Belgian sandwich

Here's something really scary for Halloween: Heineken Silver. I drank it on the train out of the Netherlands and into Belgium on my holidays this year. I bought it because the beer selection on the platform kiosk at Breda station is woeful. The beer, too, is woeful. At 4% ABV it's presumably intended as a lighter alternative to Heineken Pilsner. But somehow they've loaded it with even more off flavours. I got huge dollops of butterscotch, bananas and butane which have no place in something like this. The name, I guess, is in reference to the paler-than-usual colour. While it's far from silver, "Heineken Baby Piss" didn't make the shortlist, appropriate and all that it would have been. Don't buy this.

I was headed south to Brussels where, as far as I'm aware, Heineken Silver is unknown. I managed to finally get a beer in at both À L'Imaige de Nostre-Dame and Au Bon Vieux Temps, having been trying for over a year, and also squeezed in a lunch at In t'Spinnekopke. This very traditional tavern is one of those establishments that has stood its ground as the rest of the city happened around it; not quite on the same ground level or building line as its younger neighbours. It was in all the guidebooks when I first explored Brussels in the early 2000s as the place to experience beer-centric Belgian gastronomy but then closed before I got to visit, and stayed closed until very recently.

The food, I'm happy to say, is excellent: a perfect place to try the typical Belgian dishes. I wasn't quite prepared for the beer offer. I've said before that I would love to see straight lambic served on draught as the unfussy drink-of-the-people it used to be. Well, this is one of the places that does that, offering Boon Lambik by the litre jug for the table (you can have less if you want, but... why would you?) I tend to think of lambic as flat but this is quite fizzy: kegged rather than casked, I guess. Sitting outside I didn't check. It's dry and minerally but only mildly sour. The main flavour is citrus: orange and grapefruit peel, which has nothing to do with hops. A little tannin adds an extra flourish to what's already a superb thirst-quenching, palate-cleansing, faith-in-humanity-restoring beer. At some point somebody decided that instead of this being everywhere, we should have crappy yellow lager instead. Idiot.

Purpose of visit was the annual Brussels reception of the European Beer Consumers Union. Representatives of various countries bring local beers to this, Carlow Brewing very kindly donating a few cases of Leann Folláin to the cause on behalf of Ireland. Two Austrian beers caught my attention, beginning with Zickentaler Hausbier by Bierquelle Heugraben in the far south-east, near the Hungarian border. I didn't inspect too closely for a stated style, but it's a rustic deep orange colour. The flavour is similarly rustic: very dry with notes of breadcrust and boiled veg. As such, it's not an easy drinker, even at just 4.8% ABV. This is for people who like their German-speaking lagers to taste very Teutonic. I'm not really one of them.

The other came from the opposite side of Austria: Attersee, near Salzburg. Bierschmiede is the brewery and Rotglut the delightful name. They describe it as an Altbayrischer Dunkel, and I've no idea how that differs from the usual Munich-style sort. It's the same handsome chestnut red and has very similar burnt caramel flavours, combining both sweetness and dryness expertly. The bonus feature is a lovely floral aroma, rather than the bitter liquorice dunkels usually have. All in all it's an excellent dark lager, offering everything that makes dunkel worthwhile and given a creative spin.

As their Ukraine-supporting beer, De La Senne has produced a saison called Kolos Rises. It's mostly a very typical saison: 5.7% ABV, straw coloured and straw tasting. The body is light despite the strength and the style basics are given a twist here too with the inclusion of new world hops. That gives it a surprise fresh citric zest which contrasts well with the farmhouse elements, adding a sense of pale ale. I only had the one, but I feel sure I could drink my way through a lot of solidarity, should the occasion arise.

There was just one other beer I didn't recognise, and I drank it for the sake of completeness. It's a blonde ale -- yawn, right? -- named Kameleon Blond, from Flemish brewery Den Hopperd. Immediately on tasting I realised this was not a run-of-the-mill blonde. It's very obvious that our old friend Brettanomyces has played a big part in its creation, lending it a powerfully funky farmyard aroma and then succulent stonefruit plus yet more funk in the flavour. The finish brings some oily winter herbs for extra and welcome complexity. It's gorgeous, and I'm surprised it's not more famous. If you ever need a beer to convince a Brett-sceptic of the yeast's charms, this expresses them beautifully and clearly.

The next day I was back on the rails and headed once more to the Netherlands. To entertain myself, a black IPA I had brought down from Breda, called Blaker, brewed by De Werf in North Holland. This is an absolute classic of the style, right from the very first sip. Creamy coffee first, then a huge floral element, with rosewater primarily, then jasmine and lavender. The bitter side is similarly unsubtle without being oppressive, taking bittering elements from both the hops and the roasted grains. It makes good use of 7% ABV to boost the mouthfeel, and that helps give it a prodigiously long finish of chocolate and more flowers. I took my time to savour it, passing a substantial portion of the journey to Amsterdam in pure black IPA reverie.

Nothing beats arriving into Amsterdam early on a Friday evening, especially if you immediately get the hell out of the packed and roaring city centre. I headed south, enjoying passing through Rembrantplein much more by virtue of being cocooned in the number 4 tram rather than out in it.

It was fairly quiet at Foeders. I had not previously visited this little pub, specialising in high-end wild-fermented beers, but with something for everyone on the list. I seem to have caught them during a Tilquin tap takeover, which was no hardship at all.

Round one for me brought Tilquin Pomme, a geuze with added apple. It's 6% ABV and looks normal: a pale golden hue. The aroma is normal as well, namely gorgeous and spicy, but with perhaps a little bonus dry white wine thrown in -- Chablis or the like. The flavour has a detectable sweetness which serves to soften the more severe sour edges. It's not like the syrupy industrial lambics, but rather how I would like them to taste. The apple hasn't fermented out and imparts subtle fruit flavours which complement the base beer nicely. Tilquin doesn't always get the extra flavourings right, but I appreciated the lightness of touch in this one.

M'lady don't care as much for geuze so she had an eisbock: Moersleutel's Lizard. That's a lovely rich liqueur of a thing, 16% ABV and mostly uncarbonated with a thick texture, exuding chocolate sauce and Tia Maria. There's a little honeycomb too, for extra smoothness, although it's not overly sweet or unpleasantly sticky. Moersleutel excels again at the strong and dark stuff.

It's not really built for the session, however, so on the next round she switched to Black Swan, a Baltic porter from Brussels Beer Project. At 9.9% ABV it's a strong one, and smells quite severe, all burnt-toast harshness. The flavour couldn't be more different, however, giving sweet milk chocolate plus delightful raspberry topnotes. It's quite heavy, and doesn't really feel like the lager it presumably is, but it's still very tasty if not exactly to-style.

I was back at the Tilquin taps, of course, and sneaked a cheeky pair. The pink one is a collaboration with Brussels micro L'Ermitage and is called Saison Lambic Fruit des Bois. That makes it pretty clear what it's made up of, presumably a collaboration in the true sense of blending beers from the two producers. You get your classic Bretty horse up front in the aroma, and the mouthfeel is heavy, no doubt because of a high gravity which finished it at 7.5% ABV. The funk from the aroma dominates the flavour too, leaving only a faint trace of blackberry and raspberry late on. It's nice, but I think I expected more. They seem to have held back on the lambic side, and while the funk is fun, it would have benefitted from some tartness too.

The golden glassful is a sister to the Tilquin Pomme, Tilquin Poire: same strength and same aroma. I could tell from the flavour that the geuze had been diluted with something, but I couldn't say what. This is something I find with perry as well: the taste is very often too subtle for me to pick up on it. Here I noticed a certain fruit pie warmth but my mind immediately suggested apple as the filling, rather than pear. Still, at least I was able to enjoy it as a high quality geuze, and that's enough.

The trip was drawing to a close but we still had a whole weekend to enjoy Amsterdam. Where we went and what we drank follows next.

B.A.R.B.S.

Belgium, Austria, Romania, Bulgaria and Sweden are the remaining countries whose Borefts 2022 beers I haven't covered yet.

Alvinne are stalwarts of the festival, and most of the beers of theirs that I've drank, I've drank here. They can be tough going, however, relying heavily on the super funky house yeast. I sometimes feel that the brewers get more pleasure from their beers than the drinkers do. An exception is this year's Berliner Kriek Munt: as the name suggests, a Berliner weisse with cherry and mint. It's 4.5% ABV, bright pink, and has a cleanly assertive sourness. There's a waft of cherry candy and a sprig of mint, like an hour after you've brushed your teeth. I'm guessing, given the brewery's love for wild cultures, that it's a proper mixed fermentation job, though I couldn't detect anything specifically Bretty about it. It's damn nice, however, regardless.

Bevog carried the flag for Austria and had a series of beers named for critically endangered animals. Peacock Tarantula is a gose with kaffir lime, bergamot and orange. The appearance is an innocent hazy yellow and the ABV a standard 4.7%. An orange squash foretaste leads on to... nothing very much: no salt, no sourness, no coriander. There's a vaguely wild funk but how it's produced I couldn't say. There's not really enough of it to give the beer proper character. This is a very basic refresher but nothing more involved than that.

The beer was starting to run out in general when I came back to Bevog late on the Saturday to try their Seedated, an imperial stout with pumpkin seeds. I got the last dribble in the keg as a freebie. I wasn't expecting to taste much pumpkin seed in an 11.1% ABV beast like this, and so it proved. There's lots of very standard, and delicious, mocha or macchiato, but that's it. Doesn't it count as a failure when your attempted novelty beer tastes beautifully unadulterated? Probably, but I enjoyed what I had of this one anyway.

Romania's finest, Hop Hooligans, were there with a collaboration they made with another Romanian outfit, Low Frequency. It's a cherry, coconut and chocolate stout of 12% ABV with the delightful name of Witness the Thiccness. You may not be surprised to learn it tastes a lot like a Bounty bar while also tasting a lot like a Bakewell tart. This is a great example of the liquid dessert style done well; gimmicky perhaps, but holding on to its essential stoutiness. Another hit from the Hooligans. Their beer appears in Ireland occasionally and you should buy some if you see it.

I haven't had many beers from Bulgaria, and at the festival it was represented by Metalhead. I tried their not-very-metal 3% ABV table beer, Silvera. It is dry-hopped, though. Rock on! It's pale and light but has a pleasing depth of body. Fresh lemon peel meets a slightly funky, herbal, urinal-cake effect. Despite that image, it's clean and very thirst quenching with enough complexity to be properly interesting. Spot on for a table beer, then. Well done, Metalheads.

And so to Sweden. Stigbergets is a brewery that seems to have come from nowhere (actually Gothenberg) to be suddenly omnipresent on the craft beer and festival circuit. Cacao! is a 12.5% ABV imperial stout with cacao. Supposedly loud cacao, judging by the punctuation. To me it's another one of those pastry stouts that taste like chocolate caramel wafer biscuits and not much else. That's it. That's the review. Next!

I didn't fare much better with their supposedly west coast double IPA Be Forewarned. Yes do: this is an opaque sunset colour and has very east coast vanilla notes in the foretaste. That fades and is replaced by an acrid and heavy pine bitterness, which is at least in keeping with the style even if it doesn't taste great. The haze returns in the finish to deliver a dreggy grittiness. This was both not to my taste and a violation of its purported style rules. A couple of turns in the centrifuge wouldn't do it any harm.

We finish on another Borefts veteran: I don't think Närke has missed any of the twelve runs. They've been firmly ensconced in the same pitch at the back door of the barrel store for most of those. Plenty of favourites were available, including the novelty castoreum beer served from a urinal. For me, Katalysator: an 8.5% ABV rauchbock. Deep amber in colour, it has the crisp grain aroma of a standard lager, with no more than a faint wisp of smoke. Neither are there fireworks on tasting, it stays simple and balanced, not hot, not thick, just a little sweet and seasoned with a gentle smokiness. It's a lovely mellow affair, equally sippable or quaffable, and hitting a centre point between festbier and rauchbier with all the best features of both.

That seems as good a place as any to wrap this up. It was good to be back at Borefts, and great that it continued as if The Blip hadn't happened. I wish it many more successful years.

Latin lessons

The Borefts Beer Festival tends to be a good place to get a cross section of brewing in Spain and Italy, and many of the leading lights from both countries have featured over the years. Two breweries from each were present at the 2022 edition.

We'll start in Italy, with Canediguerra in the north-west. Canediguerra Vienna Lager seems like a good opener, being one of those Vienna lagers which does nothing fancy with the style specs and is wonderful as a result. Not that it's plain: there's a fantastic complexity, perhaps aided by the slightly high 5.4% ABV. That seems to give it a nougat richness, with nuts and caramel on a slightly roasted and extremely crisp base. It's very impressive how they managed to balance the malt sweetness with clean dryness, and an extra surprise was the golden colour, which those in the know reckon to be the style's appropriate shade.

Sitting next to it in the photo, looking like everyone else's Vienna lager, is Objekt 007. This is described as a "fruity oud bruin" and is an almost unreasonable 8.6% ABV. It's not a style I particularly enjoy and this is a good example of why, from the solventy acetone aroma to the flavour of sticky throat lozenges. It tries to be sour but the sugar overpowers that. Some pleasant cherry notes are the only aspect I liked; otherwise it's just not for me.

Down closer to Rome there's Ritual Lab, selling beer since 2014 but not previously to me. As is my wont, I took the measure of them with their pilsner, Ritual Pils. It was a genuine surprise to find that this is in the Italian Pilsner style, modelled after Birrificio Italiano's Tipopils. As such, aroma hops feature strongly and from the innocent golden 4.9%-er comes a powerful waft of spicy perfume -- jasmine and bergamot. That follows straight through into the flavour and is so concentrated as to be a little bit shocking and difficult at first. I got used to it, however, and by the end of my small sample was thoroughly enjoying it. Sadly I neglected to go back for anything else, but I'll be keeping an eye out for any other Ritual Lab wares to come my way.

To Spain, then. Or, more accurately, the Basque country. Another new brewer to me was the poorly-named Drunken Bros from Bilbao. They too were at the pils game, claiming to have a German Pils Remastered. Big talk. It's another very pale one, this time 5% ABV. I didn't like the plasticky aroma but it probably shows that they're using proper German hops in the proper way. The mouthfeel is beautifully soft while the flavour offers a total contrast to the smell, being lightly perfumed, the floral notes turning to a gentle herbal bitterness in the finish. The confrontational name is unnecessary, but it really is an excellent example of pilsner in the German fashion.

Four beers and no kerr-azy imperial stout yet? The Bros have us covered. Kthulhu is 11.3% ABV and brewed with hazelnuts. It's very black and, presumably thanks to the nut oils, mostly headless. The aroma is a happy blend of cherries and espresso while hazelnut is at the centre of the flavour, balanced by drier roast and boosted by a warming liqueur effect. It's dangerously easy drinking and very nicely done overall, with lots of character but no silliness.

Laugar has been at Borefts before, and is familiar enough to have been allowed a collaboration with De Molen. Named after the stereotypical clothing of both breweries' homes, it's called Klompen & Txapela, and is a "smoked saison wine" infused with bourbon and chilli peppers. It's 13.6% ABV and a murky ochre colour. As expected the flavour is a riot of competing tastes, showing kippers, brown sugar and sweet sherry, most prominently: a combination nobody would, or should, willingly throw together. I've no idea if it works or not, it's just weird. This one is definitely built to be a festival special, served in small measures to the brave or foolish, and then never seen again.

Laugur has a side project called Wild Nation, producing fancy 75cl bottles of funky stuff. It proved popular, though I only tried one of them: Zubiete. This is a wild ale fermented in Bordeaux wine barrels, clear yellow with a little vinegar and a lot of farmyard in the aroma. There's a certain white wine aspect to the taste but it lacks fruit, being thin and sharp. At 5.9% ABV, it should be richer. As is, this tasted like an experiment. Not to judge the whole project on one glass of one beer, but Wild Nation seems like it needs more practice before it's in the upper echelons of European wild beer brewing.

One more Borefts post to come, wrapping up all the other countries in attendance.

Berlin and beyond

Continuing my way through the 2022 Borefts Beer Festival, and today the map pins land on Germany and Croatia.

I've had a couple of beers from Berlin's Schneeeule at Hagstravaganza in recent years, but they've tended to be outré festival specials. Here they brought their core beers, which I've been curious to try. I began, then, with Marlene, their straight-up Berliner weisse, one of the few brewed properly with a Brettanomyces fermentation. It really does yield results, and while there's nothing startling about the 3.5% ABV or lemon biscuit aroma, the flavour has an extra depth of stonefruit while also being as effervescent and thirst-quenching as one might expect. It's a far cry from the basic kettle-soured product that tends to get the Berliner badge slapped on it by other breweries.

That had me back later for more and I tried Mariana next, the Schneeeule contribution to the Pink Boots Society project. It's another Berliner weisse, this time at 4.4% ABV, and dry hopped. It's a pale and Lilt-y yellow; a little sickly looking. The crisp biscuit thing returns in the foretaste, then after it comes a fascinating mix of peachy funky Brett with piney citrus hops and a sour burn on the finish. There's a little bit of a lemonade vibe; one of the classy homemade sorts with a sprig of something sticking out of the jug. Highly enjoyable.

Finally from them, a porter, sorta. Autobahn is heavily soured to the point where it tastes nothing like normal porter, and the garnet colouring is off-kilter too. There's the faintest trace of roast grain and chocolate but it may as well not be there; all the rest is tart and tangy, set on a light body at 4.5% ABV. This is much more like the Schneeeule beers I've tried before, and simply not as enjoyable as straight Berliner weisse.

We used to get beer from Freigeist of Cologne over here, and it was very welcome as they tended to produce interesting stuff. It's been gone a while now, however, and I was looking forward to getting reacquainted at Borefts.

Altes Aus Liebe certainly sounds interesting: a smoked Altbier. It's starts out sanely at 4.8% ABV with a medium brown appearance and a dry biscuit aroma. The good parts of dark lager are represented in the flavour, with the right amount of crisp roast. Where there should be a clean finish, however, the smoke butts rudely in, adding an acridity to the finish that doesn't do anything for me. I know little of the alchemy of smoked beer, but I'm sure it's possible to do a smoked Alt which integrates the smokiness rather than tacking it on so obtrusively.

We say goodbye to Germany with a Gute Nacht, Marie, an eisbock based on an imperial stout and 13% ABV. It's densely black and smells of soy-sauce autolysis and more smoke. Lots of roast arrives first, plus a pleasantly assertive hop bitterness. Once again, however, it goes up the left before the end, introducing an unpleasant twang of putty, smoked fish or iodine; a chemical characteristic that spoils it. Perhaps I picked badly or perhaps Freigeist is being overambitious with its recipes and processes.

Croatia was represented by guess who: yes, it's The Garden again, on a seemingly endless international festival circuit. The oddest thing on their menu was a Passion Fruit & Coffee Sour: not a combination of words I have seen before. It's 7.9% ABV but feels even heavier. I immediately twigged the sweet passionfruit, but the flavour behind it had me thinking first of crisps. It took a while for that to unfold into coffee roast. It's very strange having that alongside tropical fruit, but I can see why they did it and it genuinely does work, though perhaps this is one to file under "interesting" rather than "enjoyable drinking".

A plain West Coast Double IPA? Yes please. Garden's is 8.1% ABV and looks to be a clean and innocent pale gold but is actually another full and sticky bodied job. There's lots of residual sugar in here, bringing a kind of marmalade effect. The hops start out by playing up to the Seville orange thing but then take a turn for the bitter, becoming heavily resinous and herbal. It channels the old-school characteristics very well indeed: loud and brash, but with a charm and poise which renders such behaviour entirely forgivable. You get exactly what the name suggests.

A stout to finish on, and Garden's Imperial Blueberry & Vanilla Stout is rather a lightweight by the standards of this festival, at only 8.2% ABV. All the cool kids are in the double digits. I'd love to say it holds its own in the flavour department but it really doesn't, offering only vague chocolate cake and espresso to begin, and then a berry tartness which lacks any of the berries' actual taste. It's inoffensive but unexciting, and certainly doesn't stack up well against the neighbours' imperial stouts. Bit of a knife-to-a-gunfight situation.

We stay in southern Europe next as the explorations continue tomorrow.

Mate!

It's post two from the 2022 Borefts Beer Festival and today's breweries are all from the English-speaking world, inasmuch as it was represented. There was just one visitor from the UK, namely Manchester's Marble. I try to have at least one beer from each brewery, and my Marble was their Amontillado Barley Wine. And it was one of the best beers I had all weekend. 12.4% ABV, it's copper coloured and really shows off the sherry. There's a warming Christmas pudding effect, full of nuts and brandy with a strongly vinous character, though surprisingly light-bodied, something which only adds to the sherry impression. As such it's a little at risk of losing sight of its beeriness, but is too enjoyable for that to be a worry.

Everything else I have for you today is Australian. We get very little by way of Aussie beer in these latitudes, and the two breweries representing Down Under looked to be doing particularly interesting things. Let's get stuck in.

First up is Good Land in Traralgon, western Victoria. Double Pastel Neon Sour sounded like the sort of thing lots of other breweries make, but unlike lots of other beers with similar names it's not a sticky, cloying mess. Instead, from this dark pink number, I got clean and distinct notes of Parma Violets and cherry-lips candy. It's all rather jolly, even if it's not even slightly sour. My only real complaint is that it's overclocked: I'm sure it's possible to make something very like this at much less than its 7% ABV.

They also had Heaven, a 10.2% ABV bourbon barrel-aged Belgian-style stout. It's a bit of a dual-aspect job, smooth and creamy while also showing a hard and aggressive bitterness. In the aroma you get an invigorating shot of espresso and also a tang of liquorice. Lots of oaky vanilla gives it something in common with modern dessertish imperial pastry stouts, but at heart it's much more traditional and hard-edged. The two sides don't gel together very well and I found it tough going as a result.

It's out with the Brettanomyces next, for 10,000 Miles, a golden beer of indeterminate style though we are informed that all the fermentation was with Brett. It smells perfumey, of lavender and bergamot, which is a good start, but it turns acrid quite quickly. In the foretaste there's some lovely stonefruit and farmyard funk before it switches to become extremely dry, the Brett having gobbled all the sugar and left little of interest behind. This needs to be softened to become more palateable. Some actual fruit or time in a wine barrel might help.

Finally, a chocolate vanilla stout, 5.6% ABV, called Man on the Moon. I did not have a good time with it, beginning with the super-sweet aroma, reminding me of white chocolate in particular. The flavour is more caramel than chocolate, sticky, with an acrid throat-burn in the finish. This beer promises fun but delivers only cruelty.

Good Land, mediocre beers.

Boatrocker is also from Victoria but a more urban part, on the edge of Melbourne. I was extremely impressed by their Plum Lord, badged innocently as a "plum wild ale" but very convincingly lambic-like. There's sufficient fruit to deliver on the promise of the name, and it's a purple emulsion in appearance, but there's also an intense oak and mineral sour spicing, just like you'd find in a quality fruited gueze. It's a superb melding of the sweet and sour elements into a mature and well-integrated 6.5% ABV whole. And from Australia!

I chanced one other from them later: the grape ale called Demi-Jaune. Australia has the grapes so why not do grape ale? It's a hefty 8.2% ABV and smells like a sticky dessert wine with a squirt of vinegar in it. The flavour begins with a Prosecco-like sweetness and fizz, before introducing a luscious peach and plum effect which I'm assuming is Brettanomyces at work, rather than the grapes. Overall it's bright, spritzy and cleansing, ideally suited to a 75cl bottle but a glass from the Lindr tap was no hardship.

So I probably should have spent more time with Boatrocker. Oh well. Tomorrow I'll pick off another couple of countries from the festival line-up.

Back with a bang

Despite the two-year absence it all seemed very business-as-usual at the 2022 Borefts beer festival. Once again the De Molen brewery in Bodegraven hosted a hand-picked selection of local and international brewers, with a slight emphasis on what used to be deemed strange and wacky recipes but these days is simply what beer is. It'll take me a while to get through everything and I'm starting today with the host's own beers and whatever else there was from elsewhere in the Netherlands.

De Molen took the opportunity to launch a new beer, a collaboration with BrewDog called Doric & Dutch. I'm happy to have spent enough time in northeast Scotland to understand the name. In the festival programme it's billed simply as a stout at 7.2% ABV and I was concerned that I might have been given the wrong beer when I brought it back to the table. What I got tasted strongly of gingerbread, and subsequent research revealed that it is indeed brewed with "gingerbread spices". That gives it an odd but not unpleasant aftershave aroma and then an even odder ginger and cinnamon taste. The base beer is a light and chocolatey stout which I think would be better without the enhancement. It's fine: far from De Molen's best work and perhaps not deserving of the troop of bagpipers who brought in the first KeyKeg, but as a sweet spiced stout it does the job.

De Molen seems to have got a bulk deal on blood oranges, or possibly blood orange syrup, because it featured heavily in two of the beers. First, good old Hel & Verdoemenis got the Blood Orange treatment which completely buried the imperial stout but created something new and quite fun. The density that comes from 10% ABV gives it an oily Terry's Chocolate Orange effect. There's not much else to it other than big chocolate and big orange, and it's certainly not an improvement on plain H&D. The underlying quality shines through the gimmickry, however.

Then there was Kruid & Koek, a quadrupel, though a bit of a lightweight at only 8.5% ABV. Here the bonus ingredient comes across as fresh and zesty, giving me an instant flashback to bitty Club Orange or Orangina. Even more than in the stout, the base beer disappears under the fruit onslaught, and really it could be any style at any strength. Quadrupel rarely impresses me, and even making one that doesn't taste like quadrupel isn't helping. A lighter touch on the orange is needed.

Time to get back to basics, and Heidi & Peter is the sort of thing De Molen can be relied upon to do well. It's an 11.4% ABV imperial stout with added honey and aged in bourbon barrels. There's a sumptuous chocolate-cake richness to it, made into even more of a dessert by a hint of coconut which I assume derives from the barrels. It was marked in the programme simply as "vintage" and I don't know how old it was, though I did detect a slight autolytic twang, but very much in the "adding character" sense rather than the "ruining the beer" one.

From there we progress to an 18% ABV icebock called Ice & Age. This dark brown number started life as a doppelbock before being strengthened by freeze-distilling. It really seems to have concentrated the doppelbock characteristics too, with an aroma of fig paste and a powerful fruitcake flavour. In fact, more than a German lager it reminded me of Belgian dark ale, with similar sorts of fruity esters. As such, I began to find it difficult to drink after a few sips, though at that strength that's probably no bad thing.

I finished my De Molen beers, and indeed the 2022 festival, up at the brewery windmill where De Molen had taken the bar to itself. Here I give my palate a bit of a reset with a 6% ABV hazy IPA called Water & Vuur. This had a bit of dankness, a bit of funk, and some citric high notes, all perfectly acceptable in an IPA. It's not the brewery's forte, however, and it shows. While there's nothing wrong with it, it doesn't really stand out, especially when compared with some other hoppy stuff available from the guests.

Normal service resumes with Mill & Wherry, a 13.8% ABV imperial stout brewed in collaboration with Polish brewer Piwoteka. Rowanberry, I've just read, is the special ingredient here. What I got was a spicy cinnamon, tonka bean and nutmeg kick in the foretaste, with chocolate around the edges and a dry chilli-skin burn. It's a little rough and there's a touch of staleness, however that may have crept in. It's still decent, though, and whetted my appetite for something even bigger.

My last beer, then, was Kaal & Krul, 15.7% ABV and aged on Bowmore whisky casks. The result is soft and devilishly smooth, with warming notes of port and sweet vermouth. Scotch barrels can result in harsh spirit flavours but there's none of that here: the strength is apparent from the texture but not from any heat. There's a honeyish character at the centre which grows as it goes, threatening to make it overly sweet, though fortunately it doesn't follow through. I picked well for a beer to finish on, though appear to have been in too much of a hurry to photograph it.

But while I'm finished with De Molen for now, there was much else to be sampled from the Dutch guests. An early pick on the second day was Crank Crank the Juice Juice double IPA (the single version is called "Crank the Juice", obviously) from Moersleutel. I was drawn to it because I really only know the brewery for their strong and dark stuff, and wanted to see how they fared with hops. Brilliantly, it turned out. This 8%-er absolutely delivers on the name and genuinely tastes like freshly-squeezed orange juice, down to the slightly bitty texture. Behind this sits a weighty green dankness and a luxurious alcohol heat. In a bigger measure it might get a bit cloying, but I think I'd take the chance.

I mentioned Brouwerij Eleven last Monday, in reference to their multicollaborational Glamping IPA. It looks like they've also collaborated with a local Indonesian restaurant in Utrecht, Toko Pedis, to create Lombokbok, a doppelbock with added chilli pepper and coconut. It's still copper coloured and more than meets the spec strengthwise at 8% ABV. There's a worrying touch of vinegar in the aroma so it was a big surprise to find the flavour opening on concentrated strawberry jam. Then there's a hard hop bitterness, some herbal spicing and tart berries. All the things, basically. Too many of the things, really, and I'm not sure this beer knows what it's meant to be. It's certainly not a doppelbock any more. Maybe it works with food but on its own it was just too weird.

Eleven also teamed up with a wine distributor to create BA Kriek, a kriek, obviously, aged in Geodoro barrels. I don't think I know what Geodoro tastes like. Regardless, the end result wasn't up to much. I got none of the oak or wine character I was hoping for, nor any wild sourness or funk. Instead it's a heavy and syrupy beer where at least the cherries taste real, but otherwise isn't a million miles from the heavily sweetened krieks of Belgium's less reputable lambic brewers. I'm sure a lot of effort went into designing and creating this; shame it doesn't seem to have paid off.

We'll finish on another freeze-distilled job, and Kees was rationing their Ice Bock Dark very carefully. There probably isn't much of it: getting a beer up to 25% ABV involves removing a lot of the volume, I'm sure. And yet the end result tastes about half that. Yes it's thick and tarry, but not excessively so and it's still very drinkable. That it's based on an imperial stout is apparent from the chocolate sauce foretaste leading on to drier roast later. Everything you'd want from a big imperial stout is here, just at a ludicrous strength. I can see a use for that. Well done Kees.

That's enough for today. We'll start bothering the international visitors next.