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.