Big night

For the second post from Fidelty 2022 it's time for the dark beers, the strong beers, and the answer to the question if I drank any IPAs at all. Mostly, I drank them vicariously in the company of Andrew and Chris, visitors from Coventry and haze-loving hopheads to a man. If anyone was going to steer me to the right part of New England, they would. In the meantime, I got on with things.

You don't go to a gig like Fidelity and expect brown ale, but Trouble brought one, a new entity called Harry's Nut Butter, the magic ingredient being peanut butter. There is a certain nuttiness to this one, but allied with a big chocolate flavour from the malt, it came across more as hazelnut to me. The chocolate manages to be both candyshop milk variety and also more grown-up bitter dark chocolate. Though a relatively modest 5.8% ABV there's lots going on here and I found it quite busy. While I'd be willing to give it another go, I think a measure much larger than the festival tasters might be hard work.

Scottish lager specialists Donzoko had a smoked Baltic porter that they brewed with, and I think at, Cloudwater in Manchester. Low & Slow is 10% ABV, so a gentle introduction to the double-digit beers of the evening. It's fully compliant with the style's requisites, being clean and chocolatey with a liquorice bitterness which could have been stronger but worked nevertheless. Then the smoke was merely a seasoning on top of this, adding a subtle extra complexity which didn't overpower the rest. I wouldn't have minded a bit of overpowering but fully respect the balanced line they've taken here. It's a better beer for it.

Not an IPA, but an American wheat beer came from Verdant. I really just liked the name: Every Day Is A Different Dose. Isn't it just? This has a pleasing wheaty softness while the flavour blends sweet New-Englandish vanilla notes with a harder grass bitterness from the hops. It's only 6% ABV and manages to be refreshing with that, though there's an edge to it, making clear it's no lightweight.

To ensure that ticket-holding festival-goers still managed to experience the all-important fear of missing out, several breweries had limited-release launches during the evening -- events you had to be prepared for and build into your drinking schedule, lest you be left bereft of a thimbleful of the really good stuff. Around the corner from where I was stood, Track had one of these, and Chris said I should check it out as the beer wouldn't last long. He didn't say what the beer was but I set off for Track anyway. And thus I found myself with the only IPA I drank all night: the aptly named Together At Last.

This is a triple IPA of 10.5% ABV, brewed in collaboration with Queensland's Range Brewing. It's pale, opaque and smells of garlic, vanilla and alcohol. Sweet to begin with, it finishes on a harder spring-onion bitterness. Lacking the clean burn which is triple IPA's only worthwhile feature, this manages to both fail the basic requirements and offer nothing new. The exception that proved the rule's worthiness left me content that avoiding IPA was the correct move for maximum enjoyment.

While that was cans, Finback's 10pm special was in a much more dramatic magnum bottle. Grazing on the Ordinary is a bourbon-barrel-aged imperial milk stout with added coconut and hazelnut. It's 12.8% ABV and every bit as thick and luxurious as one would expect from that. The aroma exudes coconut in huge doses, and while there's a little bourbon vanilla, I got an altogether more classy Rioja-like oak from that side. The barrel element is what really interested me in this one and I think the coconut gets in the way. Although it was highly enjoyable and deserving of its special status at the event, I'd like a version without the novelty add-ins.

At the next stand over, Beerbliotek had a barley wine called To the Nines. Not a great example, as it turned out. It's very sweet and tastes more of sticky candy than beer. There's loads of caramel and not much by way of hop, an ingredient that should have been thoroughly ramped up to help balance 13% ABV. A note of coffee was tolerable but I gave up when it offered me banana. That's not right at all. Other barley wines were available so maybe I just picked the wrong one as my sole representative.

It was deep into the final hour at this point and I took a break from notetaking to enjoy some Æblerov cider and Superstition mead, the latter having two especially fun tricked-out examples, a surprise to someone who likes their mead very much on the dry and plain side. But there were some further strong and dark offerings in the vicinity so while no kicking out was taking place yet, I grabbed a couple of nightcaps.

First was Times 8, an all-in pastry stout by Lervig and Stillwater. Vanilla, cocoa, coconut, maple syrup and actual butterscotch ramped up to 16% ABV means it should have been a mess but it wasn't. Everything dovetails neatly together to create a smooth and warming affogato dessert. Coffee seems to be the one item they haven't included in the recipe but strangely it's a sharp jolt of espresso that I got most prominently. Regardless, this is a wholesome and classy take on big and silly stout.

While literally heading for the exit I noticed a Baltic porter I had overlooked, from Põhjala, and one does not walk past Baltic porter. It's called Bison in the Barrel Room because there's bisongrass in the recipe and it was aged in apple brandy barrels. So it's not a typical Baltic porter by any means but it's still delicious, starting on warming Tia Maria coffee liqueur vibes and adding in topnotes of cherry and raspberry. Perhaps my palate had become completely detuned at this point, but it didn't taste like all of 13.5% ABV to me. 10% tops. Still an excellent place to finish, with the satisfaction that I'd made a decent dent in the strong and dark options. No need to tell me what I missed.

As I mentioned on Monday I went to the afternoon session of Fidelity 2019 and I was a little apprehensive of an evening gig, but it was all extremely civilised as far as I saw, not too crowded and with general good vibes all round. I'm sure a lot of effort goes into making sure it looks so effortless: congratulations to the teams from Whiplash and The Big Romance who organised it, as well as the crack team of ground troops who made everything go smoothly. Same again next year, please.

And for other opinions on how the event went, see Thandi, Simon and Lisa.