Keeping the faith

Three years after the inaugural event, Fidelity was back in the Round Room of the Mansion House a couple of weeks ago. It's the only festival of its kind in Ireland, where punters pay up front and have free run of forty producers' stands, each pouring two beers (with a handful of ciders and meads) per session. In a change to the previous iteration it was split across two days rather than having a daytime and evening session -- I guess they get more people going to both that way. One for me was plenty and I rocked up on the Friday.

Having done some light perusing of the advance beer lists, the first thing to catch my eye was from local outfit Third Barrel, specifically their 3-year Brettanomyces fermented Funk's Old Brother. It's a beaut too: golden coloured, 7.1% ABV and tasting like the stronger sort of geuze, with huge incense spicing and bitter herbal resins, backed by a softer white grape and honeydew melon softness. While there's a lot going on, it's perfectly smooth and mellow. The only downside was not being able to take time with it; it deserved some slow considered sipping. But is isn't that sort of gig.

I kept it Irish for the next couple, and over to Land & Labour where they had a sequel to their previous stunner Lúnaberry -- Finnberry -- swapping the blueberries for blackberries, raspberries and blackcurrants, while still very much in the style of a fruit geuze. It goes very heavy on the fruit, though tasting real, not jammy or artificial. Then there's a waxy, oaky side from the base beer. The two don't quite integrate, at least not yet. I can taste that this will be excellent when it has time to age out and meld the flavours together. Right now it's enjoyable but not at Lúnaberry's very high standard.

As one might expect, DOT brought a number of barrel aged imperial stouts to the festival but I wasn't really in the mood for that, at least not this early in proceedings, so from there I went with the BA Mezcal Sour, another golden one and an innocent 4.2% ABV. It still managed to get excellent value out of the barrel, imparting a luscious Gewürztraminer sweetness which matched well with a full and greasy Mezcal-like texture. The sourness is little more than an appley tang, but that's all that's necessary to give it character. Complex yet refreshing is just what a summer event like this needs.

It was at this point I wondered if I could make it through the five hours without letting an IPA pass my lips. Surely every beer is basically an hazy double IPA these days? How far could I get? I pondered this over a grape ale from Swedish brewer Beerbliotek, called Random Brandon. No classy and vinous Italian job this, going big and sweet with estery Jolly Rancher candy (green ones) and a generous splash of pineapple juice. A kind of mineral sulphurous note adds an unwelcome rubbery twang to the finish. It's OK, and didn't take up too much of my time, despite the stonking ABV of 7.3%. Careful now.

Estonians Pühaste fared better with something a little similar, using plums rather than grapes and keeping the ABV down(ish) at 7%. With Albert you can really taste the alcohol though not so much the fruit. Instead there's some very lambic-like vibes, intensely sour with plenty of wild-fermented funk and an intense gunpowder spicing. This is much less of a novelty than the above and I suspect has had a much longer maturation. The result is altogether more serious, and more enjoyable to me for that. It's not the sort of thing I associate with Pühaste, but it's wonderful to see they can do it. I'll be looking out for more of its ilk from them.

Seriously sour was only going to hold out so long, and it was only a matter of time before the really silly fruit stuff came my way. The medal for silliest recipe goes to the Finns of CoolHead and their fully self-explanatory Passion of the Beets. Yes, passionfruit and beetroot, together at last. Neither are particularly shy as beer ingredients normally and they both sing in this: all the sweet and cooling tropical sorbet effect from the fruit and then a powerful earthiness from the vegetable, particularly in the aroma. It's a lot of fun in an electric pink package at 5% ABV.

I was expecting more passionfruit from Barcelona's Freddo Fox, with one called Fuel Your Passion, but this gose merely includes lime and coconut. The former dominates the aroma while neither really makes much of a contribution to the flavour; especially surprising since the base beer is only 4% ABV. The result is dry and wheaty with a mild thirst-quenching salinity. I guess they've stayed much closer to gose's roots than most of what gets churned out badged as such, but it's a lot less interesting than I thought it would be regardless. Still, it wasn't a drainpour and it was straight on to the next thing.

Lacada wasn't there in any official capacity but guerrilla brand ambassador Simon was wandering around with a can of their Up the Dunes, a gose featuring foraged sea buckthorn. It's a sessionable 4.8% ABV, coloured like an orange emulsion and smelling very wild and funky with an intense acidity. While the flavour is mostly quite sharp, there's a rounded and sweeter tropical juice aspect as well. Again, this isn't a thrilling beer, nor an ill-advised facepalm novelty, but decent, balanced and pleasingly sour.

A perverse need for something very silly brought me to Brewski, and a substance called Raspberry Fluff Gose. Fluff by name and fluff by nature, this is bright pink and smells intensely candy-like. I expected it to be thick but my notes describe the texture as "manageable" so perhaps it wasn't as extreme as anticipated. The flavour, however, is pure raspberry bubblegum, with some darker forest fruits but nothing resembling balance or sourness. It's a prime example of how far the concept of "gose" has fallen from the clean and refreshing original. I blame collaborators Omnipollo.

Desperately in need of some palate-washing I turned to the lager options. Stigbergets Shangri-Lager did the job. I don't know if this 5%-er was meant to be anything fancy but I found it a perfectly middle-of-the-road pilsner: clear and golden, with hop bitterness and malt wight held in perfect balance. It was a bit dull, if I'm honest, but was exactly what I needed at the time.

My first ever beer from Berlin's Fuerst Wiacek was also a lager, their Raving Pils. This is another 5% ABV job but they've used American hops and it works well, though they do seem to have hazed it up a little. On an achingly clean cracker base there's lots of zingy grapefruit and lemon peel, raising the refreshment quotient even as it departs from the norms of German pils. It's a nice example of a Craftonian brewery making good use of what local traditional brewing does well.

For Berliner weisse I needed to go to Poland, and Kokomo Dreamin' from Stu Mostów. This was only 3.2% ABV and was as lightweight in taste as in alcohol. The novelty ingredients are peach and apricot but they're not identifiable. I found it clean and simple, with enough of a tart edge to make it refreshing and without the dry grain husk effect that too often plagues light kettle-soured beers. The fruit side came across more as berries than stonefruit, but blink and you'll miss it. Another drain-the-glass-and-move-on job. 

Finally for this circuit of the hall, Deya's Brett Pils. I'm not sure I've ever had a lager fermented on Brettanomyces before and I wasn't confident it would work. It absolutely does, however. At 5.1% ABV it's a little overclocked for the style but still manages to retain the proper level of easy-going drinkability. It does that while also introducing a luscious canteloupe softness. This is Brett in its tropical candy form, rather than hard and funky. The tap badge tells me this is version four of the recipe so they may have taken a few goes to get it right but they've absolutely nailed it here.

We're half way along and so far no IPAs and no big and sticky double-digit stonkers. The probability of encountering such narrowed as the evening wore on, however. For the gory details, see the next post.