Monstrous beasts

I've built up something of a backlog of Wicklow Wolf beers over the last few months. That's partly down to the sort of beers they've been producing, going in for strong and dark in a big way. I love it, but finding an occasion to make time for that kind of thing is tricky. I got round to them eventually, however, and here's what I found.

A tiddler starts us off, namely Apex Nobó, yet another variation on their Apex oatmeal stout. This one has added cocoa and coconut and is the lightest of today's set at 5.5% ABV. Not that it looks weak: it pours densely and is topped by a head the colour of milky coffee. The coconut is apparent in the aroma where it sits next to the promise of a green vegetal hop bitterness. It seems this will be a beer of contrasts. Coconut dominates the flavour too, arriving in at the very front and spreading oleaginously across the palate from there. The stout character suffers under its ministrations. Yes it has the oatmeal creamy texture, but there's no roast, and I didn't get much chocolate either. The promised hop tang appears only briefly at the end. I've said before that none of these variants have improved on the original and this is no exception. If you live for coconut in stout this will provide full satisfaction; me, I was too bothered about the good flavours being smothered by the gimmick.

Guardian of the Galaxy black double IPA was one of the brewery's best offerings last year. Now we learn that, together with DOT, they aged a portion of it in rum barrels and stole a name from a different science fiction franchise to create Hitchhiker's Guide. This is badged as a "dark ale" rather than any sort of IPA, so I assume the hop side has taken a dive. It looks slightly paler too: a cola brown or red rather than black. The aroma is very spirituous, with a touch of the fusel effect I often detect in rum and rum-flavoured things. Although it's a whopping 11.6% ABV, the texture is surprisingly light and there's not much of a booze kick. In fact the flavour is quite muted in general. Yes it's rummy. I've come to regard rum as the raspberry of spirits: when added to beer it tends to dominate everything. Here's it's subtle and pleasant: bringing a dash of vanilla and molasses, but nothing severe. It sits on a gentle base of milk chocolate and runny caramel. My only issue is that something this strong and convoluted should be more complex. Time seems to have smoothed out the multifaceted character that made the original so excellent. You're left with something extremely elegant, but running the risk of seeming bland with it.

The pale one in the set is the deep ochre Locavore Autumn 2021. The Locavore project began as a single annual beer using the brewery's own hops. For this barley wine, not only are the hops their own but the barley is too and, amazingly, the whiskey barrels it was aged in were made from Wicklow-grown oak. Now that's commitment to the bit. The end result is a 13.5% ABV whopper, so viscous it pours like it's been nitrogenated, a surge of fine bubbles forming the thick head. It's smells a little sickly-sweet, ripe forest berries on sappy young wood. The mouthfeel is as thick and oily as expected, and this helps create a kind of coconut greasiness in the foretaste. Blackberry and strawberry follow, before it turns bitter in the finish -- an almost Saaz-like grassiness. The barrel's contribution is slight, adding nothing more than a spicy seasoning and letting the malt do the talking, which is as it should be. Honey and dessert wine are mentioned on the blurb and I fully concur with that. It's a sticky sipper but still a superb interpretation of barley wine in the style of the classic American versions. This is very impressive stuff, even regardless of the all-local conceit. I would love to see it added to the brewery's annual roster.

That brings us back to Apex. The Imperial Four Bean version reviewed in here last year has been given the bourbon barrel treatment to become Bourbon Barrel Aged Imperial Four Bean Apex. That boosts its ABV from 9.5% to 12.7%. There's still no mistaking the tonka, however, its cinnamonesque spicing in full control of the aroma. As with the original version there's not much else going on in the flavour: a hint of coffee, a dusting of chocolate powder and a small squirt of vanilla and that's your lot. It doesn't taste beefed up or boozed out by the bourbon. While the barrel ageing of the previous beer added a subtle complexity, here they may as well not have bothered. It's just too strongly flavoured to get the benefit. If it's to be brewed again the tonka needs to be dialled right back, or removed. Three beans is plenty. Don't get me wrong, this is still a lovely, soft and warming imperial stout with a comforting sweetness that's not overdone. 

All this, and new vintages of the Locavore winter stout and the iconic Pointy Shoes imperial stout too. I don't know if Wicklow Wolf exports much of its product but they make fantastic examples of what Irish microbrewers are doing. It deserves recognition.

The other Bay Brewery

Dundalk Bay Brewery, the beer-making offshoot of metal fabricator Spectac, cut its teeth on straightforward traditional recipes for the pub trade, and I'm sure that's still what keeps the lights on. They've had a playful side since fairly early on, however, and that has definitely shifted up a gear since they appointed Dave Guilfoyle as head brewer. He seems to have brought the same level of creativity here as to his previous jobs at Pearse Lyons, Trouble and Bo Bristle.

That observation was prompted by pouring Brewmaster Tropical Hazy IPA. Breweries who don't specialise in trend-chasing haze but try and chase it anyway tend to turn out examples that are orange and, too often, clear. I had Dundalk Bay down as one of those breweries but this lad is properly yellow and opaque, looking just like the cool kids made it. The aroma is a pleasant mix of vanilla and meringue meeting citrus zing. There's a nice blend of creaminess and lightness, so I was surprised to find it's a very full 6.8% ABV. That should have guaranteed me a big flavour but I found it a bit limp in that department. The vanilla is still there, and there's a savoury kick from the hops, but it's lacking fruit analogues: no citrus, no juice. While it looks the part, it fails to walk the walk. I blame the hopping: it needs much much more than what it got. This is a great beer if you want an easy buzz: it slips back beautifully smoothly. It won't please the insufferable hopped-up hazeheads, though. While I have no particular quibble, I think it just misses what it set out to be.

Another beer was released at the same time, and can you believe it's taken this long for an Irish brewery to produce a Nitro Imperial Stout? I'm happy it was Dundalk Bay who eventually got round to it because I'm a longstanding fan of their imperial stout. Let's hope they didn't ruin it, eh? The widget rushes, the beer surges, but it doesn't look like they've gone overboard with the nitro: a slim and trim layer of cream sits over the jet-black base and from it emerges a proper aroma of caramel wafers and milky coffee. I thought I was in for sweetness but BOOM there's a blast of green vegetal bitterness right up front and I love it. It's creamily textured, of course, but there's a little prickle of cleansing carbon dioxide too. Once the hops have calmed down you get still-bitter tarry black coffee and a mildly sweet vanilla for a modicum of frankly unnecessary balance. The gas is the only gimmick here and it's a respectful one. The rest is simply a gorgeous, classically constructed, 8% ABV imperial stout. A round of applause for this from me.

It's cool if DBB wants to hone its haze into something more fashionable, but do not touch that imperial stout recipe. We need this sort of antidote to all the pastry everyone else is churning out.

Just a Helles

Nothing fancy today. A standalone lager from the generally-reliable Austrian brewery Stiegl. That said, I'm not a big fan of their flagship, Goldbräu, so was hoping better from Stiegl Hell.

The appearance is flawless, as I'd expect: a polished clear yellow that just about qualifies as golden. It's not your typical plain and smooth Helles, however. There's a herbal side to proceedings here: I get fennel's aniseed, greener baby-leaf spinach and a sweeter red cabbage relish. That sounds busy but it's all very subtle and it's entirely possible to ignore it. The malt base is a little light for Helles, but then the ABV is only 4.5% so perhaps that's to be expected. It's not thin or watery, however, and, passes the basic requirements for the style without taking any major weird turns.

It's a beer that works on two levels, with enough complexity to stand up to nerdy analysis, but still absolutely perfect if all you want is a smooth and sinkable lager. Recommended.

Corporate gigs

Everyone's favourite UK pub chains, JD Wetherspoon and BrewDog, brought simultaneous festivals to their Dublin branches in October.

For BrewDog it was the first CollabFest since they opened, shortly before the pandemic shutters came down. By the time I got there only the local collaborative offering was left: Tuck Shop Mafia, a lemony sour beer, brewed with Hope, and a big one at 8% ABV. It was an appropriate hazy yellow in the glass and smelled of bathroom cleaner, so full lemon points for that, I guess. Lemongrass is one of the ingredients and that's the first thing I noticed on tasting, that slightly dry and green rasp. Bittersweet lemonade arrives behind this, forming the main feature: the lemon peel gives it a classy, posh-lemonade feel. An oily citric resin marks the end. While the sour-beer side of the equation is missing, it's otherwise a delightfully clean-tasting job, so perhaps that's where the sour culture contributes. Why it needed to be 8% ABV I do not know: it's a cleansing and refreshing chappie, the sort of beer that should not leave me concerned about the alcohol load. 

It's a bit of a trek out to BrewDog -- it's called "Outpost" for a reason -- so more than a zingy half was needed to justify the trip. I had yet to try any beers from the in-house brewery. As it happened there were three on so I ordered three thirds.

Beginning in the middle, that's Saison & On, a down-the-line 5%-er with no silly additions as far as I'm aware. There's a lovely fruity aroma here -- ripe oranges, just on the edge of turning funky. The flavour expands on that with a mixture of pith and straw, finishing on a peppery piquancy. This is really well done, and shows off all the things that saison is supposed to be. Where it differs from the classics is in the texture: there's an almost creamy feel instead of saison's usual dry and sharp quality, and that helps spread the flavour even further. This is a level above what I would expect from a miniature back-of-the-pub brewery on the quays.

Hazy IPA is next, inevitably. Opaque Lake is what they've called it, and it hums of garlic. I genuinely thought it had warmed to room temperature from the smell, but the first sip showed it was perfectly cool. It just smells like hot food. Garlic completely infuses the flavour from start to finish to aftertaste. You get a little contrasting vanilla with that, and a chalky dryness, but nothing good. Where's the juice? This sort of gag-inducing stomach-churner belongs back in the early days of the haze craze before anyone outside Vermont knew what they were doing. As such, it can get in the bin.

The final one, left of picture, is intriguingly random: a double IPA at 9.1% ABV, brewed with grape juice. I was sceptical going in but could not resist trying it. The aroma of deep orange Vinal Tap is weirdly sulphurous, like match heads. That translates to a saltpetre spicing in the foretaste, followed by an intensely sweet fruit candy, mixed tropical breakfast juice, and a big boozy napalm burn. This is no subtle Italianate grape ale; this is BrewDog Hardcore with the bitterness dialled back and given some extra fruit. It's all rather fun. Unlike with Tuck Shop Mafia, one is made very aware that it's a strong beer. There would be a risk of cloying were it not for that dry and spicy side. If this was an experiment, I think it paid off.

With that, it was back inland, up the quays to The Silver Penny. Time was I'd do a full tour of the Dublin Wetherspoons for the festival but the apps were showing precious little festival beer on the menus so I made do with the city centre branches.

It's a number of years since any Irish brewery featured on a Wetherspoon festival list, but BRÚ planted a flag this year, with a cask Brown Ale. It's a genius move, because whatever your opinion on Wetherspoon, everybody loves a cask brown ale. This is 4.5% ABV and a clear dark garnet shade topped with old-ivory foam. The aroma is a gorgeous mix of floral and caramel, with a waft of pipe tobacco for the full oul-lad effect. It tastes plainer. There's a toasty dry roast, a crunch of chocolate biscuit, and then a faint dark berry tang on the end. All of that passes through quickly, leaving no more than a vague chocolate aftertaste. This is a drinking beer, not a tasting beer. I wasn't there to quaff pints, but it would have been ideally suited.

There were two other festival-listed beers on offer but the only one new to me was El Camino, a golden ale from Conwy. It's clear, it's golden, so full marks there. The aroma is dry and waxy but the flavour expands that into a more comfortable honey and golden syrup effect. There's a spicy bitterness which suggests English hops more than the billed Americans to me, and while it's a light 4% ABV and very easy drinking, there's a lovely depth and complexity of the sort cask ale does better than any other format. This is unfussy but absolutely delicious.

Stopping in at Keaven's Port on the way home, I snagged Hogs Back Citrus pale ale, an amber coloured 4.5%-er. This goes big on the chewy fruit candy, all Starburst and Refreshers. Lemon and lime set on a slightly sticky honey base with added pear zing. I guess it's an attempt at blending smooth English cask ale with pointy American hops, and as such it works brilliantly. There's no edge, it's all rounded and easy, but the hop flavour is firmly pronounced in a way one doesn't expect from cask ale normally. Beautifully done.

Nevertheless, I hereby pronounce a saison and a golden ale as the joint winners of this craft-beer/cask-ale face-off. The presence of UK chains in Ireland remains a controversial subject for those who believe our native pubs serve the drinkers well enough. Me, I love to see things mixing up, especially when good beer is a result of it.

Die Grünen

Green cans and Germanic styles are all that connects today's pair of offerings from Irish breweries. Any excuse for drinking two in a row.

For their 25th Limited Edition, Hope came up with the revolutionary idea of not dicking about with a gose. The result is Classic Gose, a brightly golden 5%-er. As it happened I had been drinking Bayrischer Bahnhof's Original Gose not long before so had a memory to compare it with. I don't think it's as good. The Leipzig one has a floral complexity and a precisely crisp texture; this one is softer and more saline. There's also a peachy fruitiness which speaks more of new-world hops than old-fashioned German beer. As a modern take on gose I liked it, and definitely appreciated the lack of dicking about, but I found myself wanting more from the coriander and the sourness. Pucker me up!

Hopfenweisse has never really caught on in a big way. I guess, like India pale lager, bunging in extra hops doesn't automatically improve a style. And on that negative note, let's see how Metalman got on when they tried it. Their Escape Velocity is 6% ABV which is a fair bit lighter than the Brooklyn and Schneider original. It's still plenty thick, though: an opaque fuzzy yellow with a fuzzy mouthfeel. The flavours of IPA and weissbier bump up against each other in quite an unsubtle way. The first hit is sharply bitter lemon peel, followed swiftly by green banana and butane. This fades out on a raspy chalky dryness. It's... interesting. Challenging. For me it's just a bit too busy: every sip required processing time to deal with. More than anything I wanted to clean the grit out of it and let a softer fruity side through. I would class this as an experiment that didn't quite work.

I mentioned on Monday that local brewers are doing less by way of pale ales recently, and here's an example of what we're getting instead. Whatever about the individual merits of this pair, I'm fully on board for the diversity they represent.

Fireside not included

This year's large-format high-strength Rye River special edition arrived in early October, just in time for the evenings drawing in. They've done us a wheat wine of 10.5% ABV, using smoked malt and aged in tequila barrels, and called it Embers. There's a claim that it's something like a grodziskie though stronger, but it's much darker too, and of course lacks grodziskie's essential refreshing qualities. But I won't argue with how the brewer sees it; here's how I see it.

It took a while to pour thanks to lots of fizzy froth -- not something one usually finds in beers like this. Underneath it's an autumnal auburn, if a little muddy-looking. The smoke is apparent from the aroma, and there's more than a little of the kippery effect I have found, in fairness, in grodziskie, but there's a caramel sweetness too, and maybe even a little of the tequila's greasy spirituousness. It's all very intriguing and alluring.

The dense sweetness is the first flavour element to hit: a syrupy quality, rendered maple-like by its oak overtones. There's a burnt side as well which helps dial back the intensity. The smoke is fully integrated and it doesn't taste as fish-like as it smells. There's an almost peaty richness, even though there's no reason to suppose peat was involved. That's pretty much all you get, though: a rich and thick smoked caramel sipper. I'm not really getting the barrel's contribution to the taste.

On the one hand, it's a perfect wintery sipper, though on the other, pricing it at €25 is a bit severe when it's perfectly possible to get the same amount of decent wine or whiskey to sip by the fireside for that. But I'm a beer person and I don't begrudge them taking on that corner of the market.

A multiplicity of hops

It's time for another rundown of all the pale ales and IPAs that have come my way from Irish breweries over the last couple of months.

Common Element is a new can from Dead Centre, a pale ale at 4.1% ABV, so equally at home in the pub, I guess. It's a lightly hazy yellow and brimming with tropical aromas -- mango and mandarin juiciness. That's done with Talus and Citra, though not smelling much like the latter. Juice is at the forefront of the flavour, buoyed up a nicely slick texture. After the initial tropical squeezings there's sweeter fruit candy and then -- oh hello Citra -- a sharp lime bitterness in the finish. I love this. There's a perfect balance of new-world hop attributes with enough of a malt base to carry them, and deliver them in very generous quantities at a properly guzzleable strength. This has core-range written all over it and I would welcome the opportunity to cane it by the pint.

Waterford's Crafty Hopster, brewing at Metalman, has released a second beer, following last year's All Hail. This is a rye beer called Rye of the Storm, 5% ABV and a misty sunset orange colour. Banana and clove are promised by the label, which aren't flavours I associate with rye but sure enough there's banana especially, with a little clove in the aroma, making for something that has a lot in common with weissbier. Any sign of the rye, then? There's a bit, not the squeaky bitter grass effect but a mild pepper element in the finish. They didn't badge this as a pale ale, and maybe it doesn't belong with the others in this round-up, but I'm not sure how else I'd classify it. Rye isn't enough to give it character and I can see why brewers tend to go hop-forward when it's involved. This is a bit sickly sweet without their presence.

The third in Galway Bay's Little Feelings series of pale ale features Citra Simcoe and Amarillo. I caught it on draught at the company's newest pub, The Beer Temple in Dublin city centre. As before, it's yellow and fuzzy, and the ABV has been restored to 5%. On the first sip I found it very savoury, showing lots of onion and caraway. That was a surprise, because the aroma promises the lighter side of hazy: sweet vanilla and tropical juice. This eventually emerges at the end of the flavour but it's a bit of work to get there, passing through grapefruit and lemon zest on the way. I'm not sure it was worth the effort. While passable, this has too many of the common flaws of the style to be properly enjoyable.

Meanwhile, the second in the Eight Degrees Original Gravity series is Kveik Pale Ale, hopped with Mandarina Bavaria, Simcoe and Cascade, and fermented with the titular Norwegian turbo yeast. Hornidal, since you ask. 5% ABV, it's a most unfashionable amber colour in the glass with plenty of foam on top. Mandarina gonna mandarin and there's a rasp of bittersweet mandarin skin in both the aroma and, especially, the foretaste. After that I get a dry, peppery spice. I don't normally associate any particular flavour with kveik yeast, but this suggests at least some sort of saison parallel. The dryness almost veers towards turning it acrid but there's enough juice to hold that in balance. A classic Cascade grapefruit vibe becomes more prominent as it goes and is fully complementary with everything else happening. This is a fun and interesting mix of west coast and farmhouse characteristics. Original indeed.

Even though The White Hag has initiated its Duo series of two-hop beers, the Union series of single-hoppers continues, its latest being the noughties favourite Amarillo. As always it's 5.5% ABV and built from Irish Ale malt for a medium yellow-orange colour. From my homebrew days I remember Amarillo having an an orangey character: jaffa and satsuma, or mandarin on a good day. It often doesn't come across like that out in the wild, but it does here, in a big way. The aroma has a sweet zest, like orangeade more than fruit. It's light and fizzy as one might expect, but the flavour delivered with that has a lovely oily resin quality, tasting of big and juicy jaffas first, turning to a more concentrated pithy bitterness at the end. It's a bit one-track that way, with no diversionary complexities, but that's single-hop beers for ya. I got an almost nostalgic kick from this, harking back to when hops like Amarillo were novel and exciting. That's a bonus on what is also a very tasty beer.

Galway Hooker has a new core range of 33cl cans, including its iconic flagship, the session IPA, and one that's new to me, badged as Hoppy IPA. It's 5.5% ABV and I can see they once did a house IPA of this strength for The Sliding Rock pub in Galway so perhaps this is a re-run of that. They say it's double dry-hopped, although it's clear and amber coloured. They say it's "full of citrus and tropical fruit flavours" but I get a very old-school vibe, both dry and sweet, with the tea and toffee of dark English bitter. There's a strong bitterness in the finish but it tastes more like the mineral/metallic effect of English hops than anything new-world. Cascade, perhaps? So while this tries on the clothes of modern IPA it's very much a throwback. And I like it for that. It's not a million miles from the original Galway Hooker Pale Ale, but denser and intenser. The brewery's acumen at dialling in flavours just so shows well, even if market forces cause it to describe it as something else. I encourage you to give it a whirl and make up your own mind.

Only a little stronger than that IPA is O Brother's newest pale ale, Sipping Soma. This is another one intended as a single-hop showcase, El Dorado this time. They can't resist putting a bit of haze in that, and it looks like a high-end unfiltered orangeade. It's quite an intense affair. It does confirm my preconception about El Dorado as the hop which tastes like Skittles and Opal Fruits and whatever other candies use those lab-formulated pseudo-fruit flavourings. But it really really concentrates them into something that has passed being jolly and colourful and into something a little more unsettling. For one thing there's a funk to the aroma; mouldy fruitbowl is not a good first impression. The flavour lacks any bitterness, and I think that unbalances the whole picture. The sweet fruit candy is fetid and stale, presumably a result of concentrating the flavours hard. It lightens up a little with a crisp cracker finish, but there's still a burn from the intense hopping, making it taste much stronger than it actually is. Here's another very representative example of the signature hop, but this time it's too much to be enjoyable.

O Brother also presents us with an Ikigai: we've all met a few of those, right? It's badged as an "oat cream IPA", a label I've seen before but remember little about. The can tells us it's brewed with lactose and oats to 6.1% ABV, plus Citra and Comet as hops. In the glass it's a typical New England opaque yellow. Despite the milky sugar component it smells very savoury with a spice of matchheads and some bitter greenery: spring onion and spinach. In the foretaste the vegetable side increases massively to a full-on garlic-oil burn. After a second this gets balanced, if that's the word, with a sweet vanilla element which I guess is the lactose flexing its muscle, though there are plenty of non-lactose hazy IPAs that have this as well. For all the unfruity seriousness I rather enjoyed what it does. It's big and bold, yet smooth, avoiding turning chalky or sharp: a big softie, in short. Awww.

Two new ones from Trouble next, beginning small on Little Monster. This 3.5% ABV pale ale is a hazy yellow shade and features a bright and spicy sherbet aroma with hints of bitterer lemon peel. As one would expect, the body is light although not to the point of tipping into watery. Mosaic features on the hop bill and I can definitely taste its mango and passionfruit flavour, the same sort of thing that makes White Hag's Little Fawn the masterpiece it is. Sabro is in there too and there's a pith and coconut finish with which it marks its territory. Of the Azacca and El Dorado there is less indication, but what's there is enough for a very sessionable creation like this. The blend of tropical juice and citric bite works beautifully, creating something that justifies a close sensory inspection but works equally well as a quaffer. I would be very happy to see this on draught.

Its companion is a modest double IPA of 7.6% ABV, called Lights Out. It's a deep orange colour and slightly hazy. Sabro, Mosaic and Columbus are the hops and I think the Mosaic is winning, at least in the juicy and tropical aroma. There's a substantial backing of candy malt behind it. The flavour is fun. First of all there's a big and greasy texture, reminiscent of a much stronger beer. On top of that, the Mosaic's pineapple and mango meets the others' bitter pith, creating a very realistic exotic fruit cocktail. After the initial sharpness, it settles back to juice with a long mandarin finish. It does a lot of the things that the good yellow emulsions do, and there's no danger of grit or garlic or vanilla. Just juice 'n' booze, baby! I like.

We go back to The White Hag next. The brewery has form for Brett-infusing its hoppy classics, notably with Little Fawn to create Olcan, but a couple of years ago they also did it to their west coast IPA to create Brett Barrel Aged Bran & Sceolan. I missed it first time around but they've brought it back for the 2020 vintage. Hoo-wee, it smells of Brettanomyces: that classic Orval mix of wet logs, ripe peaches and gunpowder spices. There's still a trace of the dry and hoppy IPA left in the flavour: it's thinly textured and there's a pinch of grapefruit and some watermelon. You need to look closely for that, though, because up front it's all of that greasy funk and sparky saltpetre that's familiar from the best of Belgium. It's gorgeous, basically, and amazing that I got it in my local SuperValu for €3.50 the can. The complexity and the balance of flavours make this one of the best beers in the country right now.

The late summer release from St Mel's was called, appropriately, Lúnasa, a double IPA. It poured a dense, dark, amber colour with a lot of ominous haze. The aroma is similarly ominous, being very savoury, giving rye bread, poppy seed and herbed sausage: not what one would hope for from the promised cocktail of American hops. The flavour is a rather more pleasant, but it's bizarrely devoid of fruity characteristics: citric, juicy or otherwise. Up front it's strongly bitter, and I get an impression of rye grass in particular, even though rye isn't among the ingredients. Following behind is a slightly harsh diesel and metal tang, the bitterness building and never quite fading, eventually coating the palate in mechanical grease. At 7.1% ABV it's light for a double IPA but there's more heft than the number suggests. While I appreciated the assertiveness, and I liked the wholesome bready quality, I wasn't really a fan of this, finding it too harsh and too distant from the norms of American-style double IPA, in both its west-coast and hazy iterations. Basic ol' me is not ready for such a brave take on the style.

Hopfully has done some large cans! Hooray! I get to use my large Hopfully glass. First up it's Tangerina, a big lad: an 8.5% ABV double IPA with (surprise surprise) tangerine juice. It's a Fanta-coloured hazy yellow but the aroma doesn't suggest juice or soft drinks: it smells quite dry and savoury; grain and boiled veg. Not unpleasant, but not especially enticing either. First impression on tasting is of a hot and heavy beer, slick textured and syrupy. So there's the sweetness, and it is orangey -- cordial, fading to oily peel. The savoury side is still there: hot garlic and caraway. I expected this to be fun but found it all quite serious. It's nearly fun, it's fun-adjacent, but I think the big alcohol throws it off kilter. There's a good idea here, but it needs toning down.

Finally, as a nod to the guys' native Brazil, there followed Copacabana, a New England-style IPA with coconut, as well as Sabro hops for extra coconutty excitement. It's suitably hazy, a pale orange colour with a loose-bubbled white head. The aroma is a creamy sort of coconut, reminding me of sun cream primarily. A sharper citrus lurks behind it. Unsurprisingly, the coconut is a major part of the flavour. Set on a soft texture, there's a real feel of piña colada about it, at the expense of its beeriness. A pinch of limey citrus in the finish pulls it back from the brink. This is still very much a novelty, however, going all in on the coconut special effects. The result does taste quite exotic, in both the tropical and unusual senses of the word. I liked the boldness of it, that it's not aiming to be a slight twist on an established and fashionable beer style. It's very much its own thing, and whether or not it's for you will depend heavily on your opinion of coconut in beer.

I don't have the data to hand but I get the feeling that the release rate of new pale ales and IPAs among Irish breweries is falling, with a more diverse offering taking up the slack. That's not bad thing, frankly. It could be a while before the next one of these.

Bock on the clock

Asahi-owned Dutch giant Grolsch seems to be putting a particular effort into making autumn bock season its thing. On my way across the Netherlands and back last month I found three different releases from them in the seasonal style.

Your basic model is Rijke Herfstbok. The name claims it's rich, but I think that's an overstatement. At 6.6% ABV one can reasonably expect it to be, but I found it rather simple, almost verging on bland. It's the proper brown-maroon colour and despite a flavour that accentuates sweet caramel it's still very clean and lagery. There's a touch of tea and fruitcake by way of complexity, but none of the liquorice bitterness which I think helps balance the dark sugar in beers like this. I can see how something so straightforward and unchallenging would be welcomed at the appropriate time each year; it's a beer of easy and comforting familiarity, even when trying it for the first time.

But if you do want something a little different, but not too much, Grolsch offers Gerijpte Herfstbok: a "ripened" version, aged a year prior to release. From tasting, it's obvious why they do it because you get a lot of extra complexity for your patience. The tea tannins round out into something more like an oaky red wine, with the formerly prominent sugar relegated to a supporting role. Again it's not complex or busy, but it's still highly enjoyable for all that.

Bock was brought into the Dutch brewing vernacular by Bavarian brewers and perhaps it's a nod to them that there's also a Grolsch Dunkel Weizenbock. In keeping with the local theme, this is red unlike German weizenbock, though similarly strong at 7.3% ABV. It's cloudy too, and has a thick milkshake mouthfeel. The red flavours of normal autumn bock are presented here as strawberry and raspberry candy, with a hint of coconut and a seam of banana. A surprise note of tropical breakfast juice finishes things off. Whereas bock is necessarily mellow and warming, this is much more sunny and frivolous. I enjoyed it, and would be perfectly happy to see it in circulation year-round.

Three for three on the bock front for Grolsch, then. Here's your regular reminder that large multinational breweries are capable of making very good beer, especially when local tastes demand them.

I haven't quite finished with bock for now, but to wrap up the travel, yesterday's post left off in Amsterdam on Sunday evening. I decided to treat myself on Monday to a day with no plans. I ended up strolling west along the IJ, to the brewery which shares its name. The taproom was doing a brisk afternoon trade, and there was one unfamiliar beer in the line-up: Chinook Crimson Ale.

Despite the name it's orange rather than red, and there's a bitterness in the foretaste that says IPA more than amber ale to me. It settles after a sip or two, however. There's cherries and berries in the malt sweetness and a tannic rasp for balance. That all makes it just fruity enough to pass as a red ale, without any of the stickiness or blandness that tarnishes red's reputation. A sizeable 6% ABV helps there too. 't IJ still does its best work in the broadly Belgian genres, but I give this Americanised effort a pass.

My tram back passed by a newer branch of the Gollem chain and I hopped off for a nosy. Unlike the original it's a bright and spacious bar, lit by its large windows, though not lacking in charm. They've called it "Gollem Craft Beers" suggesting they're actually courting customers like me rather than picking them up by accident.

You don't see a lot of Portuguese craft beer in northern Europe so I availed of the opportunity to try a couple from Cerveja Musa of Lisbon. The first was an American IPA called Born in the USA. There's not much of a nod to authenticity here as it's only 5.5% ABV. A nasty oniony sharpness gets it off to a bad start from which it never really recovers. I'm not sure which coast its supposedly operating from: it shows both a soft tropical fruit middle and then a hard dry finish. None of these would be a deal-breaker by itself but the flavour doesn't hold itself together, trying to be too many different things. There was a time when this was how all European breweries interpreted American IPA but we're past that now, and this should be too.

I figured I would be on safer ground with something strong and dark. Step forward Baltic Sabbath \m/. This is a none-more-black Baltic porter of 7.9% ABV which smells rich and bitter, of dark chocolate and burnt toast. The flavour pulls a bit of a switcheroo, turning sweeter, with big dollops of caramel and treacle, with the creamy smoothness of a big stout in place of the angular crispness of typical Baltic porter. My expectations were confounded, but to hell with my expectations: this is an excellent beer, and a very satisfying one to drink.

Feeling the need for more big stout (when do I not?) I turned back to those Flying Dutchmen from Finland. They have an 8%-er with the terrible name of Flying Dutchman More Complicated Than Your Girlfriend Stout. It was the Mother-in-Law back in Zwolle -- knock it off, lads. This starts with a gorgeous liquorice aroma while the flavour starts roasty before opening into purple flowers, pithy citrus and a tarry finish. In fairness to the name, it does have a certain truth to it: the complexity here is substantial, and there are points on the journey where this seems more like a black IPA than a stout -- something very much in its favour. Naff name aside, this is exemplary.

There was one last Flying Dutchman to be had on my way to the airport, calling in at The Hague, and a couple of beers at Rootz. Beast of the East the Bear is There (what?) is an imperial stout. This offers two kinds of bitterness in the foretaste: roasty and herbal. Then it turns suddenly very sweet with vanilla and cocoa before a floral fade-out leading to a chocolate aftertaste. I detected mild, but not overdone, pastry vibes, and it's all rather jolly. I didn't realise until afterwards just how convoluted it is, brewed with cocoa, vanilla, cinnamon, oak chips and chilli. I feel robbed of the last of these in particular. Still, I enjoyed it so can't complain.

One last bock for the road? Why not. I'm guessing that La Chouffe produces Chouffe Bok 6666 specifically for the Dutch market this time of year. It's very much in the Dutch mould, 6.7% ABV, rounding up, with a caramel base and then more fruit than most: raspberry, redcurrant, raisin and strawberry all came to my attention. Although I suspect it's warm fermented, there's a pleasing cleanness which keeps it easy to drink, and I think I caught a pinch of the La Chouffe signature white pepper spice as well. I'm not going to say it's better than Grolsch's offering, but it's a worthwhile variation on the style.

Lunch on the hoof was a burger at the Burgerbar chain which has Burgerbar Weizen as its house beer. It's pretty poor, though on an impressively end-to-end basis. That begins with a flat and lifeless pour producing a wan and watery-looking yellow glassful. It smells of banana candy though the foretaste is harsh unripe banana, then a growing sweetness as it warms, introducing bubblegum and toffee. Whoever brewed this hasn't quite got the hang of weissbier; and whoever picked it for the restaurant mustn't have ever paired it with a burger. At least the burger itself was good.

With time for one last beer I decided I would drop down to cosy old Hoppzak to see what The Hague's finest had pouring. Alas, when I got there Hoppzak was closed, and with no time for anything more ambitious I ended up next door in what used to be The Shelby Public House but seems have have undergone a legally mandated rebrand and is now The Sixpence. There's still a big painting of Cillian Murphy in a flatcap on the wall, mind. A pint of the house beer was sufficient to kill half an hour. I don't know who brews Sixpence Pilsner, though it did appear to come from a Czech-style tank rather than keg. It's in the broadly Czech style too, thickly textured with a smooth golden syrup quality. Some grassy Saaz would have gone nicely with that, but there's basically no hop character. It's a bland and inoffensive lager, and maybe I had had enough flavour excitement to do me a while by this stage.

My next beer was at home.

Crawling through Amsterdam

With EBCU business concluded, Reuben and I made our way from Zwolle to Amsterdam with a bit of time to punch in before going home. I suggested the MoreBeer Tour, a visit to the four bars owned by Peter van der Arend with the promise of a souvenir t-shirt on completion. I had done it before, back in 2015, but the line-up had changed a little since then, and so had the t-shirt design, so I was well up for a re-run. And therefore we found ourselves as the first customers of Sunday afternoon at Arendsnest.

On the principle of never passing a beer with your pseudonym on it, I opted for Nut Job, a 10% ABV imperial stout from the generally-reliable Moersleutel. Peanuts are the ingredient that gives this its name but I can't say I found much evidence of them. It's a very dense black colour with a tan-coloured head. The aroma is medium-sweet, like aromatic tobacco. The flavour, however, is very sweet, loaded with vanilla and brown sugar. Only towards the end, when it had warmed up and I was nearly finished, did a tarry bitterness creep in. It's fine, and good hearty rib-sticking stuff, but I felt I deserved a more complex experience, given the specs. Oh well. Onwards.

It's a short walk along and across the canals to BeerTemple, also quiet but not completely empty. Over the last few years, MoreBeer has been marking various anniversaries with specially-brewed IPAs from Uiltje. For their 12th, it's Big Fat 12, a double IPA of 8.2% ABV. This is one of those old-style dense and sticky jobs, coppery orange in colour with a flavour that's part juice but mostly cordial. It just about gets away with it by adding some spicy hops which deliver a sufficient amount of balancing resinous bitterness, and there's an unexpected dash of coconut in the finish. So while it's viscous, it's not cloying, and rather enjoyable for that. Big Fat 5 remains the best of the series so far and, pleasingly, is still in production.

Opting to stay for another, I picked Fleur du Nord from the menu. This is ostensibly a saison, produced by Funk Factory in Wisconsin and came in a tiny measure for an un-tiny price. It's mixed-fermentation fermented, foeder-aged and infused with locally-sourced honey, finishing up at 4.5% ABV. It's clear and golden with a sharply sour bite at the outset. Venturing further, I found it very geuze-like. Maybe it didn't have quite the same level of wood and spice character but it's very characterful regardless, brimming with lemon zest and dry white wine. Were it not for the price I would have gulped it down and called for another.

Instead, we moved on. For the day-drinker, the MoreBeer Tour presents a dilemma at the half-way point. While the two central locations open at noon, the outliers make you wait until 4pm. We did some light shopping at Bierkoning and then repaired to De Brabantse Aap for a plate of bitterballen and a pint.

I don't have a review here of their witbier, Witte Antonia, brewed at the Bekeerde Suster brewpub which I haven't visited since 2009. The tall glass is an indication that this is wit with weiss overtones. The savoury herbal side is here but backed by generous amounts of bubblegum and banana. And that's your lot. It's hard to impress with a beer like this, but it achieves what it sets out to do in a perfectly satisfactory way. And more importantly, it killed the half hour before it was time to hop on a tram and resume the Tour.

The barman was still setting out the tables when we arrived at the next stop. This place was the Jopen Proeflokaal when I first ventured this way, and the last time I was here it was called 'Cause Beer Loves Food with BrewDog as the beer-brand-in-residence. Now it's "Mikkeller at Morebeer", though still the same delightfully poky little nook it always was.

We both opted for beers from Mikkeller's wild ale brewery, Baghaven. For me, Oud Sasughaven, another soured saison, this one blended with lambic supplied by Oud Beersel. It's 6% ABV and hazy yellow in appearance. The geuze dominates everything with typical flavours of zest and gunpowder for an all-round sour and spicy experience. It's lovely but I'm not sure what the benefit is, as against just drinking geuze.

Reuben went with one called Stevnsbær Blend 2, a super strong kriek of 8.5% ABV, pouring dark purple with a frothy pink topping. This one really takes you on a journey, starting sharply sour before turning rich and warm while still staying clean and brisk. The flavour offers buckets of funky farmyard headiness as well as sweetly dessertish red cherries. It's a beer to get lost in, offering something quite different to what the Belgian lambic houses do in this space. I would like to see more breweries being playful with mixed fermentation at this high level of quality.

On the next round I went dark again, picking Dark Humor Club from Estonian brewery Sori. There are a few different versions of this imperial stout; this was the Pedro Ximénez barrel-aged version. It's opaque black with a beige head and smells of café crème, all rich and sweet and roasted, with some raisin fruitiness, presumably from the barrel. The flavour begins as red vermouth then turns more stoutish, with gradually building chocolate and vanilla notes, finishing on a jolt of strong espresso. I'm definitely a fan of beers like this where the barrel character adds a twist but doesn't overpower the essential stout nature. It beats wading through the bourbon vanillins every time.

And for Reuben, something called Orgia Apocaliptica from Poesiat & Kater. It's an IPA, but brewed with maca root, a sort of South American ginseng. It's quite west-coast in its outlook, with a pithy bitterness on a caramel malt base. I guess it's the maca adding an extra dimension to this, a dry and tannic side, resulting in something that tastes a bit like a fruit tea. It's good, but nothing special. There are probably better ways to get your daily quota of maca on board.

Back to the tram, then, and our final stop was Craft & Draft where we claimed our t-shirts. Of all the breweries in all the world to find on the board here, one I didn't expect to see was Neder, the unassuming little inn in the Franconian backwater of Forchheim. Are they filling keykegs now? The beer was their schwarzbier, Schwarze Anna. Alas, a hearty clay mug of it was not an option and I had to make do with a tiddly glass. It's lovely, though. At 5.2% ABV it's more full-on than most of this sort, with a strongly astringent bitterness on top of the dark dry toast, and then a surprise but welcome blackberry tartness. The busyness of the flavour does perhaps suit it to the craft bar tippling environment, though I would make a courageous attempt at ripping through half litres of it too, given the choice.

But we had reached journey's end. We managed a farewell beer at Gollem before Reuben departed Centraal for Schiphol. I had a bit of time left in country however. And oh, how remiss of me: I haven't given you any bock today. I'll make that up in the concluding post tomorrow.

For the Gram

From Zwolle, we set off further westwards on Saturday morning for Gramsbergen, a small town about 3km from the border with Germany. G-berg, as nobody calls it, is home to the Mommeriete brewery, set in a rustic canalside inn, all oak beams and porcelain fireplaces. We missed getting to see it as its normal cosy self since they were gearing up for a beer festival: one organised to celebrate 20 years of the Dutch beer consumers' organisation PINT, onto which was tacked the official 30th birthday bash for EBCU. It was a modest affair, beginning in the the afternoon and finishing at 7pm, and only three guest breweries were in attendance.

But it was only good manners to begin with the house beers and my first was Vrouwe Van Gramsbergh, Mommeriete's quadrupel. It's a rich brown colour and 10% ABV, all of which suggested something big and wholesome, but perhaps because it was cold on draught it actually proved quite light; refreshing, even. There's a fun and fruity flavour profile showing plump raisins and meadow flowers, finishing on a pinch of grassy bitterness. The base is all easy-going milk chocolate. Perhaps it's just as well that the first beer of the day wasn't a palate-thumper. I appreciate this kind of gentler approach to quadrupel.

De Vrouwe's husband, an imperial stout, was not on the roster, but I did get to try the tripel: Scheerse. This is another easy-going take on a strong style. It's the full 9% ABV and a proper pale golden shade. There's lots of rich honey in the flavour, if not in the mouthfeel, and a minimal but present amount of spicing. I'm always wary of big and flabby esters in microbrewed tripel but this neatly avoided all the usual pitfalls. I love the idea of popping in to your neighbourhood café and being able to enjoy tasty and accessible tripel or quadrupel, brewed on site, like these.

The day's first bock was a smoked one: De Vaandrig. Maybe because it only gets a limited run at a specific time of the year this one didn't seem quite dialled in to me. Though 6.7% ABV it's rather thin, missing the weighty caramel that makes Dutch autumn bock well suited to the season, especially when drinking it outdoors. The smoke, then, is unsubtle -- a raw sort of kippery effect that covers any nuance there may be. It's not a bad beer and was perfectly drinkable, but if it were mine I would be making tweaks to create something richer and more warming.

It didn't seem like the sort of place that would have a New England IPA in production but we live in strange times. Mommeriete's is called Het Varel and is a not-to-style clear amber colour. Told you it wasn't the right sort of place. Or am I being too hasty? It does taste properly juicy, with a hit of lemon rind for balance on the end. Unfortunately, after the initial thrill it starts to unravel, introducing a savoury character which I thought might be phenolic and tasted of burnt plastic to Reuben. By the end, the glass offered a mix of sweet fruit cordial and caramelised onions, which is not a happy time. Another recipe that needs work, I think, although abandoning it in favour of a clean and sharp west-coaster would be my actual recommendation.

Finally for Mommeriete, I came late to their strong blonde ale Jonkvrouwe. I seem to have had good luck with blonde ales all weekend because this was another cracker. Though only 7% ABV it has a lovely honey thickness, feeling richer than one might expect. This weighty Belgian-style malt character is balanced by a clean and zingy lemon sherbet. No bells and whistles, nothing fancy, just an extremely well designed and executed blonde ale. With everything else on offer I suspect that this may have been overlooked by many festival-goers but I'm glad I caught it.

Our friend from yesterday, Stanislaus Brewskovitch, he of the strawberry/basil IPA fame, also had a stand. I only tried one from it, a "coffee milk oatmeal stout" called Cappu dei Capi. The first surprise here was the full-on black grain aroma -- almost burnt -- not what one would expect from a lactose-infused stout. It turned out to be not very sweet but with a pleasant light, creamy texture. The flavour really isn't as complex as the title suggests, the coffee flavours staying on a low key and tokenistic chocolate or caramel. This puts in the minimum work to meet the spec, but no more than that.

The stand next door was Avereest from the neighbouring town of Dedemsvaart. I couldn't pass up a uniquely Dutch historical style when on offer, so started here with Klungel, a kuitbier: 50% oat grist and given a retro-modern twist by using a Scandinavian kveik yeast. Hazy orange in the glass, it has a fresh-squeezed orange and lemon aroma. That becomes dry and slightly astringent grapefruit on tasting, balanced by softer sherbet zing. Though it looks murky it tastes clean and precise, and at only 5% ABV is very drinkable. This fits neatly into an IPA-shaped slot without having any IPA ancestry.

It was back on the quadrupel next, with Avereest's ominously-named PK21, another 10% ABV job. This was much more to style than the one above, albeit not necessarily in a good way. It's extremely heavy and boozy, with hot caramel and fruitcake giving way to chocolate and rum, finishing up on a solvent marker-pen burn. It's definitely a sipper, and a slow one at that. I think perhaps in other circumstances, ie sitting down indoors, this would be an interesting one to savour. Standing out in the cold while eyeing the menu for what to have next is not really its ideal environment.

Gooische attracted the most attention and, of the guests, had the biggest range on offer. One of them was a grape ale, so I was straight in for one of those: Grape Ale III. This being a less than cosmopolitan part of the world, my server took great pains to explain to me what I was getting into. It seems this wasn't to everyone's taste. For me, it tasted like a work in progress. It's a dark red colour and very wine flavoured -- sweet and spicy with ruby port qualities and hints of raspberry and cherry. The finish is dry but before that it's sugar all the way and that's where it differed from the best grape ales: it needs more attenuation, more maturing time. What's there now is uncomplex, approachable and pleasant, with no off flavours or anything jarring. But I could taste its potential too. I think the brewery is going to a good place if they stick with it.

Another of my favourite styles? Oh go on then. Zwart looks like a proper schwarzbier but I started to suspect it wasn't going to be exactly my sort of thing when the ABV proved to be 7%. A gently roasted aroma lures the drinker in, to then be hit by a huge tarry bitterness. This only subsides to allow a similarly harsh burnt aspect enter the picture. Usually I can forgive very strongly flavoured beers for just being themselves; this one was too extreme for me, however. Dial it back. Dial it all back.

It must be bock time again. I only had a taster of Gooische Bock and found it a weighty one. Though a perfectly normal 7% ABV it's loaded with hot banana esters alongside the caramel, and missing any of the balancing herbal qualities. This is bock exactly as I don't like it. I'm glad I didn't buy one.

Bock also featured in the special beer of the festival. To wish PINT a happy birthday, Gooische blended their autumn bock with a winter bock to create PINT-Robijn, a rich red beer of 9% ABV. It doesn't stray too far from the bock basics though was much more drinkable than the autumn bock on its own -- I suspect that a bit of maturation has been going on and has helped with that. I got a slightly astringent raspberry tartness in with the caramel that balanced it nicely. It wasn't madly complex so I guess worked well as a conversation beer for all the old hands of PINT gathering in the brewery garden.

And with that one chugged it was time to head back west, where the bright lights of the big city beckoned.