New year, same Brussels

The coda on my New Year trip to the low countries was a couple of days in Brussels. I won't be telling you much about the pub that was top of my to-do list because Joran specialises in cider. It's well worth a visit if that sort of thing interests you, offering as it does a selection of high-end appley goodness (plus perry) from the UK and Europe, bottled, kegged and casked. The place is bright and the service friendly, making for an altogether relaxed environment in which to explore. You can read more about it on Eoghan's blog here. Thanks for the heads-up.

Also via Eoghan I learned that there's a new microbrewery in the downtown foodhall, Wolf. I dropped by on a Friday lunchtime, which was most inopportune. The place was jammed, with queues at most of the food stalls and space hard come by at the rows and rows of benches. The brewery itself doesn't look to be up and running yet. It has a small bar to one side of it and I guess that's where the beers it produces will eventually be available. On my visit they were selling just the core range from the parent brewer, Belgoo.

Making the best of it, I had a glass of Saisonneke Extra, a dry-hopped saison. Not for the first time I mistook a lemon-zest buzz for American C-hops when it's actually Mandarina Bavaria at work. Behind this there's a properly earthy, farmhouse-y saison with sweet and rich apricot esters, a rye-cracker dryness and lots of pleasing palate-scrubbing fizz. It's well-chosen as a beer to accompany food. I associate Belgoo more with daft novelty beers and this taught me that they can do classics as well.

A quick return visit to the L'Ermitage taproom got me a tangerine and lemon Berliner weisse called Sour Krump Premium. This is a light and approachable 3.8% ABV and has a beautifully zingy flavour, sparking with fresh citrus, like a rock shandy, and with a similar sort of ascorbic acidity. It's not extremely sour, but neither is it a glass of jammy nonsense: they've hit the balance just right to make the most of the fruit flavour while retaining the base beer's essential character. I like when that happens.

For herself, a stout called Spider Nicky. This is modestly strong at 5.1% ABV and has a savoury roasted meat aroma. The flavour is quite severely dry, tasting predominantly of burnt toast. A boiled-veg acidity is the sole contribution of its hops, and there's lots of fizz, something that doesn't work as well here as it would in a saison. This one missed the mark for me. I'd prefer a softer, friendlier, sort of stout.

With nothing else of interest we wandered back towards the city centre, stopping, of course, at Moeder Lambic Fontainas. I spotted Ganstaller Keller Pils on the menu here so ordered that instinctively, even though the serving was a most unBavarian 250ml. Now, this pub takes its beer seriously, and does it well but I strongly suspect the beer they gave me was not the Keller Pils. The muddy-looking glass I was served tasted exactly like a weissbier -- big banana and clove rock set on a slick texture. If it is a weiss then it's a middle-of-the-road example, but if it's a pils, something is seriously wrong with the fermentation regime at Ganstaller. I note this week on Fred's blog that there is a Ganstaller weissbier (Gans Weiss) on rotation with the Keller Pils in Belgian pubs at the moment, and that supports my theory of mistaken identity rather better. I didn't feel up to asking my server to double check, so we'll never know for sure.

The dark beer beside it is a De Ranke standard, Noir de Dottignies. It's 9% ABV and a dark chestnut colour, rather than black. The aroma is all dark roast but it's softer to taste, showing very typical Belgian fruit flavours like plum, fig and raisin. Though dense and heavy it's surprisingly easy drinking, the taste being well-integrated with no jump-scares or sharp edges. This could easily pass for a quadrupel and I commend it to fans of that style.

Just as I wasn't going to pass up a Ganstaller beer when I saw one, I also couldn't leave before trying the Italian grape ale on offer. Ridda is a pale one, from Yblon in Sicily. There is some white grape character here, including a perfumed Muscat effect in the background, but mostly this is dry and savoury, tasting of sesame seed more than anything. The lack of complexity may be in part to do with the low 5.5% ABV, however I think also it might benefit from some post-fermentation processing: Brett, barrels, that sort of thing.

No quibbling over strength with the other beer here: De Dochter van de Korenaar's stonking 13% ABV barley wine L'Ensemble. It's the colour of a dark wine: maroon, shading to brown. An aroma of violets and toffee led me to expect a cough mixture flavour but it's lighter than that, and much more fun. Instead, I got chocolate and Turkish delight, sweet but not cloying or hot. The intensity is such that it demands slow savouring, but that's very much worth doing.

A visit to the Horta museum provided an opportunity to call in to the original Chez Moeder Lambic bar, now called Moeder Lambic Original. They had Rose de Gambrinus on cask and I transcended my ticker tendencies to drink two glasses of that in a row. Sorry not sorry. Across the table, the first round brought a French brown ale, Mister Brown, from Piggy in Lorraine. This took a while to pour, fobbing like crazy from the tap. It was worth the wait, though. Its aroma is rich and warm, like a mug of latte coffee, while the flavour starts bitter but smooths out, again taking its cues from coffee more than beer. There's a touch of mocha chocolate, some cola nut and a pinch of green-veg bitterness. Brown malt doing what brown malt does best, here. It's maybe a little sickly, and at 5.8% ABV has plenty of substance. I really enjoyed what I tasted of it, however.

That was followed by a house beer: Moeder Supérieur from Jandrain-Jandrenouille. Like the De Ranke one above, this is dark and vaguely monastic in style, though a mere dubbel-like 7% ABV. Spices mix with the fruit in the aroma: nutmeg on raisins. There's a heavily floral flavour, reminding me of lavender and rosewater, contrasting with dry burnt toast. While not spectacular, it's a very interesting and unusual arrangement of typical dark Belgian flavours, and is much better than a house beer needs to be.

A hankering for Mexican food brought us to El Mexicanito in Ixelles. I recommend it. For those, like me, who rarely get to eat Mexican they have a pleasing option of everything from the menu on one big plate. To wash that down, Ocho Reales, a dark garnet-coloured ale that tasted lager-clean. Big liquorice energy puts it in the dunkelbock end of the spectrum, heading for Baltic porter territory: a lot is packed in at only 5.5% ABV. A body that's full to the point to seeming creamy is the only nod to warm fermentation I could find. The serious dark bitterness gets balanced by a fun sweet note of raspberry cordial. I don't know how commonplace this is in Mexico but it's well worth seeking out. I wish more Mexican restaurants stocked it too.

We did a bit of classic Brussels pub-hopping as well; excursions to À La Bécasse, Le Coq and Le Cirio were enjoyable but yielded no new ticks. At Au Bon Vieux Temps they were pushing Corsendonk Christmas Ale quite heavily, presumably trying to shift stock as the season ends. This is an 8.5% ABV biggie, dark brown of course, and surprisingly bitter. I got masses of aniseed, a hint of bitter herbs (marjoram, maybe?) and then a rush of brown sugar and burnt caramel. It's ungimmicky, which is to say not very Christmassy, and not very exciting either. Maybe the decadent strength is meant to be festive enough.

It had been a long time since I last visited À La Mort Subite, and nearly two decades since I'd sat in the antique main bar. This was the last stop before going home. They advertise something called Gueuze Sur Lie on the draught menu. It arrived a dark hazy orange colour with a sweetish geuze aroma -- Heineken's Mort Subite brand being a byword for the sweetened sort. There is a mildly sour bite in the flavour and lots of woody spices. I liked it. It does manage to hit a lot of the sensory beats of good geuze but without the intense sourness while avoiding the sickliness found in Faro blends. If I had to guess what it is, I'd say a kegged young lambic, but then it wouldn't be a geuze. Still, it does what unfussy draught lambic is meant to do, and I was happy with that.

Another winter seasonal from a mainstream brewer to finish on: Grimbergen Hiver. This is a clear garnet red with a snowy top. It's very dry, tasting of cereal grains and straw. There is perhaps a little honey in the mix but no big and warm winter fruit notes, and just a slight tang of old-world hop bitters. You don't even get a buzz from the booze as it's a downright puritan 6.5% ABV. After this it's just as well the days are getting longer.

Thanks for coming with me on my travels. Normal service resumes back in Dublin on Monday.