I sought. That was something of a theme on the Italian leg of this trip.

The actual ultima beer was from the dire selection at Marco Polo Airport. Dolomiti 8° was the cheapest they had, and it wasn't cheap. It was 8% ABV, in fairness to it, and tasted every bit of that: a very Belgian mix of golden syrup and spices, all smooth, warming and classy. Not very interesting, but at least it was easy to drink while also satisfyingly boozy. Grand for a late-night airport rush job.

And so back home again. It was a fascinating trip, showing me a whole new side of Croatia, endearing Slovenia to me, and cementing Venice's reputation as one of the most fascinating and fun places on the planet, especially now it's developing a beer scene. Trieste was a little disappointing, but at least it's off my list. Now it's time to check what else is still on there.

Fancy meeting you here

Finishing up my blogging about Trieste today with the very non-local beers I found. There's something of a Germanic theme running through the set.

Up at the castle, for instance, the handy little portable bar in the courtyard was serving Zwickel 1409 from Privatbrauerei Schweiger, near Munich. I was expecting pale and cloudy so was surprised to get something quite amber-coloured and perfectly clear. It appears to be a riff on the Munich Helles style because it's big and soft, heavily textured with a bready, cakey sweetness. A mild plastic bitterness appears behind this briefly, but doesn't interrupt the wholesome malt weight. This didn't really fit the context of a sunny afternoon refresher, suited better to dark beerhalls with roaring fires.

Below in the city there is an actual German beerhall of sorts, themed around the Mönchshof beers brewed by Kulmbacher. Again it was too sunny to explore inside so we took a table on the small terrace.

Mönchshof Pils is another thick and heavy lager, though this one goes bigger on the hops, with a weedpatch greenness and peppery rocket spices. The malt flavours take a while to emerge from that, bringing in a balancing note of honey as it warms. I wanted to like it, I really did, but again I had been in the mood for something crisp and refreshing and, again, this didn't deliver.

Herself had better luck with Klosterbok, which I think is the beer normally sold as Mönchshof Bock. It's a gorgeous chestnut red colour with an intense cooked-veg aroma: cabbage, shading to rotten timber. It's much more balanced on tasting, with a delicious caramel smokiness complementing the hops. The texture is smooth without being heavy, making for a very drinkable yet complex medium-dark lager. Just the sort of thing you want when drinking Bavarian.

Forst, in the South Tyrol, is one of the local brands. There's even a Forst beerhall in Trieste, though we didn't visit. It's a bit odd seeing an Italian beer all branded in German, but then this is a complicated part of the world. I acquired Sixtus, the doppelbock, cheaply in a supermarket. I thought it was going to be a bit of a weakling at just 6.5% ABV, but it's very nicely weighty. The hop side is quite understated, showing a very faintly green nobility. The main component is a thick wodge of toffee infused with coffee and liquorice, both in quantity also. It's still properly lager-clean, though at the same time creamy, with a warming cakey quality which I think would make it an ideal dessert beer. An everyday budget alternative to those dark Belgians or rare barley wines you have to justify to yourself, perhaps.

Immediately on entering my first Italian supermarket of the trip, I discovered that not only is Tennent's Super still on the go here (brewed by AB InBev in Bremen), it's thriving, with multiple point-of-sale materials in this shop and others. For the uninitiated, it's a 9% ABV lager, beloved of generations of Scottish heavy drinkers. I'm not sure if it was around in my youth -- it must have been -- but I had never tried it. Here it is supplied in 33cl green glass bottles rather than the classic purple tin. "Central heating for tramps" goes the old unofficial strapline, and I can see why. There's a definite warming richness to it. Unsurprisingly, that gets quite sickly before long. It's like a Belgian strong ale but minus the spices and fruits which make those sorts of beers palatable. A musty noble hop greenness represents the lager side of the equation, adding no crispness nor any serious balancing bitterness. I'd love to say this is an overlooked delight, but much like its brother-in-arms, Carlsberg Special Brew, it's a bit of a hot mess and I can see why the alcohol content is the only feature for which it's known.

To Sicily for something cleaner: Birra Messina, one of Heineken's Italian brands. Cristalli Di Sale is the one in the range which isn't a plain lager. Instead it's a lager with added Sicilian salt. It looks like a witbier, or even a gose -- that hazy shade of yellow. It smells a bit like both too: slightly briney with a squeeze of citrus. The flavour, also, is light and lemony, along the lines of an unfussy kellerbier. I couldn't detect the salt, but did get some kind of seasoning; a gentle white pepper effect. Finally, here's the clean and refreshing lager I had been looking for, perfect after a long day's touristing before going out in search of dinner. Well played, Heineken Italy.

In Trieste station, rushing for a train beer before rushing for a train, I picked Nektar lager because it was cold, cheap and unfamiliar -- my three favourite things in beer. I had thought it was another local macro but it's actually from Bosnia. It turned out to be a very pale clear gold, though the ABV is a substantial 5%. From the first sip I got a heavy sweetness, unlagerlike notes of beeswax and honey. Is the name somehow connected? I dunno. The ingredients are helpfully listed but honey isn't among them. There's not much else going on: everything just tails off after the initial hit. A minuscule basic hop tang -- tinny and faint -- is perceptible in the aftertaste if you look for it, but there's little else to say. It's not actively unpleasant, which probably puts it ahead in the league of €1 Bosnian lagers. That's about all I can write in its favour, however.

Off we went again, hugging the north Adriatic coast and heading for our exit point: Venice.

Not Joyce's choices

Spot the Theresianer lighthouse

Beer was not top of the agenda for my visit to Trieste, and it's not really a beery city, though like any city of any size these days, there are pockets of a scene. It's an unpretentious, buzzy and chatty sort of town -- unmistakably Italian despite its time spent as the largest seaport of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The harbour is a bit down-at-heel now and the city feels like it has turned its back on it. The city centre occupies a patch of largely reclaimed land before sloping dramatically upwards. Steeply winding streets and staircases are a speciality.

The totemic beer brand of Trieste is Theresianer, one which wears an image of the old lighthouse on its label. It's brewed quite a distance from the city, closer to Venice, and I've covered a lot of the range previously in these two posts. However, I found two breweries operating inside the city itself.

Bire, out along the harbour promenade, is trying to be the fancy one. It occupies a big space on the ground floor of a grand palazzo, the inside stripped back to bare stone and copper pipework, with Czech-style serving tanks suspended from the vaulted ceiling. Money was spent on this. Money which would have been better spent on the kitchen ventilation system as the grease smells pervading the whole premises made it impossible to sit inside. It's also not one of those crafted-with-love, playful experimentation breweries: there's a small list of basic styles, several of which weren't available.

I still would have started with Bire Pils anyway. It's 4.8% ABV and shows the yellow haze of typical by-the-numbers brewpub lager. In the plus column there's a pleasant golden syrup malt sweetness, though the noble green bitterness sent to balance it feels a little forced or tacked-on. A twang of vinegar on the very end suggests a flaw in the brewing process or maybe beer that isn't moving as fast as it needs to. Either way, I figured I had the measure of the place from this wonky offering.

So just one other beer to report on: Bire Red IPA. This poured murky and undercarbonated. The aroma started out decent, with some fresh citrus juice, but also some worrying chlorophenol vapours too. That all but takes over the flavour, delivering a ghastly jolt of TCP on the first sip. It's just possible to detect the subtle mandarin notes which I'm sure they wanted in behind, but it's infected and bad and shouldn't have been on sale.

You needn't put Bire top of your beer agenda for Trieste.

There was much more of a quirky sense of fun to be found at Birrificio Cavana. It's tucked away down a sidestreet off a sidestreet and is minuscule: just three or four tall tables inside, a short counter with a rudimentary kitchen behind, and squeezed in along one side, behind glass, the brewery. It feels like drinking in a phonebox.

And yet they managed a list of five beers across a variety of styles. Pilsner first, of course: Bionda Chiara ("light blonde") as they've either named or described it. Though 4.5% ABV it's not all that light: a dark gold colour in the glass, and perfectly clear for a change. That matches a heavy, almost creamy, mouthfeel, but that's where the plaudits end. While there's nothing wrong with it, there's not much going on either: it's crisp and plain like plain crisps, and a mild wisp of dry grass on the finish is the only real nod to proper flavour. Another brewpub lager created for the drinker scared of trying anything else, I think.

The Strong Ale beside it showed rather more heft. This dark red number is 7% ABV and smells strongly of banana, though more in the dubbel way than a weissbier. There's a definite Belgian-style spice coming from the yeast, and then loads more banana esters. I'd classify it somewhere between a dubbel and a dunkelweiss. If the banana doesn't bother you too much it's quite palatable.

We had just dipped into autumn but the Summer Ale was still on tap. It's a name that suggests lightness and easy-drinking so I was surprised to be served a glass of copper-coloured beer and even more surprised by the bizarre flavour. I actually don't remember the details now but my notes burble on about coconuts, rosewater, Earl Grey tea, incense, cardamom and bubblebath. Trippy, man. I liked it though, in a lol-what-is-this sort of way.

Olga is the weizen, a light one at just 4.5% ABV, served in a proper tall glass. It's crisp and spicy, an easy-going variety of the species. That said, it's full of complexity, with celery notes from the hops, gunpowder from the yeast and warm cookies from the malt, including hints of cinnamon and almond. That sounds much busier than it actually is. It's a beer you can relax with, and allow the flavours to unfold gradually.

The inevitable IPA is called Megan: after the all-conquering American soccer star? I dunno. This is a hazy amber colour and gives off an aroma of tinned strawberries. It's even more strawberry-like on tasting, with a dry and resinous bitterness behind. There are significant quantities of tannins as well, and a certain heat from 6% ABV. This is another off-kilter but enjoyable one, copperfastening my conclusion that Cavana's whimsical playfulness is part of its charm.

I only had one beer at the Trieste venue with perhaps the best reputation for beer: Taverna Ai Mastri d'Arme. I didn't even get to see the inside, sitting out in the small courtyard in front, served by a bearded giant in a Galway Bay Brewery t-shirt. Black Lullaby is from Retorto, a brewery in Emilia-Romagna, and is described as a "Belgian dark strong ale". That, it turns out, means 8.3% ABV and jet black with lots of foam. The aroma is sweet, like cherry jam, while the flavour presents a mix of cherry liqueur and chocolate on a velvety smooth texture. There's nothing especially Belgian tasting here, but it's very nice.

The strongly maritime, oppressively wood-clad Bounty Pub was the first place I discovered that Italian craft beer bars don't really go in for proper toilets much: a single ceramic hole in the floor suffices for venues that hold sixty or seventy people. If you want to make beer more appealing to women, you could start by sorting that out. Unlike pretty much every other bar we were in, there was an uncomfortably tense atmosphere in Bounty. One beer each, then gone. Both were from Bradipongo brewery, just north of Venice.

Mine was Estout, a cask stout at a very Irish 4.2% ABV. There's a smooth and sweet milky coffee foretaste, with some sharper espresso behind and an odd but fun sprinkling of bitter herbs. There's just enough complexity here to keep a suppable beer interesting all the way through.

A 7%-er for herself: Mafalda, a Belgian-style ale of indeterminate style. It's a murky amber colour with an old-world Christmassy spice aroma and a flavour with liquorice, lavender and caramel. Spiced like a tripel but lighter than a dubbel, I reckon; heavy and warm, and tasty with it too. On this showing, Bradipongo is your go-to for wholesome Italian ales this winter.

Where Bounty Bar is dark and claustrophobic, Hop & Rock is bright and airy, with large windows and whitewashed walls. We were the only punters on the sunny afternoon we dropped by. It was a little hard to imagine it crammed with the evening crowd, though I'm sure that happens.

Sour #1 was my opener, from Hop Skin out of Lombardy. It's a hazy juice-looking orange colour and smells of fresh mango pulp. Thick and sweet like a smoothie, there's lots of real-tasting mango, guava and passionfruit. Next to no beer character though, and nothing to justify the stonking 7.2% ABV. Have I mentioned that I'm sick of "sour" beers that aren't sour? If I'd known this was one of them I wouldn't have ordered it.

That was in stark contrast to the other half of the round, Teodorico, a Baltic porter from Birra Mastino near Verona. This is cola-brown with an off-white head. It's heavily bitter like the best Baltic porters, laying down thick liquorice balanced with rich bourbon biscuit. And all properly lager-clean. Everything required of the style is delivered and it's a happy reminder that there are still grown-up brewers making grown-up beers for grown-ups.

One more quick pair before the pub kicked us out for its mid-afternoon break, beginning with a pils from southerner Eastside, situated between Rome and Naples. It's called Sempre Visa and is 5.5% ABV. I wanted crisp and clean; I got hazy and wholesome, with a grain crunch and a squirt of lemon zest, finishing on fresh green asparagus. It's decent as unfiltered lagers go, giving a proper impression of an unprocessed, natural sort of beer. I have time for that approach.

Ritual Lab's La Bock was a marked contrast, showing some of how diverse lager can be, even in the broadly German styles. This is amber coloured and though a reasonable 6.3% ABV smells very hot and is full-bodied to doppelbock levels. I think a German one would be cleaner; this packs in smoke and burnt caramel instead, with a porter-like chocolate character, finishing on a vegetal green hop note. While a little extreme, it hangs together well and is very tasty.

Today's final pub is Mastro Birraio, a cramped/cosy one-room bar nestling into one of the steeper streets. It looked to be a decent neighbourhood for pubs and restaurants, but as is typical for these things we visited late on our last evening. More than any of the others, this seems to have a clientele of local beer enthusiasts, and the staff were friendly and welcoming.

More pils and more Baltic porter, then. Polaris by Zanna was the former, smooth but bitterly herbal with some basil and traces of the Polaris hop's trademark subtle mint. I'm not sure I'd have spotted it if it hadn't been named. This is, however, the crisp and clean beer I had been looking for earlier. Flawless stuff, and beautifully frothy in its tall flute.

The porter is called No'tt and is from Terre di Faul, right in the middle of the country. It's 7.1% ABV and was served on cask -- possibly the first time I've had a Baltic porter come that way. There's a strange herbal liqueur aroma, of Fernet Branca mixed with vinegar. That concentrates in the flavour, where it's heavy and quite hot. An intense experience is on offer here but I don't think it really works as a beer, turning busy, cloying and difficult to drink. Any lager qualities it may have had are gone too. Disappointing.

There was a grape ale and I hadn't had one in Italy yet so I insisted on staying. This was Le Bucce Bianco from a farmhouse brewery near Venice called Siemàn. It's golden coloured and quite flat, smelling tart and cidery, but that's OK. It tastes of grape must first -- Tai Bianco is the variety used, a signature one of the area. 15 months of barrel ageing results in lots of funky Brett accompanying this, and a peachy gumminess too. 7.3% ABV makes it one to sip and savour, like a good wine. This beauty is exactly the sort of thing I came to northern Italy for, but saw precious little of.

Another barrel-aged sipper alongside that: Barrel Runner from Founders. It seemed somehow appropriate as a pairing, though this double IPA is a full-on 11.1% ABV. There's a powerfully hot aroma from the hazy orange glassful, blending herbs and citrus in quite a sickly way. I was reminded of grappa. It tastes of vanilla, coconut and nasty old-fashioned medicine, making for a harsh and headachey concoction. Beers like this should be mellow and smooth, not loud and busy as this is. Maybe it needs ageing further.

Anyway, that's your fancy bars and breweries of Trieste. We'll wrap up a few more next before moving along.

Holed up and shipping out

L: Cum Grano Salis, R: Jasmine IPA

My final post from former Yugoslavia wraps up Ljubljana with the hotel and more train beers.

But before that, an Irish bar. It's not that we were desperate for a pint of Kilkenny or anything: the beer list at Patrick's warranted a closer look so down the stairs we went. I had Cum Grano Salis, a gose of course, from Reservoir Dogs. It's pale yellow and has a distinctly saline aroma. The flavour goes all-out with the hops, delivering a refreshing citrus spritz up front, rendered more serious by full-on lemon sourness and a certain peppery spice. It is a little watery for 4.7% ABV, but maybe that's part of how it's been designed to quench. Overall it's fun and easy-going; not much to think about but plenty to enjoy.

The other beer is, oddly, Canadian: a Jasmine IPA from Steamworks in British Columbia. This looks similar but is hazier. Somehow it manages to smell both sickly and savoury, much weightier than 6.5% ABV implies. I'm guessing it's the jasmine, however it was added, that gives it a weird herbal tea vibe, part hibiscus tea, part ill-advised aperitif liqueur. I found it curdling in my stomach and was very glad to be merely sipping someone else's. The combination of flavours here just doesn't work at all.

Retreating to the hotel room, one of the surprisingly few black lagers I drank on the trip was Castra Dark. It's very plain fare, hellbent on a dry burnt toast effect with none of the sweeter nuance, nor any hop-derived complexity. It's OK, I guess: clean and sufficiently lagerlike. A more pleasant, stoutish, creamy texture forms as it warms and flattens, though it never loses the palate-scorching dryness. While it's perfectly drinkable, I doubt it'll convince anyone of the multifaceted wonders of this style, however.

Omnivar Holiday Hog is an imperial stout, and a big one at 11.5% ABV. The texture is remarkably thin for that, and the busy fizz was the first impression it gave me. The flavour is very decent, though: rich mocha, a touch of wafer biscuit or waffle coated in chocolate sauce. Maybe it's just the name but I thought I detected a hint of cinnamon or similar Christmas spice by way of background complexity. Regardless, this is a solid half-litre of big stout.

The same brewery's Dubbel Date is a dubbel, with dates in it. See what they did there? Though a moderate 7.6% ABV it's deliciously warming and avoids the marker-pen solvent heat brewers who aren't dubbel specialists sometimes create by mistake. All the items one turns to this style for are present: the raisin, plum and fig. Nothing I recognised as date, mind. There's a distinctive dryness to it too, making it taste more like a tea brack than the more typical Christmas cake. The busy flavours mean a half litre may be too much for a single serve; it depends what you're up for.

I raved about Barut's Summer Snow Berliner weisse on Wednesday. A bottle of their Space Goat Brettanomyces IPA was more challenging. It's 6.7% ABV and a pale hazy orange colour. The aroma is very funky: a concentrated Orval vibe. On tasting the first thing to come through is a bleachy twang which I think is all part of the beer's Brett experience but which didn't endear it to me. There are gentler flavours behind it: squishy ripe apricot, a buzz of orange sherbet and some more serious sweaty-horse funk. So, plenty going on then, but is it nice? On balance, I'm saying no. The later flavours are lovely, but the foretaste is just too harsh and it's hard to enjoy anything after that. It's thin too, and for an alleged IPA there just isn't enough hop character. Some subtle refinement would be appreciated.

I approached Crazy Duck's Ugly Duckling oatmeal stout with caution. Some dregs had congealed on the neck of the bottle and the cap was bowing upward, A gusher was anticipated, and so it proved, though thankfully not dramatically. In the glass it's a shiny and even black with a lasting head of old ivory. The ABV is 5.7%. First tasting brings the sour cherry tang of attenuation gone a little too far. While not unpleasant, it's not rich and smooth as one would expect from an oatmeal stout, and I suspect it was meant to be. This is rough and uncontrolled, like wonky homebrew. There was no rush back to the shop to pick up more Crazy Duck beers.

Loo-Blah-Nah brewery, I assume, takes its name from the capital's pronunciation. I picked up the American IPA in a supermarket where it was cooking on warm shelves. It still smelled fresh, however: spritzy grapefruit with softer melon and mango. While quite a pale yellow, it has lots of foam, but that's not indicative of bottle-conditioning gone wrong. The flavour is clean, with a blend of tropical fruit in the ascendant: cantaloupe, mango and pineapple were the first I noticed, and there were others I won't list. "Tropical" will suffice. There's a drier finish with the bitterness of peach skin. That helps make it very easy drinking, given the sizeable 5.9% ABV. This was a highly enjoyable half litre.

Maister brewery has a porter with the attractive name of Noordung. A full 6% ABV, it appears even stronger, glooping stickily out of the bottle like an imperial stout and forming a dark tan head, albeit briefly. The aroma is an alluring mix of black peppercorns and rosewater. Unsurprisingly, there's a lot of chocolate in the flavour: smooth and rich and dark, like churro sauce. There's a lactic quality to this, adding to the luxurious density. The floral notes so prominent in the aroma arrive late, while the very finish is a slightly disappointing carbonic dryness, but one entirely in keeping with the style. I have absolutely no complaints about this beer; it delivers all that's promised and quite a bit more.

Pronunciation fans will be all over Põhjala's Öö Baltic porter. It's incredibly thick and tarry; moreso than one might expect at a mere 10.5% ABV. There's a strong smoked element to the intense flavour, and buckets of very dark chocolate. Though the volume is turned up and feedback is blaring, it's still possible to taste the basic features of Baltic porter: an old-fashioned liquorice bitterness and plenty of burnt toast. Maybe it's a little too extreme, though. The best of these are balanced and quite easy to drink; this one is deliberately trying to be bigger, better, faster, more but it does nothing to improve the format.

As a palate cleanser, from the brightly-coloured macrobrewery cans in the supermarket, Jelen: the house beer of Serbia. Though relatively light at 4.6% ABV this is very full and cottony in the mouth. The flavour is just as unnatural as the texture: twangy zinc, sticky syrup and a weedpatch greenness which suggests a Germanic origin of whatever hop extract or substitute they've used. By the standards of big industrial lager, this is rough. One could pass that off as "character" -- and it's certainly a distinctive combination -- but there's a lack of the subtleties of good lager here, tasting exactly like a megabrewer trying to create a quality product on the cheap.

On the afternoon of departure there was just time for a swift one at the hotel bar. I had my first and only Mali Grad beer: Black Magic Woman, described as an India black ale. It's actually a coppery auburn colour, and with the thinness of colour comes a thinness of texture, definitely not befitting 6% ABV. The flavour is quite washed-out too -- dry roast in the ascendant and a vague, hard to pin down, floral hop taste. All that fades quickly leaving just a tinny rasp on the back of the tongue. It's clean and unchallenging, I guess, but there's no way to sugarcoat the basic lack of character.

And for herself, Baja, an oatmeal stout from Bevog. This was darker, but still brown, and has an odd beef Bovril aroma. On tasting, the meatiness remains, joined by the cooked-cereal oatmeal to create a sort of black pudding quality. I like black pudding, but not in beer. A strong herbal bitterness adds a little to the sausage effect, and there's more disturbing Slavic aperitif liqueur as well. It is smooth, so that's one oatmeal stout goal achieved, but overall it's too busy and too weird for me.

Finally, while trundling over the mountains towards Italy: Green Gold's Mars Colony. This is a pale ale with (per the can) oats and (per my palate) oodles of Sorachi Ace. I get a crazy bang of coconut from the start and all the way through. Even the acidic napalm burn on the finish has a tikki buzz about it. The ABV is a biggish 5% and it's amber coloured, that heavy malt giving it a thickness which accentuates those hops even more. It's a little one-dimensional, perhaps, but tremendous fun for those of us who like our Sorachi unsubtle

And with the Adriatic sparkling in the distance, the next phase of the trip was ready to begin...

Union city booze

Slovenia has two megabrand industrial beers, both owned by Heineken these days though still brewed in separate locations. Laško is in the spa town of the same name, while Ljubljana has Union. The site is just outside the city centre and from a distance looks strikingly monolithic: two flat grey cubes. Beside this cower the remains of the older brewery, established on the site in 1864.

Union Svetlo is the flagship pale lager. I bought a small can from the supermarket, where a plethora of packaging options were on offer. It's 4.9% ABV, a pale gold colour and smells sugary, to the point of being sickly. That comes through in the flavour, where it's "balanced" by a harsh gastric acidity. This is stomach-curdling stuff in multiple ways at once. I was glad I only bought a small can, and even that -- served cold -- was hard work. So within 12 hours of drinking it I was queuing up at the brewery for a tour.

The taproom is shiny and new, very much the sort of thing you'll find in any large "brewery experience" worldwide. Locals do use it, however, and a few joined us in the beer garden as we awaited our guide. While there we drank Union Svetlo Nefiltrirano, the unfiltered version of the previous beer. It's the pale orange colour of a weissbier and tastes like one too, packed with banana and butane; a grain crispness being the only nod to cool fermentation. There's a certain refreshing lager quality here, but I think the base beer just isn't clean enough, turning estery and headachey by the end. I don't know why I thought it was going to be better.

There's also a dark version, Temno Nefiltrirano, not that I see the point of dark and filtered in the first place. There was no discernible haze in the cola-red liquid; held up to the light it seems crystalline, albeit dark. It smells of espresso, and slightly beefy too, like Bovril. The body is full and the flavour is sweet, giving an initial impression of chocolate muffin. A dry and burnt bite follows that. Beers like this usually have a liquorice bitterness and I had to look for it here, eventually finding a mild tang buried under the sugar. Overall, not a bad example of central European dark lager but hardly a classic.

The tour itself is thorough to say the least. Yes there's the flashy audio-visual stuff, and the rooms full of old bottles and antiquated brewing equipment, but towards the end it brings you into the modern brewhouse where a three-storey-tall kettle of pale lager was boiling away angrily, and then to the packaging plant to see how a responsible brewery washes and refills returned bottles. Nobody mentioned "passion" even once.

To begin with, they gave their alcohol-free Elderflower Radler. Well, it sounded interesting. It transpired to be a very sweet affair, sticky with it, and tasting more like blueberry jam than anything else. It wasn't even particularly refreshing, just jarringly sugary.

Union also does a Grapefruit Radler, one with a bit of alcohol -- 2% ABV. I caught up with it a few days later as we were leaving the country. The aroma here is very promising: a eye-watering spritz of really real grapefruit. I thought I was in for a tart delight... but no. They must have shovelled boatloads of sugar into this one too as the end result is very sweet, dropping the acidity in favour of a lemonade thing. Grapefruit flavour sulks back on to the palate at the end, but still buzzing with syrupy sweetness. As industrial radlers go, this is par for the course and perfectly refreshing. Aroma aside, no special prizes here. Was Union going to throw anything worthwhile at me?

Back at the brewery, the taproom had three shots at redemption: three beers, exclusive to the venue, and at least some of them recreations of old recipes otherwise abandoned. First out was Union Amber, a copper coloured lager at 5.4% ABV. This had a lot in common with Irish red ale, being sweet and biscuity, though dry as well: a mixture of coffee grounds and oat cookies. It's wholesome and rustic in a way one does not associate with Heineken, though rather dull as well. Next!

The tall handsome dark beer here is Union Bok. This is another lager and 7% ABV, so could perhaps be considered in the doppelbock style. Mind you, the murkiness suggests dubbel to me. There's a strong chocolate aroma and quite a portery flavour to match that: mild roast with an air of mocha. While satisfyingly dense, it stays clean, never becoming too sweet. Tastewise it doesn't belong to any family of bock that I recognise, but it is quite nice.

Finally comes Triglav, this one definitely an old brewery recipe and of no particular style, just strong: 9% ABV. Though allegedly yet another cold-fermented one, it has a lot in common with Belgian tripel, from the pale orange colour to the tight white foam, to the mixture of heat and spices. Coriander and orange peel have been used in the recipe and both make positive contributions to the taste. When the initial herbal rush fades there's a mellow buzz of peach fuzz and melon rind. Despite the whopping strength it stays cool and refreshing, and another would have been lovely but it was time to move on.

Perhaps that's the real draw of the Union visitor centre: it pours the only really good beer they make. And several others.

Before we move back to the smaller breweries, a quick look at a handful from Union's sister brewery Laško. I had Laško Weissbier at the island café on picturesque Lake Bled. It's pretty much bang on for the Bavarian style, albeit on the pale side. There's a full and fluffy body topped with a handsome pile of foam. The flavour adds a bite of greenness to its sweet and smooth banana. An unexciting example of an unexciting style, perhaps, but it delivers what anyone might want from it.

Now here's an interesting experiment. Heineken has taken the flagship Laško lager (reviewed back here) and added copious doses of the national hop, Styrian Goldings. Please be upstanding for Laško Golding. It's... better than bog standard Laško Zlatorog: crisper, cleaner, more like a proper lager and less like plasticky lowest-common-denominator industrial fizz. That it's not simply plain Laško with a hop change is evident from the ABV going up from 4.9% to 5.4%. I don't get any especially strident hop flavours here, but it's a damn decent lager and were I in the habit of buying tins in a Slovenian supermarket I might make this my go-to. Your regular reminder that the industrials can make decent beer; they mostly just choose not to.

As well as the Grapefruit Radler described above, I also had a can of Laško IPA on the train onwards. The cream and green branding here bears a strong resemblance to the Guinness one. "100% Slovenian hops" exclaims the can, like that's a good thing. It is indeed very Fuggley, with an almost acrid marmalade-shred bitterness and earthy coconut husk. This is set on quite a sickly malt base. Even at a reasonable 5.2% ABV it makes for tough drinking, and I think that's only partly because of my personal difficulties with Styrian Goldings. Maybe it's the branding, but this has a lot of the same problems as that sickly stuffy Guinness Nitro IPA.

A final wrap-up of Ljubljana, and more train beer, to come in tomorrow's post.