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.