Move fast and brew things

I made three trips to The Guinness Open Gate Brewery over the autumn, the first in September, taking further advantage of their new walk-ins policy.

My on-arrival sample was Open Gate Festbier, a little bit of a lightweight at 5.5% ABV. Still there's a richness to both the deep golden colour and the malt-driven aroma, smelling almost sticky with honey and treacle. The flavour continues in that vein, and while it stays in the Bavarian zone, there's a touch of those awful orange-coloured things the Americans call Oktoberfest beer. Here, the lower gravity comes to its aid and it finishes quickly before turning nasty. It's decent and characterful, representing the style adequately. I wasn't tempted into ordering a bigger measure however.

My first actual choice was Open Gate Smoked Porter. This looks properly Guinnessy: black with a cream-coloured head, and its 4.8% ABV offers a reminder that Guinness calling its 4.2% ABV flagship a "stout" is a bit silly. Anyway, the aroma shows the standard roast and mild sourness of regular Guinness, and the texture is similar too. I expected the smoke to jump out in the taste, but it's subtle to the point of non-existent. Instead, the dominant flavour is chocolate, and that's what echoes long in the aftertaste. There's a bit of a dry bite which could be the smoke, but if you like your smoked beers smokey, as I do, this isn't the one. Another candidate for the "passable" file. If they hadn't advertised the smoke I might have enjoyed it more.

Open Gate IPAs are rarely stellar so I wasn't expecting much from Hook Line & Sinker, a staff brewing competition winner. It's mostly clear and amber coloured, smelling faintly of orange peel. We're definitely on the west coast here (6.8% ABV, 70 IBUs) as the flavour proceeds to pine resin and good old fashioned grapefruit. As tends to happen with these -- and I blame the Guinness yeast for this -- the malt side mutes the hops somewhat; an attempt to bring balance to a style that doesn't suit it. So the brightly bitter citrus becomes prosaic marmalade, and the fresh pine shades to overconcentrated floor cleaner. That sounds worse than it is. Once again, this beer is fine, but it depressingly typical of Open Gate IPA. I wonder is this what the brewer intended it to be.

I left the most interesting-sounding one to the end: Jerk Spiced Brown Ale. This is the second time Open Gate has done one of these, but 2022's has been substantially beefed up from 2019's, to 8% ABV. It's just about possible to see through the very dark brown body and it's nitrogenated which probably holds the aroma back. The flavour, however, goes all in on those herbs and spices. I don't know what's in it but I get black peppercorns, nutmeg and cardamom on a perfect brown ale base of toffee and milk chocolate. My only issue with this one is that it doesn't taste anything like the ABV: it's light-bodied and even thirst-quenching in a way that beer of this strength shouldn't be. The nitrogen alone should have given it more body than it has. Go figure. Anyway, it's lovely but I'm not sure I'd want to drink it again out of fear of how quickly I could down it.

Early last month I was back, as Open Gate hosted a segment of the autumn 2022 European Beer Consumers Union meeting. On the flight this time was another new IPA, called Hoppy McHoppface. Again it's a very typical OGB IPA, presenting headless, dark and murky, and tasting sweet first, then resinous and finishing on a hard tacked-on bitterness. None of the elements meld together properly, nor is there any standout headline feature. The end result is a mulchy estery mess, the opposite of the bright cleanness which should be a hallmark of this sort of thing.

The brewery is trotting out a series of fruited beers fermented with Brettanomyces, and to the right of the pictured IPA there is one of those: Nitro Passion Fruit Brett. It's a very strange beast, starting on the clean tropical sorbet effect that I usually get from passionfruit, but continuing into a strange smoky spice, like there's chipotle peppers in it. That shouldn't work, and perhaps terms like "work" aren't appropriate for something like this. Let's go with weird-but-fun, which is what I like to see Open Gate doing.

A swift half before finishing: Nut's [sic] About Stout, described as a peanut stout with no peanuts. Happening across brewer Peter Simpson at the bar, he explained that it uses a distillate of peanut which provides the flavour but takes out the bit that kills people. Which is nice. The beer itself is another highly contrasting one, 5.8% ABV and a dry stout at its base. The peanut isn't oily but comes through as more of a dried peanut shell effect: husky and almost acrid. To balance things there's a big dollop of caramel in the middle, making the whole thing taste like a Snickers bar. If that's what you want from a stout, then here it is. Again, I enjoyed the silliness.

The brewery has begun a series of tutored tastings of new beers, running on one evening every month. I was invited along to the first one (thanks Reuben) and there were four new items on the roster.

I was particularly interested to see a California common, rare as they are. This one, Friends In Common, is on the strong side at 6.1% ABV. It uses that well to boost the flavour intensity, the clear red-gold beer beginning with a wholesome brown breadcrust foretaste before adding soft damp grass from what I'm guessing are Germanic hops. It's seasoned also with some black pepper spicing, giving it a slightly wild air, a little like a saison. All of this is set on a hefty smooth body and makes for satisfying drinking. Maybe there would be more California commons if they were all this tasty.

And while that was saison-like, it sat next to an actual saison called 'Tis The Saison. This is another strong one at 6% ABV, and allegedly brewed using crystal malt, though presumably not much of it because it's extremely pale, barely golden and totally clear. Not that it's bland: the saisonosity is dialled right up making it dry and very spicy, with a taste like the husk of a pink peppercorn, the Belgian yeast no doubt aided by the inclusion of rye in the grist to create the effect. Less welcome notes of banana and a touch of apple skin creep in as it warms, but it's still a very good effort overall.

There has to be another IPA, sadly, and the most interesting thing about African Haze is that it was collaboratively brewed by the team from the upcoming Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Nairobi. Still, it's just another one of those Open Gate IPAs where the hops are killed off by the yeast byproducts and the result is buttery esters reaching an almost cheese-like intensity. They say they made it more bitter than hazy IPA usually is, and that just makes it taste like there's a shot of lime cordial in it. Unimpressed, I moved on.

A lovely palate-cleansing tripel finishes us off. Just A Tripel is 10% ABV and a striking clear deep golden colour. The esters are a huge part of this, but more appropriate to a tripel than the above IPAs. There's lot of banana aroma, while the flavour is clove rock in particular. There's a little white pepper but nowhere near as much spice as I like in a tripel. The best feature is the booze, delivering as it does a pleasant warming fuzziness, perfect for a miserable evening in mid-November. Overall, it's fine, but not exactly high end, to my palate anyway.

With the Gin Botanical Lager being the highlight from the last session, maybe novelty beer is a particular Open Gate strong point. I'm on board with that.