P9 lives

Today's three beers are from Garage Brewing in Barcelona, all with names that give nothing away about what they are. Even a hint would help, guys.

With P9 even the stated style was obscure: "Barcelona weisse". It took some further research to deduce that they're referencing Berliner weisse here, as it's a 4% ABV sour beer with added fruit, namely raspberry and passionfruit. It's hazy and bright vermillion in the glass, smelling of not much but really pushing the passionfruit in the flavour. I'm reminded of the mighty and much-missed Castaway by YellowBelly. There's a tangy sharpness right at the front which gets the mouth watering before the fruit arrives. As well as the smooth and sweet tropical ingredient, the pink tang of tart raspberries brings up the rear. Neither sticks around long because the texture is quite thin and the finish quick and clean. I don't think it has much in common with real Berliner weisse, but as a simple sunny summer refresher it's absolutely bang on: super fun but seriously well-made with it.

Another German sour style gets an overhaul next. Everything We Do purports to be gose but lacks coriander and bungs in lime, grapefruit and mango with the sea salt. It shouldn't be surprising that something with the ingredients of mixed breakfast juice looks like mixed breakfast juice: a bright opaque orange. The aroma isn't far off that either. Although it's another light-textured one, sticking at 4% ABV, the base beer gets quite lost. Instead lime is dominant, oily and bitter, with something vaguely tropical behind it -- mango I guess, but not distinctive enough to be identifiable. It's fine as a generic fruited sour beer but not particularly interesting and definitely not deserving of being labelled gose. 

The trilogy ends with Lolcats, an imperial stout of 10% ABV with coconut. And it's very that: hot and heavy with a sharp hop bitterness, and bags of dry charcoal roast to begin, suddenly overlaid with sweet and oily coconut. There's almost a clash between the grown-up stout and the candy, but it gets away with it. Although all the aspects are loud and present, the traditional bitter side is dominant while the coconut helps serve balance its excesses. Well I'm entertained.

Overall, a good showing from Garage here. The beers are clean, precise and do everything they're meant to do, while also being a little daring and cheeky in their recipes. Isn't that what small-batch brewing ought to be about?

The buzz stops here

I bought today's Stone beers some time before the announcement of the brewery's takeover by Japanese multinational Sapporo, which should make them taste better than otherwise.

The first is perhaps a little poignant: the ardently west-coast Stone was sometimes accused of having fallen into irrelevance by continuing brewing the sort of beer that made it famous two decades ago. Now, in a vain attempt at catch-up, there's Stone Hazy IPA. At 6.7% ABV it's a bit of a beast, and it looks quite dark and citrussy rather than fresh, pale and juicy. Perhaps their heart wasn't in it. Still, it's a Stone beer and that means quality. Here it's a bright and lively mandarin zing with a touch of orange hard candy. I guess that's their nod towards IPA being predominantly sweet over bitter, but there's still a pinch in here; a jolt of citrus rind right at the finish, helping keep it cleanly-flavoured. As such, it's very enjoyable. It's not the sort of soup that Haze True Believers want, but if Stone are going to bend to the market's childish whims, then doing it in this grown-up and precise way wins for me.

The next IPA is in a bigger can and even stronger at 7.5% ABV. It features as collaborator another brewery in the still-good-but-no-longer-fashionable boat, Deschutes. Honey is the special ingredient that gives it its name: Let's Bee Homies. The appearance includes some nasty looking gobbets floating about in the dark orange murky body. There's an interesting sweetness to the aroma which I'm guessing is the honey meeting the hops: somewhat floral with a little tropical lychee in the background. That tropical side is the main flavour feature, though there's a dash of lime in here as well, representing the west coast. I think I can just about taste the honey, but it's mild: present, though not assertive. I drank it within its one-year best-before but I think I missed the best of this. It tasted a little stale and lacking a zing which I suspect the recipe intended. As is, it's mostly a fairly average American IPA of the old school: amber coloured with a sweet toffee base to which intense hops have been added. While I doubt it's intended to be retro, it is enjoyable as such.

Poor old Stone, though. I'd like to think the new ownership will both allow the reliably good beers to keep coming and inject some new life into it. But that never actually happens, does it?

Boundary hopping

An assortment of pale ales of various sorts from Belfast brewer Boundary today. They love a bit of haze so I'm not expecting to see through any of these.

We'll start with some Idle Chatter, a 4.5% ABV pale ale hopped with Mosaic and Cascade. Boy is it hazy: all the eggy yellow. There's a certain chalky grit to the aroma but also lots of lovely and fresh hop oils suggesting limes, peaches and honeydew melon. Flavourwise it goes all in on the tropicals, the Mosaic giving it full pineapple and lychee, with a squeeze of ripe mandarin for good measure. The Cascade plays a counter melody of citric bitterness, its normal earthy quality becoming a more trendy dank funkiness. I was extremely sceptical going into this; it looks and smells a bit like one of those hoppy hazy beers done badly, so I'm pleased to find it an absolute joy.

I picked that up along with another very similar beer -- same strength, same style, same colour -- called You Asked For This, this time hopped with Idaho 7 and Azacca. I didn't drink them side-by-side so can't do a direct comparison but this was also pretty good. It's a little more old-fashioned, however, eschewing tropical fruit for notes of aniseed, poppyseed, orange cordial and garlic. It's seems thicker, heavier and altogether more serious; not a bad thing, just different. I thought there would be more of a fruit-candy kick from those particular hops but it has chosen an alternative direction. That's OK, you still get plenty of hop for your buck and lots of character at a modest strength.

Next we are Suitably Ashamed, which is an IPA at 6% ABV. Yep, hazy again, though a deep shade of orange, rather than yellow like the others. Azacca, Citra and Amarillo is an interesting combination, suggesting both sweet stonefruit and bitter citrus to me. A sniff gives little away but on tasting it's the bitterness to the fore: lemon and lime to begin, but growing in intensity, becoming a burnt rubber effect by the end. Luckily the body is light and the finish is quick, so the unpleasantness doesn't last long, but this isn't a beer I wanted to spend time with. There's a hardness which is out of character for haze, and again Azacca's rainbow fruit effect is absent. It's not unpleasant, but I'm not sure what it's trying to be.

The finisher is a brand new style on me: white double IPA, or possibly double white IPA. The Elements of Joy, a collaboration with Queer Brewing, includes orange zest and coriander, and certainly looks like a white IPA, being an opaque pale orange-yellow with lots of gritty bits throughout. The aroma is at once herbal and juicy, assorted tropical fruits turning ripe and mushy in a medicine cabinet. That medicinal thing is all the flavour does, piling in aniseed, cardamom, garlic and rosemary. The sensation is like walking into a Victorian manor house pantry in midwinter: wholesome, but somewhat threatening. Full use is made of the 8% ABV to really push the special effects and put some heat behind them. I wasn't sure what to make of it. I liked the laugh-out-loud audacity of it, but it's not easy or even particularly pleasant drinking. As a drinker I feel it's taking advantage of me, trying to do things to my palate I'd rather it didn't. I'm rarely a fan of white IPA, and I think that goes double for white double IPA: too much, too hot and too strange.

A good start got lost quite quickly with this lot. They weren't the usual flaws I find with hazy beer, and there's definitely no consistent house unpleasantness -- I'm fully prepared to believe that the ones I wasn't keen on simply didn't suit me. I'm disappointed by the lack of zing, however. Haze should involve a softness and a tang that I didn't get from most of these.

The value of nothing

Five euro and thirty-five cent for a 440ml can of a 2.6% ABV table beer. I says to the fella "Do I get the table as well for that?"

I don't know if anyone else has noticed but the price of beer is something fierce these days. Anyway, this is Ephemeral by Whiplash. It wouldn't want to be too ephemeral says I, to nobody in particular. It's a pale and translucent yellow colour and smells delightfully fresh and zesty, like the dream of a cool refreshing witbier outside a Belgian seafront café. I start to feel my pockets loosen already. The texture is, I guess, unavoidably thin -- the oats failing to bulk it out. On such a watery base the flavours sit uneasy. The lemon effect is achieved with actual lemon, and what I took for a yeast-derived Belgian complexity is just plain basil. Both of these simply float on the surface of the taste, obvious and unintegrated. There are some pleasant ripe-pear esters and it's refreshingly drinkable as I guess is the point of table beer, but this isn't a style that's meant to wow anyone and this version doesn't wow me, beyond that price tag.

A mere €0.90 more upgrades me to a double IPA at 8.3% ABV. Let Your Love Grow is made with Citra and Nelson Sauvin and is a little darker than I'd expect for one of these from Whiplash: definitely orange rather than yellow, and totally opaque, of course. Now here the ingredients are integrated. The aroma carries both Citra's sharp lime and Nelson's mineral grapes, but blended beautifully into a summery wine cooler. The texture is rounded without being heavy, carrying the alcohol so the beer doesn't taste hot. That hands the flavour back to the hops and it really makes great use of both, with elements of fruit cordial, chewy candy and sharper pith. Only a very slight mucky grittiness interrupts the experience, but otherwise it's Whiplash at their best. You can pay several more euro to buy less good, less fresh, imported versions of this. And there's no need.

You never know if a beer will be good value until you buy it and drink it. Both of these were tasty, but one justified the price asked and the other did not.

Peer pressure

It's one of those beers I've seen around for ages and keep meaning to get to. In the pub era it would eventually have turned up as the best draft option on some random evening, but that's so much less likely to happen these days so it has stayed on the edge of my vision. Except it was in full view when I visited Rascals back in July, in their off licence fridge. Which means I finally got around to buying, and now trying, Lervig Orange Velvet.

It's a lactose-infused pale ale with vanilla and tangerine extract, which goes some way towards explaining why I've not been in a rush to try it. It seems innocent enough, however: pale and fuzzy looking, with only 5.5% ABV. The aroma is pretty sickly, vanilla and orange like a two-tone ice lolly, an effect some beer fans value, but not me. There's a hard and clashing bitterness rubbing up against this, thanks to the Citra, Simcoe and Amarillo hops. The smell doesn't bode well for the taste, then.

It does gel together a little better here, however. The meringue dessert thing is still present and it meets a herbal and savoury hop side, part classy Italian leaf salad; part urinal cake, and together it just about works. While sweet, it's not oppressively so, and the hops make a welcome and non-jarring contribution. Overall it's not bad at all. Perhaps I shouldn't have left it this long.

Clearance ale

I'm off on holidays for the next while, which meant doing a bit of fridge and notebook clearing before I went. Here's most of a summer's worth of randomly assorted Irish pale ales and IPAs.

Nasc was a traditional music festival held back in May at which Four Provinces had a beer of the same name. It subsequently showed up on draught in their pub which is where I found it. This is a pale ale of 4.5% ABV, amber coloured and decently weighty for the strength. Fresh American hops, and I'm thinking Cascade in particular, give it an intensely perfumey resinous character, reminding me a lot of Galway Hooker's now-iconic pale ale. It's every bit as sessionable as that one, cool and sinkable but with a long lasting bitter finish. I can see this being perfect for a festival, refreshing and unfussy but also packed with flavour. Only the slightly overdone carbonation would give me pause before going back to the bar for another.

Kinnegar has taken on one of my favourite beer styles, the sour IPA, with Brewers At Play 25. It's a modest 4.9% ABV and a lovely crystal-clear pale gold in the glass. The aroma suggests mandarin segments with a little zest while the flavour opens on a clean and refreshing tartness, with a kind of ascorbic minerality scouring the palate slightly. The vitamin C character continues into the finish with the return of the sweetly citric notes from the aroma. It works well, and I particularly enjoyed the way it emphasised the sourness over the hops. It's nice not to be complaining about breweries using the word "sour" on things that aren't.

I haven't seen beer from Tyrone's Baronscourt Brewing down in these parts before, or indeed at all, but Aldi had one in stock, a pale ale called Not A Flying Duck. It's a Lucozade amber colour and smells sweetly of sherbet and marmalade, very much in the English style. The label says it's slightly hazy with tropical aromas and it's neither, so let's draw a veil over that. I do believe them when they say it's dry hopped with Citra and Simcoe, so I guess it's the weighty roasted malt that covers them up in an effect that used to be called "balance" when such things mattered. The end result here is a traditional, retro, broadly American-style pale ale, with the clean tannins of a British bitter. It's been a while since I've tasted anything like it and it was fun to revisit.

Perhaps someone at Aldi likes a bitter because there's a new commission from Lough Gill as well, in the ESB style, called Watt. It's amber too and piles in the tannins. No pretence at tropical or American hops here: the flavour is very earthy and English. Lighter notes are thin on the ground but I detect a certain amount of summer fruit, some mild strawberry or cherry. Overall, though, it's a bitter bitter -- dry and attenuated, with even the malt seeming muted for 5% ABV. I got through it OK, but I didn't smile much.

For something fiercely modern, here's Hopfully in collaboration with Bullhouse, haze enthusiasts both, with a pale ale called Upstairs. The aroma is a little lacking in this, smelling delicately of sherbet and zest rather than anything brasher. The flavour too lacks hop impact. There's a pleasant lemon-sorbet bite and none of the vanilla sweetness nor garlic oiliness that often comes with these. But there's not a whole lot else. I find myself a little disappointed that it's not awful the way hazy hoppy things sometimes are, but neither is it one of the good ones. One-off collaborations tend to be on the extreme end of the spectrum, because why not, but this doesn't taste like two breweries who do this sort of thing as a matter of course trying to impress each other. If hazy pale ale were a shrug...

Lough Gill travel on the same lines with New Journey, a self-styled "DDH juicy IPA" of 5.7% ABV. No skimping on the haze here either: it's a bright eggy yellow, as I've come to think they all should be. Juice is promised and juice is delivered, from the noseful of freshly-squeezed you get from the aroma to the more intense lemon and lime of the foretaste, leading on to brief but pleasant mango and pineapple in the finish. Full-spectrum juice, this. Alas, that's not all and there's an element of dry and savoury grit which harshens the zing and roughens the zest. It may seem unreasonable to request a clean-tasting can of murk but I know it's possible so I'm keeping to my standards. As is, this is only OK. I don't know exactly where the polish is needed but it could do with some buffing up to really sparkle. Nice try, though. It had me for a moment.

Dublin contract brewer Fat Walrus has invented the "space IPA" style, for reasons of their own. Maybe it's the addition of Galaxy hops which make it so, but it's the reason it's called Galaxy Shmalaxy. It's a heady fellow, taking an age to pour and finishing with an impressive foamy bouffant over a translucent pale orange body. It follows that it's highly carbonated and that interferes a little with the foretaste. When the carbon dioxide subsides there's a lovely bittersweet twist of mandarin peel or orange liqueur, in classy cocktail kind of way. That fades to a dry bitterness which makes for an interesting contrast with a big fluffy mouthfeel, the sort of thing that usually comes with juicy tropical New England-style IPAs, and this isn't one of those. Yet it's no palate-scorching west coast creature either. Instead, it's a balanced presentation of Galaxy at its orangey best. Lovely. If that's space IPA, I look forward to the next one.

Hasn't O Brother run out of ways to make IPA at this stage? I haven't been keeping count but they've got through a lot. The newest is called Social Proof, Amarillo and Mosaic, 6.5% ABV and with a spritz of mandarin in the aroma. Nice. It's not exactly New England style but the mouthfeel is certainly smooth and soft, which is in its favour. No vanilla or garlic in the flavour, thankfully, and instead it has a lightly bitter meringue-pie filling character, finishing swiftly and neatly on citrus peel. It's an understated and unfussy sort of IPA, and I liked that about it. There's a lot to be said for not trying anything fancy.

The dadrock lyrics are in endless supply at Third Barrel, with the next being a double IPA called Coming Through In Waves. Hopwise they've thrown everything at it -- Mosaic, Sabro, Cryo Pop and HBC 630 -- though the strength is modest for the style at 7.8% ABV. It's extremely hazy, the colour of beaten egg with a gritty texture. The flavour has a certain amount of tropical fruit but it's in the ha'penny place next to a big garlic and spring onion twang, as well as a booziness that shows the strength as perhaps not so modest after all. It's not a great example of the style and I think the hopping may have been overambitious. Less garlic, more guava, please.

That's it for now. There was still plenty of beer in the fridge when I left but it'll have to wait until the autumn nights are drawing in before I get to it.

Wartime collaboration

Pinta has a series of collaboratively brewed IPAs with breweries from around Europe and beyond. It's called the "Hazy Discovery" series and it seems a bit odd to pick just one fairly narrow genre of beer when creativity is usually the whole point of collaboration. Anyway. Latvian brewer Ārpus is first, hence Hazy Discovery Riga.

Though a full 6.5% ABV, this is a little watery-looking in the glass, yellow and translucent. The aroma is hard and stony, suggesting full-throat Nelson Sauvin to me, with merely the faintest dribble of juice behind. Despite the appearance there's a decently full mouthfeel with a substantial alcohol heat, both of which help to carry lots of flavour. At this point I look at the label and see that what I thought was mega-Nelson is merely ordinary Riwaka, which makes a certain amount of sense. I've found this hop to be unpleasantly harsh in the past but here they've matched it with Mosaic which was a great idea. You still get the Kiwi's intense winter herbs and flinty minerals, but after the first bite there's a softer caress of mandarin and mango. It's very much a beer of two halves and doesn't go anywhere more daring than that. It tastes great, though. That's enough for me.

When the series reached Kyiv it abandoned its usual name and went with No To War! instead. Ukrainian brewery Rebrew is the partner this time. The ABV goes up to 7% and it's a little hazier though still quite pale and thin looking. I know not to prejudge this time, however. Sweet and creamy coconut is the aroma, followed by a powerfully pithy bitterness. Some sort of Sorachi variant, then? We are not told, but consider yourself warned or enticed according to taste: this beer is very that. Again a sizeable heat boosts the impact of the big hop taste, though texture is if anything thinner than before. There's something savoury on the fade-out, a little antiseptic but in a natural way: eucaplyptus or chamomile.

All solidarity with the people of Ukraine, and I'm once again pleased to be contributing to the humanitarian effort in however tokenistic a way, but the Kiwi-derived Latvian collaboration is my pick of this pair. Both show Pinta's acumen when it comes to hops, regardless.

R you serious?

Tradition dictates that oysters may only be consumed when there's an R in the month. Tradition is silent on when you're allowed to bung them into a stout, however. Galway Bay Brewery's summer stout, Flaggy Shore, bears the name of an oyster farmer of the same name and location, and carries a shellfish allergy warning, so I guess like the Porterhouse's own Oyster Stout it does actually include them in the recipe.

Otherwise it's a straightforward Irish stout: 4.5% ABV and served on nitro. It's nicely full-bodied and leaning to sweet with lots of milk chocolate in the centre, though finishing properly dry, adding a mildly metallic pinch of old world hops in the aftertaste. There's no novelty factor going on, however. I might be picking up a little salt, but no more than you'd get from actual milk chocolate. It seems the poor oysters died for nothing.

Regardless, it's a very decent stout, and consumed on a warm afternoon in Dublin was exceedingly refreshing. I'd happily drink this any time of the year, with molluscs or without.

Refreshing

My weekend in London wasn't a beer trip, and it's possible I enjoyed it all the more for that. Planning was rudimentary as regards what to drink and precisely where, and knowing it was going to be London in August, and therefore horrifically hot, I set myself a rule of staying within the neighbourhood of broadly the West End: no transport and no long walks.

Pub one was The Lamb, lasted visited in the summer of 2008. It made its name as a Young's house, and while the Ordinary was in very good shape, the Special was on the turn, tangy and a bit vinegary. It was fun to see Sambrooks on the handles as well, now that they've occupied the site where Young's Ram Brewery used to be. The pint of Wandle was in excellent condition.

Since Þe Olde Mitre doesn't open on weekends we popped in there next. It wasn't especially busy, with most punters preferring the warmth of the alley outside to the delicious, refreshing air conditioning. Although this is still a Fuller's pub, the selection of beers was nicely diverse and I opted for Mallinsons Nelson Sauvin as the first tick of the trip. This is a flawless golden colour with a persistent slim head and a lovely aroma of dry grape and diesel. Nelson, then. The flavour was rather harsher, lacking the hop's squishy-grape lusciousness and piling in dry biscuit instead, which is no kind of substitute. While recognisably Nelson Sauvin, it's not the happy kind, unfortunately.

Heading back west for a late pint in Holborn, I happened across Star at The Ship, the first of a number of Portobello Brewing beers of the weekend. This is a bitter, and a tightly astringent one, like a mug of extremely strong, stewed, black tea. I have a reasonable tolerance for this sort of thing but this was beyond it, the intense bitterness almost reaching the point of sourness. Not that it was off; I'm sure it was as the brewer intended and perfectly well kept. It just didn't suit me.

An inevitable Wetherspoon nightcap brought me to Shakespeare's Head where they were serving another Portobello beer, Market Porter. This was dry again, with lots of cocoa, but softened by elements of cherry and raisin, plus blackberry for an extra complexity and a little bitterness. There was an odd sort of grittiness to the texture which I didn't care for but which didn't spoil it. I'm willing to accept that cask porter is so rare that my standards aren't especially high. But here was one, and I drank a pint of it, and enjoyed doing so.

If it had been a long time since I was last at The Lamb, it's even longer since I visited The Harp (March 2008) so that was a must-do early on Saturday. The crowd thronging Covent Garden hadn't quite made it as far as Chandos Place yet, so there were seats. This is where I first fell in love with Harvey's Best Bitter and that's where I started and it was of course divine. A second was tempting, but the strange taps even moreso.

Now here's a Fuller's bar making use of its unconjoined brewing sibling. Among the beers from the House of Fuller, Smith, Turner & Asahi was The Summer Mild, a collaboration between Dark Star and Anspach & Hobday. It's only 3.5% ABV and golden, with a little bit of haze as a nod to fashion. Aroma and flavour: not much. There's a touch of citric zest in both, but otherwise it's extremely plain. I guess the idea is for it to be unchallenging, and it's certainly that, but shading too much towards boring. Another perfectly-kept but extremely mediocre beer. Just as well I was interspersing these with classics.

Knowing this trip was on the cards, I read with interest Boak & Bailey's post in July about Central London Pubs That Feel Like Locals, and hey: there was one on the doorstep here. The Nell Gwynne is a tiny one-roomer up an alleyway off the bustle of The Strand. It really is an oasis of calm, and we had the place to ourselves while the streets of theatreland were mobbed.

Beerwise, I started on Golden Close from a new brewery to me, Barsham in Norfolk. This is an IPA, brewed to a substantial 5% ABV and clear golden, like they do them up north. The Landlord parallels didn't end there as it has both a waxy bitterness and a lightening touch of honey: maybe not as pronounced as in Keighley's finest, but close enough to keep me happy. The finish is quick, which speaks to how clean and well-kept it was, though I think the strength justified a longer aftertaste than was on offer. I enjoyed it, but was ready to switch for the second pint.

The second pint was Portobello's London Pilsner, with the feeling I was building some kind of set of the brewery's beers. This one seems like a bit of a commodity job, designed to fill a niche, though was one of three lagers on tap. It's 4.6% ABV and fizzy. That has its place but isn't much of a step up from industrial lager, nor from what I remember of Camden Hells, which was another option. A mild fruity banana taste passes for character while also being a sign of not getting the fermentation exactly right. Above all, to be a pilsner, this needs more hops.

We'd passed the swarming Nag's Head on the way through Covent Garden earlier. I don't have a link for the last time I drank here because it was in November 2000 -- when we came over to visit the Millennium exhibition in Greenwich. I completely irrationally wanted to revisit, so that happened before lunch on Sunday when trade was brisk but not yet unreasonable.

It's owned by the McMullen Brewery, a Victorian institution in Hertfordshire, and the pub is heavily vertically integrated, making it a bit like a non-evil Samuel Smith. An exceptionally dull pint of AK (it's better bottled) was followed by a pint of "Nag's Head Bitter", which I take to be the urban rebadge of their 4.2% ABV Country Bitter. I fared little better with it, finding it largely flavourless with the same soapy twang that haunts flagship AK. Maybe it's charming that there's still a market for beers like this, but I don't know who's drinking them, or why.

It was a big surprise, then, to find Riverside IPA a delight. "Riverside" is their craft-styled keg range and this 5.6% ABV job is brewed with Mosaic and Rakau. The result is a bright and fresh tropical aroma, settling on tasting to pineapple primarily, with a few zesty citrus features and some stonefruit for good measure. If the aim was to make something palate-tingling and modern, then mission accomplished. Let that brewer have a go with the cask stuff.

Sunday lunch was around the corner at Hawksmoor who seem to go through a plethora of house beers. There was just one today: Hawksmoor Lager, a 4% ABV Helles(ish) brewed by Harbour in Cornwall. This was much better than Portobello's effort, including the fizz and the little hint of fruit -- more palatable apple and honeydew melon -- while also giving clean dry water biscuit and an aroma of wet grass. It works well as an unfussy conversation beer, but there are features worthy of exploring too.

I hadn't realised that the Covent Garden neighbourhood was home to Lowlander, a Belgian-style grand café that used to get frequent mentions in the early days of London beer blogging, when choice was a fraction of the current offer. Having revisited several noughties venues it seemed appropriate to chalk up a new one.

Although the beer list is long, it's not hugely exciting, indeed representing the Belgian beer scene of 15 years ago rather than today. The house Lowlander Pils is from Huyghe, presumably a rebadge of something. Go on then.

It was served exceedingly cold, but with outside temperatures at 30°C+VAT I wasn't complaining about that. Crispness is the be all and end all here, with a dry brown breadcrust effect and pretty much nothing else. This is another niche-filling beer, for the drinking partner of anyone who has been dragged here by someone desperate for a pint of Westmalle Dubbel, which was also an option. Since I was here to see the bar more than to sample the beer, I didn't mind. Something more interesting was called for next.

Up the other end of Drury Lane and over a bit there's a branch of Craft Beer Co. On the ground floor it's a narrow stand-up bar with stools along the window but there's also a roomy basement with very effective air conditioning. This seemed like an ideal venue to wait out the remains of the afternoon.

The chain has a longstanding relationship with Kent Brewery for the house beers. I had the keg Pale Ale at a different and since-defunct branch in 2012. Here I went for the cask Craft Bitter. They've certainly gone all-out for tradition on this, resulting in an almost still amber beer with a strong green metallic bitterness which says Fuggles to me, though my abilities as regards picking out English hops have never been especially good. A grainy dryness forms the base behind this. It's yet another niche-filler, I guess. They could have done something more interesting with the format.

Of course, most of what's on tap represented the wild and wacky world of British craft brewing. Orbit Dry Hopped Gose, for instance, takes Leipzig's classic sour style, brewed to 4.3% ABV, and bungs in loads of Citra and Godiva hops. It still manages to feel like a proper gose, hazy yellow with nicely assertive levels of salinity and sourness. Then the hops make it taste like a lemonade, all sweetly citrus. It's approachable and refreshing, which I'm sure was the point.

Somebody always has to take things too far, however, and here it's Devon brewery Yonder with their Watermelon Gose. I refuse to believe that if you added real watermelon to a pale beer you would end up with something as luridly pink as this. That it's done with some kind of concentrate is suggested by the way the flavour blares watermelon-flavoured candy rather than anything grown on the ground. Still, credit where it's due: there's still a trace of saline gose lurking at the back of this. The cloying syrupy gunk makes it difficult to enjoy, however.

Back in May I got a bit arsey with the perfectly lovely Craft Beer Channel over their promotion of Anspach & Hobday's London Black stout, and how they insisted on comparing it to Guinness. It's such a cliché in coverage (reporting or advertising) of stout that it exhausts and frustrates me. Anyway, here was an opportunity to at least find out for myself whether any comparison is justified.

Reader, it is not. A&H London Black is a masterpiece of stouty complexity, absolutely packed with flavour. Not way-out or weird flavours, it's still predominantly chocolate and coffee as it should be, but present to an intensity that's almost too much, almost too busy. Yet it pulls back at the last instant, aided by a modest 4.4% ABV. The result is an absolutely perfect balance of porter's sweet and bitter sides, both represented in a big way but not clashing. It is a very different proposition to Draught Guinness and I don't get why you'd mention them in the same breath. Regardless, I would be very pleased to see this beer becoming commonplace around London. It has the potential to live up to the promise that Fuller's London Porter never delivers on.

There was a bit of spare time at Heathrow, enough for a couple of pints at the Fuller's concession in Terminal 2. From Dark Star, Sunquake, described as a "juicy California IPA" and 4.8% ABV. I'll leave you to decide what's wrong with that description. A fruit candy aroma leads on to genuinely juicy mango and pineapple, with a finish of tart grapefruit. None of this is laid on thick, making it subtle and accessible, while still presenting a twist on what English cask ale can be, of the sort that was all but unknown before the wave of haze engulfed us.

Beside it, they were pouring something quite similar from the elder sibling, a Fuller's summer seasonal called Sticky Wicket, described more prosaically as a tropical pale ale. The aroma is brimming with Skittles and Starburst before it calms down on tasting. The hopping is Australian, and is an excellent ambassador for the nation, showing off the rounded and ripe mandarin and strawberry that makes these varieties such a great fit for summer beers. These two made an excellent reminder that it is perfectly possible to deliver hop zing in a cask beer if you do it right.

Other observations from my first post-pandemic visit to Britain and its beer are that St Austell Tribute remains a beauty despite its ubiquity, equally London Pride still doesn't do it for me no matter how well it's kept, and Siren's Broken Dream on cask is a must-drink when you see it. Two different bars were casually serving this 6.5% ABV chocolate stout from their handpumps and I'm delighted to see it move into the mainstream from something only punters at a CAMRA festival would nudge each other and giggle at.

Overall, a few minor missteps aside, I came away with a much better impression of London's cask beer than I did after the sweltering death march of August 2015. Have things improved, or did I make better choices, or simply get luckier? Regardless, it was fun, enlightening, and a reminder that short trips to The Big Smoke are best done over small areas of town at a time.

Full Frontaal

They're not messing about at Dutch brewery Frontaal. Here's three beers in three big styles.

We begin pale, with Andreas, a tripel. There's no redundant "Belgian" in front of that: it's a "Bredase" tripel, and presumably the only one from Breda. Interestingly it's all malt, which I guess is a point of difference to the norm, though it remains full strength at 8.5% ABV. Immediate marks off for poor head retention: while it is a rich hazy gold underneath, the lack of foam on top was disappointing. It's nicely sweet and there's a very Belgian spicing which puts it back in my good books; a mixture of cloves and candy. That's balanced with a bitter orange-peel pith, before more cloves arrive in the finish and linger long in the aftertaste. It's a pretty decent tripel, not doing anything especially brave or innovative with the style, but I put that in the plus column. If my local brewery was making a tripel like this I would be happy for them to use the city's name as a prefix.

They've called Visual Distortion a "wee heavy": one of those pervasive side-effects of the BJCP where a single beer becomes an entire style. Regardless, the words now signify something strong and sweet and malt-driven, and this is definitely that. 9% ABV, a deep blood-red shade and smelling of toffee and caramel; or tablet, if you want to be authentically Scottish, which the beer isn't. At least they haven't put smoked malt in it. Instead, the flavour is mostly about the dark sugar, with a pinch of summer fruit, but there's also a very decent level of hop bitterness to balance it, a classic vegetal English effect from East Kent Goldings. It's thick and smooth and I think that helps cover the alcohol, making it rich, not hot. Overall it's rather nice: a plain and unfussy Presbyterian sort of strong ale; strictly no frills. It finishes cleanly and departs quietly from the palate leaving surprisingly little residual sugar. 

The ABVs go up one final half-point step for the 9.5% First Crack, an imperial oatmeal stout with coffee. Despite the syrupy unctuousness of this one there's plenty of fizz and it proved awkward, and sticky, to pour. Still, once that was done it looked well: true obsidian black with a deep brown head. For all the not-quite-conventional ingredients, the first impression is very traditional, and by that I mean hops -- a lovely almost-sharp green bite, something I prize highly in big stouts but am rarely given. The coffee is relegated to the finish where it's strong and concentrated; a little dreggy if I'm honest, and I think the beer would be better without it. There's certain amount of caramel and molasses but sweetness isn't a defining feature of this one. As such, I liked it. While it has no massive complexity, it goes about its business in a competent and above all grown-up way. Often that's enough.

Three solid a workmanlike beers from North Brabant here. All three avoid silly twists and daring gimmicks, and the end products are very enjoyable as a result. It's comforting to know that some brewers still reckon that's a worthwhile exercise.

Power sour hour

Fruit-flavoured sour beer, as brewed by modern craft breweries, is not something I get very excited about. There are a lot of them out there, reflecting how easy they must be to produce in assorted varieties. I like sour beer to be sour and these are very often not sour at all. Nevertheless, my curiosity has been piqued by the sub-genre that Brazilian brewers have made their own: the Catharina sour. Reports from jaded old cynics like myself have been positive, so when a brewery closer to home slapped the label on one of theirs, I was straight out to buy it.

The brewery is Prizm in southern France and the beer is called Try A Philosophy, made with pineapple, lime, cocoa and passionfruit. It's a sizeable 6% ABV and a deep orange colour, reflecting the huge volume of thick gunk that came from the can late in the pour. The passionfruit and pineapple share the aroma equally, while the flavour opens with an immediate and distinct tartness, accentuated by a surprisingly attenuated body, not the pulpy smoothie I anticipated. Those tropical fruits add a sweetness that's just sufficient to balance the tang, though the lime gets a bit lost in it. I was wary of what to expect from cocoa pulp but needn't have worried: there's nothing in the taste profile that I can pin to that. Even though this looks like chunky carrot soup in the glass, it's clean, balanced and refreshing, with a lovely light tingle for carbonation. I would never have guessed the strength and could happily drink a couple of these in a row, given the opportunity. The Catharina sour cheerleading squad has a new member.

While I was pitching around for breweries trying sour styles from other countries, I found Polish brewer Stu Mostów's take on Berliner weisse: Remade, one which they've admitted varies from the basics by being double strength at 7.4% ABV and heavily hopped with New Zealand varieties. No head retention issues here: there's a thick and lasting pile of foam over the hazy pale orange body. Despite the lack of fruit the aroma is still quite tropical, with watermelon and mango notes. This time the alcohol does boost the body, making it full and rounded. The hop flavour is predominantly bitter -- grassy and a little vegetal -- and in combination this really makes it taste like a pale ale. I couldn't pick out any sourness, certainly not of the intensity I want from Berliner weisse. It's fine to drink, but it really doesn't meet the requirements of the specification. I wanted clean, sharp and fizzy, and this isn't really any of these, being heavy and hop-driven. Enjoyable sipping, but where's the sour?

Well this was educational. Catharina sour is fun, but you can't mess with Berliner weisse. Now we know.

Witch, please

The Irish beer festival circuit continued winding back up to normality with the fourth Hagstravaganza festival at The White Hag brewery in Ballymote last month. The brewery's welcome expansion means the former car showroom doesn't have anything like the festival floorspace it used to but there's acres of space outside and the bar queues were kept moving at a decent lick all afternoon. Sixty taps from mostly European breweries plus a handful of Americans provided plenty of selection, and there was the bonus addition of a dedicated barrel-aged bar in a room off to the side. Where to start?

With lager, of course. Hawaiian brewer Maui offered a Helles called Bikini Blonde. It's a flawless apple-golden colour, though unattractively headless in the glass. The texture is so soft it almost feels a little flat. 4.8% ABV and a strong grassy bitterness made it seem more like a pils than a Helles to me, though that's not really a criticism. This is a perfectly fine drinking lager, perhaps not worthy of being shipped to Sligo from the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but since it was there I had no objections to drinking it as my first of the day.

Italian brewery Vetra had the day's only dark lager, called simply Black, and it's a bit of a whopper at 6.8% ABV. From that it gets a heavy mouthfeel and a little heat, while still perfectly cleanly flavoured, so had some attributes of doppelbock in what was otherwise a perfectly executed schwarzbier. Central to that is a big bag of bitter liquorice with dry roasted grains around the edges. Filling and satisfying more than thirst-quenching, it proved every inch the sipper that the ABV suggests. It would have been nice to take more time with it but time, as always, was ticking along.

We get no Portuguese craft beer in Ireland normally, and it's far too long since I visited, so I made a point of drinking both Portuguese beers on offer from Dois Corvos, beginning with Sétimo Céu ("Seventh Heaven"). This is badged as a triple IPA though at only 9% ABV seemed a little light for that. It's also in the New England style so was fully hazy and a dense-looking orange colour. It introduced itself with a buzz of garlic in the aroma though the flavour is clean and juicy and the alcohol quite well hidden. Sweet orange cordial is at the centre and I got a certain clove-like spiciness as well. The finish is oily and dank, making full use of what must be a lot of hops. Other than a lack of proper TIPA oomph I have little to complain about with this one.

Their other offering was called Still Life With Stout And Other Stuff, an imperial pastry job with hazelnuts and chocolate. I expected sweet but there's a substantial roast coffee bitterness in here, as well as a savoury side which Reuben reckoned was autolytic but I'm not so sure. It didn't do the beer any harm as far as I'm concerned. The best feature of this was the texture: a gorgeous creamy, warming hug in your mouth, thanks in no small part to the 10.5% ABV. Here's another dark beer deserving of much more time than it got on the day.

At this point I decided to nip around to the barrel bar and got a glass of Stingo, provided by Kirkstall, brewed in collaboration with To Øl. It's a strong ale of 8.4% ABV, copper coloured and headless. It's surprisingly light bodied, though fizzy, and carries flavours of melon and lemon on a strongly pithy bitterness. That contrasts with a powerful sweet sherry taste. All told, it's a bit busy and this is one where slowing down was mandatory while I made my way through it. Probably no harm. I see this working better as a finishing beer rather than one at the half way point, however.

A palate cleanser was very much in order and Burgundian brewer 90BPM provided that. The name is pleasingly French: Minitel Rose, a raspberry Berliner weisse of only 3.3% ABV. It's fairly basic stuff: a murky pink emulsion and mildly sour with a dollop or two of raspberry jam. Although it got the cleansing job done I felt it could use something extra to add complexity; maybe citrus or herbs or the like. Regardless, it didn't last long and I was ready for another imperial stout.

That was Fudgesicle from Basqueland. Again there's hazelnuts and chocolate in here, as well as caramel, and the ABV is even bigger than Dois Corvo's at 11.6%. But success is not just about the candy and the gravity as this didn't have anything like the same complexity, being an extremely sweet and sticky booze bomb with very little else to offer. It's amazing how two beers with a similar daft spec can yield such different results.

One last IPA next, Uno 2, from Swedish brewer Stigbergets and collaborating partners Omnipollo. I've said it before, but Omnipollo is a much better brewer when it comes to hop-forward styles as against their messy stouts, though this one didn't float my boat. It's the pale yellow of custard powder and tastes heavily of garlic to begin, before turning increasingly tropical. 8% ABV generates a lot of heat, however, and that does away with any fruit freshness. The result is a very average New England-style double IPA redolent with all the usual flaws.

Back to the other bar where there was an intriguing offer from Kerry brewery Dick Mack's: a Dingle [whiskey] Barrel Aged Saison at 10.5% ABV: not the sort of strength that things labelled as saison usually end up. It's  brown and smells strongly of grainy red apples. Saison's typical pear flavour is what it mostly tastes of, which is fair enough, and it's dry and light textured too. I was expecting lots of spirity heat from the barrels but that's absent and the whiskey merely adds some mellow oaky vanilla tones. It was a brave experiment but it worked, creating something very unusual but tasty with it. I'm glad I took a chance.

Two final tokens were burning a hole in my festival cargo pants so it was time to go all in on the imperial stouts. Penultimately I had Rosinenbomber from BRLO, a 12% ABV job that I quaffed stupidly quickly. It's highly enjoyable though; extremely smooth and rich with lots of espresso and a sharp hop-driven edge of bitterness. No messing here, just big strong stout done very well. I notice that it was a collaboration with Lervig, who provided the goods in a similar context at Fidelty a few weeks earlier.

The last beer came to the station with me, and several stops along the line back to Dublin too. Matière Noire ("Dark Matter") is from Mont Hardi and is a bit of a lightweight in this context: only 10% ABV. Still it was the most complex one of the day, setting fudge and chocolate against a herbal vermouth and chilli spicing. A lot of work went into this, it turns out: cinnamon, vanilla, cardamom and lactose, ageing in bourbon and cognac barrels separately then blended. It's amazing the result tastes like simply an excellent no-frills example. Something for other stout hackers to aspire to.

That wraps up the gig for me. It's a festival cliché but the highlight really was spending the day with friends and catching up with trade folks I hadn't seen since before The Unpleasantness. A big thanks to Bob, The White Hag team and all the staffers for giving us the opportunity.