Time to get silly

With one eye on the clock and one on the ABVs it was time to bring the 2019 Borefts Beer Festival to a close.

The first strong 'un comes from Poland's Browar Artezan and is called One of Each. Imperial porter is the designated style, and 11% ABV the strength. It poured quite flat and had a stark burnt taste: burnt toast and burnt caramel. It rounded out a little as it warmed but nothing more charming than stewed veg emerged from this. Smooth and luscious this ain't; more weird and difficult. Not fun.

Kees brought a concoction called NY Blueberry Cheesecake With Chocolate & Maple Topping. "Pastry stout" adds the festival programme, helpfully. There's a very sweet cocoa aroma from this while it tastes like affogato: thick sticky coffee and bags of sweet vanilla. A sprinkling of hazelnuts and toffee sauce arrive late. The name has presumably been chosen to drive traffic to it but it doesn't really deliver on everything promised. It's nice, though; not letting novelty drown out the solid imperial stout it's based around.

My beer of the festival came from Americans Olde Hickory: their Photon Sphere barrel-aged imperial stout. It's light-textured for 11.9% ABV with no booze heat, just a gentle soothing warmth. The flavour mixes coconut and milk chocolate with a red berry complexity, finishing on rosewater and Ruffle bars. This is a perfect dessert beer, giving great value even in a sample-sized measure.

De Dochter van de Korenaar mostly brought their core range, from which I had never tried Sans Pardon imperial stout so gave that a go when I called by their stall. It looked the part: a pure obsidian black. The aroma is roasty and there's lots of very grown-up bitterness. 11% ABV gives it a round smoothness rather than gimmicky sweetness or booze wallop. In a festival full of weird twists and takes, it was refreshing to try one as straight-up as this before returning to the madness.

And De Molen had plenty of madness on offer. I only got to taste three from their extensive line-up, plus another on which they collaborated. We begin with Decadent & Dutch, a stroopwafel barley wine. Not my first stroopwafel beer, and not the first where I have to say it doesn't taste like waffles. It looked awful, headless and swampy, but tasted decent. I got a mild stewed-apple fruit warmth from it, but not much else. This is the simpler sort of 10.1% ABV pastrified barley wine.

From there to an almond macaroon imperial stout called Trust & Effort. This one does indeed smell of almonds, but also of marker pens. It's intensely sweet and the almond flavour is tacked-on, like a bucket of amaretto has been simply dumped into the fermenter. The base stout is lost in this, and as it's 10% ABV I think it's reasonable to expect some sort of stout character. It's a bit silly, but if you paid for the novelty it certainly delivers on it.

Side by Side strong ale was pouring at the Hair of the Dog bar, it being a collaboration between the Portland brewery, De Molen and Tamamura Honten of Japan. It's 11.5% ABV and has an abundance of the signature liquorice flavour I get from lots of HoD's wares. Bourbon barrel ageing has given it an extra smoothness and warmth: you definitely know you have a big beer on your hands. For all that, it's quite easy-going; rounded, mellow and very pleasant. If it wasn't almost departure time this would be one to sit over.

But the train wouldn't wait. The departing beer is, perhaps appropriately, Seek & Destroy, the only single-figure job in this set, at a piddling 9.4% ABV. The brewery claims it's a spiced imperial stout but I got no spice from it. Instead there's a savoury cola-nut taste, and a medicinal coal-tar bitterness with an edge of burnt plastic. Whatever they did to this poor beer, I don't think it worked as it was meant to. Oh well.

So much for Borefts 2019, then. Bring on the after party!