Thiols and barrels and bears, oh my

"Does it have thiols in it? I'm not drinking anything without thiols." This appears to be what brewers are banking on their end users demanding these days, because there's a lot of thiols-as-marketing around. What's a thiol? I don't know, I've never seen one. Third Barrel's Electric Eyes has them, though, according to the can. It's a hazy IPA, though modest at just 5.6% ABV. The thiol-optimised hops are Idaho 7 and El Dorado and they come through quite intensely in the aroma, especially El Dorado's tropical-flavoured chew sweet impression. There's tropical juice aplenty too, and a mild bitter spicing. The flavour is an odd mix of bitter and sweet, presenting aniseed, jaffa pith, garlic and orangeade, set on a light and fizzy body, missing the fluff of most sweetly hazy jobs. Oddness aside, it's quite good, brightly fresh and enjoyably complex, showing off aspects of its two hops I'd hadn't found before. That's because of the thiols, you know.

No thiols are listed on the session IPA Day Drinkin 4: The Dank Knight. It might still be worthwhile, however. Like the previous three in the series it's 4% ABV and hazy yellow, but this time we get Idaho 7, Mosaic and Columbus for hops. Dank? Not really. That word implies resinousness to me and this is precisely as light as the ABV implies. There is a slight herbal spice thing, however, which could be classified as dank if it showed up in a weighty US-style IPA, but this ain't one of them. Enough on dank. What you do get is lots of fun citrus zest, lemon in particular, with touches of orange and grapefruit. For a session IPA that's perfect. It's fun and flavoursome while unfussy and very drinkable. No complaints here.

There was another new one from Third Barrel client Crafty Bear in mid-November called Colour Change. This is a very hazy pale ale, its opalescence putting me immediately in mind of Trouble's iconic Ambush, though it's a tad stronger at 5.4% ABV. Once that was in my head there was no escaping it. The aroma, too, sang of mandarins and vanilla, though with perhaps more of a bitterness than the Kildare lad. The flavour, it turned out, didn't swing that way, and instead it's a beautifully smooth and sweet affair, piling in the fruit and brushing it with just a cheeky hint of savoury garlic on the end. Overall it's very good, though. Crafty Bear is a sporadic producer and I don't know how permanent any of its beers are, but I could see this one being a steady seller, just like Ambush.

Loose on the Juice has been around even longer, and the fact it was still around in January and was tasting banging-fresh on draught in UnderDog suggests I wasn't drinking the first batch. The ABV goes up to 6.3% ABV and the body is quite dark for something hazy. While the previous one smelled of mandarin but didn't taste of it, this follows through fully on the same promise: bags of juicy mandarin, though not a lot else. A tiny hint of coconut in the finish is its only nod to complexity. There's very little heat for the strength too. Again, this is a great example of how to bring out the good side of hazy IPA, and could also be a go-to if it sticks around.

A late add to the Crafty Bear set is Shape Change, a session IPA.  It's a sort of a beige colour in the glass topped by plenty of loose white head. The aroma is fresh and very New-Englandish, showing lots of lemon curd with a rub of garlic. This is no weakling at 4.5% ABV and the body shows off that full-sized gravity, being round and fluffy, carrying the flavour all the way through to a long finish. Said flavour is an uncomplicated mix of citrus and candy: not quite juice, but definitely fruit-based and sweet. It doesn't do much, but you do at least get plenty of it. Though designed as a session beer, this hits pretty much all the points required of a bigger American-style IPA. I'm not a huge fan of this flavour profile in general, but I think they've made a great job of it here.

Back to Third Barrel for some stronger stuff to finish on. First up: Dubbel Impact, only about the 13th commercial beer to use the name in recent years. Like Van Damme himself, it's a big boy: a full 8% ABV and looks a darker brown than most dubbels. The head is half-hearted and doesn't last long, somewhat spoiling the appearance of what should be a foamy, hearty ale for jolly monk types to quaff. Without the froth it looks a bit Calvinist. In the flavour, the Belgium factor is quite low: not much by way of fruity esters; no plums or figs, and surprisingly little heat. What you get instead is a rich cakey chocolate effect with a little clove spicing, some sugary toffee and floral topnotes. A dry roasted edge finishes it off neatly. It's good, but not exactly what I'm after in a dubbel. I really miss the dark fruit. Far be it from me to ding a beer purely on stylistic grounds, but this is one of those. Close your eyes and think of porter.

Lastly a stout with salted caramel called Set To Smooth. Set to fizzy, more like: lots of foam on this as it poured, and quite an actively sparkly mouthfeel. The beer behind the bubbles seems a little thin too, given the not-insubstantial 7% ABV. Still, the salted caramel is absolutely there in the flavour, sweet with a mildly sweaty tang. There's a bit of complexity with that as well: hazelnut, coconut and a dab of hop resin. While it tastes good, as long as sweet is your thing, I find the thinness hard to get past. It really ought to be bigger and stickier, and just seems a little vapid without it; a pastry stout for slimmers. Them's the breaks, I guess.

I should be grateful that Third Barrel is turning out more than an endless stream of hazy pale ales, but that does seem to be what they're especially good at, on this showing at least. Maybe the dubbel needs more thiols? Just a suggestion.

Mellowing with age

Since its very beginning, The White Hag has made its name primarily on big, bold and strong beers. At first glance, today's three recent releases don't seem like they're in the same race at all. Let's get them open and find out. 

Low-alcohol beer is not really the brewery's area of specialism so Not Being Televised, at 3.5% ABV, is something of an outlier. The name references the collaborating kiwi hop merchants, The Hop Revolution, of Nelson. Indeed, Nelson Sauvin is one of the hops, joined by Motueka and Pacific Sunrise in this session IPA. It's pale but not watery looking, fully hazed up and all. The aroma shows two aspects: a typical New-England orangey juiciness and the harder grass bitterness that I associate with New Zealand hops generally and Motueka specifically. The murk gets a little bit in the way of the flavour and the earthy grit caught my attention before the hopping did. It is a touch light on the latter front, offering only a quick burst of soft citrus and sharp cabbage leaf, before it all tails off. I think it would be unfair to say it's watery, but it's not far from it, and you'd know it's a low-strength job. So it's fine for what it is but it's not one to get excited about. The hops are good, however I think it would benefit from more of them.

A stout comes next, in collaboration with Italian brewery Brewfist. It's called Gola Secca and is a modest 4.8% ABV. It looks well: black on first impressions though ruby red when held to the light, and topped by a fine off-white head. The aroma leads on roast though adds a leafy green bitterness to the background. That bitterness comes right to the fore on tasting, unfolding into fresh cabbage leaf and a pepper or nutmeg spicing. There's some cocoa for balance of a sort -- a less severe bitterness than the veg -- and then a long herbal buzz for an aftertaste, suggesting aniseed and spearmint to me. They advertise it as "dry", and while it starts there it goes off in a number of interesting directions, none of them passing close to pastry. I liked it, and particularly how it demonstrates that you don't need a high ABV for a stout to be interesting.

The White Hag's first beer, back in 2014, was a red IPA called Fleadh. They've re-used the name for a similar-but-different red ale of 5.5% ABV. The pour seems flat at first then settles with a loose head, the way a much stronger barley wine or the like might. It's definitely red, or amber, translucent with even a pinkish tint. Fruit candy is suggested, softly, by the aroma, while the flavour isn't much louder. There's a surprising watery thinness and a broadly sweet taste of strawberry jelly and glacé cherry. I get a savoury rosemary and oregano element as well. The can suggests I should be interpreting this as grapefruit and juniper, and the latter is fair but it definitely doesn't have the classic American citrus flavours, despite the application of Centennial and Simcoe. What it's really lacking is the malt body to hold this all together and give the hops a platform to work from. As is, it doesn't live up to its party inspired name.

The stout wins, out of this lot. Otherwise, I think the brewery does better at stronger beer styles overall.

A sorry stout

I do love an apology beer. This one was very kindly supplied by an off licence to atone for a small mistake in an online order. It's called Catch Me If You Can and is a 10.3% ABV imperial stout, bourbon aged and with added molasses, crackers and assorted spices. It's from California brewery The Bruery, best known (to me anyway) as a brewer of big stouts.

It glooped blackly into the glass and appeared completely flat at first, before suddenly frothing up in a most inconvenient manner. The head eventually settled into a thick layer of foam, resembling nitrogenation though nothing like as persistent. The mouthfeel is smooth and slick, troubled only by a faint sparkle.

Despite the complicated array of add-ins it smells quite simply of mushy banana, and that's in the finish of the flavour also, but before it there's a more orthodox milk chocolate character. You would need to be told about the spices to spot them. I could just about detect the advertised ginger, but cinnamon, clove, nutmeg or allspice? *shrug* 

The general bigness of this beer is its best feature: it's filling and very satisfying to sip. If the advertised flavour is what attracts you then I'm afraid you're in for disappointment. It's especially surprising how little bourbon character there is. I'm fine with mildly spiced chocolate, and especially for free.

All the family

O Brother's place on this blog tends to be in the regular Irish IPA round-ups: they do like an IPA or two. Today, though, there's enough diversity on offer from them to warrant a standalone post.

Talus Lager, for instance, isn't their norm, even though they've made plenty of great pale lagers in the past. This appears to have been exclusive to UnderDog with this name and may be called something else somewhere else (edit: the brewery seems to have subsequently settled on "Cloud Hopper" as the name). On the pub's opening night it didn't seem to be getting many fans but when I came to it a week or two later I was impressed. It's odd, for sure: the hops are sweet and fruity, making it taste of peach and apricot, but the lager base is perfectly clean and crisp with a snap of wholesome grain husk. Maybe some found the contrast too jarring but I think it worked, resulting in something thirst-quenching and palate-cleansing while also easy to drink and only 4.3% ABV. What's not to like in that?

A canned collaboration with a pub? What's that about? Anyway, Lionn Ruadh na Samhna is a red ale produced with top Galway boozer Bierhaus at an admittedly pintable 4.7% ABV. It does suffer one of the the standard can problems: being unfiltered there's dregs in the bottom, and there's no way of knowing when they're in danger of ending up in the glass. So they ended up in the glass. Despite the modest strength there's a rich and sumptuous aroma, full of surprise chocolate with a busy buzz of peppery hops. The flavour goes the same way, adding marzipan, lemon peel and sandalwood, the hop resins lasting long into the finish. The name being as Gaelige wrongfooted me into expecting an Irish red, but it says "hoppy red ale" on the can and it means it. As such this is very much along the lines of American amber ale, though without the weighty body they tend to have. Nobody is making beer like this any more and its a damn shame -- I have a lot of time for American amber, done well and served fresh, which this is.

There must be hops, of course, and we'll start there on Overnight Success, a 5.1% ABV pale ale. It's very hazy and exhibits most of the things I don't like about haze and which aren't always present. Big vanilla dominates the flavour, given an unwelcome rub of garlic and finishing on a dry and savoury caraway bite. There's lots of chalky, gritty, bittiness from the haze proteins, matching the unpleasant flavour with an unpleasant mouthfeel. Hazy beer doesn't have to be like this. Other breweries are perfectly able to make it full of flavour but also clean and enjoyable. It shouldn't be a chore to drink. 

A full-on IPA is next, the 6.6% ABV Illuminate. It's hazy again, of course, and topped with a pleasing stiff froth. Alas the aroma is one of those savoury ones, smelling like rye bread and chopped onion rather than anything juicy. The flavour is better, thankfully. Not juicy, exactly, but sweet and orangey, like cordial. At least part of that is attributable to the alcohol which is punching above its gravity here, adding weight and a certain heat. The finish is quick, however, and my overall impression is of something not terribly complex -- satisfying to drink in its own way but offering up little for forensic sensory analysis.

And a stout to finish. I was a bit sceptical that How Now Are You is only 5.5% ABV yet badged as "Foreign Extra" style. Surely it would need to be north of 6% for that? It arrived black anyway, though sorely lacking in head which is never a good look for a pint of stout of any stripe. There's a fair bit of fizz, again a bit disorientating, though I will never opine that it should have been nitrogenated. It is possible to have stout that's properly creamy and foamy without that sort of flavour-killing intervention. And I'm very glad it wasn't used here because the flavour is absolute redemption. In keeping, I guess, with old-style export practices it may not be brewed extra strong but it's definitely brewed with extra hops, and there's a superb buzz of crunchy green veg and bright summer flowers provided by an unorthodox but extremely welcome hopping. Behind this there's a little sweet chocolate, almost missed because the mouthfeel is thin but present nonetheless. This is nearly superb but needs a little tweaking on the gravity, I reckon, to work properly. If O Brother were in the habit of re-brewing things like this, and minded to bring back their much-missed cask programme, I think this would be an excellent candidate.

In general it has been a slow start to the year for new releases from Irish breweries. O Brother is one I'd like to see picking the pace up.

Compare the Cashmere

Three new beers from Trouble Brewing today, all with one thing in common.

Limón is a pale ale of 4.5% ABV and brewed with Cashmere and Cascade hops, plus a cheeky fistful of lemongrass. It's amber coloured and slightly hazy, suggesting they haven't skimped on the malt nor gone overboard with filtration. The aroma is impressively lemony: fresh and spritzy, like an actual zested fruit. That's what the flavour does too, adding a properly bitter aftertaste to the sunny front end. This is not a complicated beer and both body and carbonation are medium, meaning it's not simply a down-the-hatch refresher, though I do believe it could be put to that purpose if required. There's enough substance for it to be satisfying, staying just on the happy side of gimmicky. I can see it working well on draught in the pub, if given the opportunity. It's not a no-nonsense beer, but the nonsense is kept to the absolute minimum.

Trouble becomes the third brewery to create a beer called Ár gCairde for Mo Chara in Dundalk. This one is a hazy pale ale and 5.1% ABV. Cashmere features again, along with Idaho 7 and Mandarina Bavaria. There's a touch of the pithiness found in Limón repeated in the aroma here, and I'm assigning that to Cashmere. It doesn't smell particularly distinctive for what it is, however. The texture is a little watery, which is a surprise given the strength and the haze, and what flavour there is tails off quickly. At the beginning it's quite a generic citrus-and-vanilla, with a harder savoury edge of burnt plastic or sesame paste. I'm not a fan. The can promises juicy -- and Trouble normally knows juicy -- but this isn't it. There's not enough flavour, and what's there isn't particularly enjoyable. Drinking it straight after the Limón was like moving from stereo back to mono.

So I left it to another day before opening the decider of this set: Katana. Cashmere for the triple and the return of Cascade in this 6.4% ABV IPA. It appears to be in some sort of obscure IPA sub-style which isn't at all hazy and a sort of golden amber in colour. It'll never catch on. Dry and bitter, right? Lashings of grapefruit and pine? Nope. This is soft and quite tropical in both aroma and flavour, giving me cantaloupe, nectarine and plum with spiky herbal grassiness on the finish. That tail-end does grow in prominence as it goes along, covering the stonefruit flavour somewhat, though the ripe and juice-driven aroma remains. Despite the hard-edged name it's fun: bright and fruity while at the same time weighty and warming, bringing almost a touch of Belgian style to an otherwise very American IPA. It's not following any beer trend I'm aware of, and all the better for that.

Cashmere's zippy zesty lemon is what holds these three together as a set. Even though they're all types of pale ale with a hop in common, I got three quite different experiences. It probably goes to show that drinking a beer is the only way to find out what the beer is like. The specs on the can aren't much help; drink all the things.

The black pool

I wasn't able to make the Craic Beer Community pub crawl in January but did catch up with the beer launched at it a few days later in The Black Sheep. It's that rarest of beasts a dark mild, brewed by Hope and named Horizon. First impression was how pale it is: very definitely ruby or garnet rather than black. It's only 3.8% ABV but I suspect that's more to do with a high finishing gravity than a low starting one because it's very sweet and quite thick. Though lightly carbonated and keg-cold it's still not terribly quaffable. The flavour manifests as milk chocolate of the especially milky sort. Cocoa notes are minimal, as is any bitterness, roast or fruit complexity.

This is not mild done to my taste and comes across more like a milk stout to me. Not to discourage any breweries thinking of formulating one, but could we have a bit of roast? For me?

That brings us to another Dublin-brewed dark beer in a seldom-seen style. A surprise hit of the lockdown era was Barrelhead's HopburgH Helles, brewed and matured in the then-mothballed JW Sweetman brewpub, and sold by the resolutely untrendy half-litre bottle. Matters have moved on since: JWS has changed hands and the new owner has taken the brewery out; Barrelhead has rebranded as Hopkins & Hopkins, and established a brewery of its own, upriver in Smithfield. And now there's a second release: HopburgH Schwarzbier.

It's a favourite style of mine so I'm glad they chose it. Like the Helles it's 5.2% ABV and comes in the same squat bauarbeiterhalbe bottle. It's black as billed, showing cola red around the edges. A persistent off-white head tops it. Full marks for the visuals, then. The aroma is quite sweet, suggesting the caramel of a dunkel rather than schwarzbier roast. To an extent that's present in the flavour too, but here it's joined by the appropriate toasted grain element. It is predominantly dry rather than sweet, so all is well. All told it's not very strongly flavoured, offering just tiny sparks of dark grain, savoury herbs and tangy treacle. That does mean it's very easy drinking, especially with the rounded body and soft carbonation.

This is a highly enjoyable beer, made to the same level of understated quality as the Helles. It's very much built for drinking rather than tasting, however. Buy several.

A Song of Bees and Castles

A fancy took me for some Polish lager, which resulted in me leaving Polonez with three cans and a bottle.

Kasztelan is a Polish brand from Carlsberg that I hadn't seen before, though it claims to be piwo regionalne of Sierpc, north of Warsaw, and I've never been, so maybe that's why. Kasztelan Jasne Pełne is the "pale strong" lager, which turned out to be a medium amber and 5.7% ABV. There's a slightly headachey aroma of esters, suggesting banana and fusel oil. That starts the flavour off sweet, banana again, with slices of red apple and halved white grapes also in the fruit salad, all floating in thin syrup. Yum. There's a modicum of lager crispness in the finish but it's tokenistic. This is plainly meant to be a big sugary palate-stomper, and it succeeds at that. It's not how I like my lagers, however.

I hoped for something considerably more subtle from Kasztelan Niepasteryzowane, given that it's only 4.6% ABV for one thing. Unpasteurised doesn't mean unfiltered, and it's a very clear golden colour in the glass. We're back on normal lager territory here, with a very orthodox aroma of dry crackers and damp grass. The aroma continues on those lines, with the malt in the ascendant, giving it notes of cornbread and Victoria sponge, shading towards Bavarian Helles territory. I'm not sure what benefits the lack of pasteurisation is meant to bestow upon it: there's no special freshness or absence of any common off-flavour; there's an absence of almost any flavour, in fact. It's a dull mass-market lager of the sort Carlsberg has built an empire upon. I thought there would be more to it but maybe that's naive of me. I craved something more interesting next.

Is honey lager a big thing in Poland? I can't say I noticed it on my visits over the years, but the shelves of Polonez had two mainstream brands with honey-infused versions of their beers. New or not, of course they had to be tried.

Łomża Miodowe was first, only because I don't really like Łomża beer. We're back up at 5.7% ABV, making me guess the honey was fermented as part of the process. It still smells massively honeyish, though: a sensory flashback of honey on hot buttered toast, something I haven't encountered in decades. Grassy hops are there too, for the full meadow effect. This smells like fun. On tasting the lager takes a back seat, providing the light body and bright fizz, while up front it's a sticky-tasting but not sticky-feeling honey effect, fully realistic and natural. Alongside the floral sweetness is a waxy bitterness, suggesting that this isn't some ersatz honey flavouring but the full multidimensional deal. I drank it last year while summer was still in full swing but it left me thinking more of mellow autumnal evenings. Overall I was charmed: not what I expected from Łomża or their honey concoction.

Canned Perła Miodowa (different declension: here's why) is a little stronger at 6% ABV and looks paler too. The honey is much less pronounced here: absent from the aroma and in the flavour as the sort of artificial plasticky candy effect that I was fearing in the beer above. Other than that mild plastic twang, this gets filed with the unpasteurised lad two above as inoffensive but not doing everything it could. All big-brand Polish honey lagers are not the same.

Polish beer, then, is full of surprises. I expected to be impressed by the unfiltered lager and thoroughly underwhelmed by the Łomża but the opposite has been the case. Well played everyone.

On the town

Late last year I mentioned that The Porterhouse had created two summer festival beers but that I only got to try one of them back at the pub. It turns out that either there was an overlooked keg of the other, or it was deemed good enough to be rebrewed, because here it was in late December: Passion Fruit IPA. After the fun of the lime lager I was ready to be impressed. I was not impressed. Although this is pleasingly and unfashionably clear, the fruit syrup is laid on thick and dominates the foretaste making it seem like an alcopop at first. Later that switches to quite a harsh leafy bitterness, so I guess it does at least qualify as both a fruit beer and an IPA: not everything claiming to be one does. But it's very basic and I think would work much better in the less critical environment of the al fresco festival rather than mid-winter in the pub.

The reason I was out in the first place was the opening of Fidelity, a new joint venture pub from Whiplash and The Big Romance people. They've done a thorough job of tarting up the grotty former Dice Bar on Queen Street and created Dublin's second high-end beer bar, a short stagger down the tram tracks from the first one.

The location by James Joyce bridge and the house from his story The Dead seems to have suffused into the beer menu, and my first here was itself called The Dead, a Whiplash porter that tends to get exported more than sold in Dublin. It's a callback to head brewer Alex's time in Guinness and is designed to taste like an old porter from there, made from the closest thing available to diastatic brown malt, given decoction mashing and some oak ageing. It's 5.5% ABV and wears chocolate up front; dark at first, then developing a caramel sweetness with dark fruit character: red grape or raisin. An additional character comes in the form of a mildly phenolic iodine smokiness. I thought I was in for something basic and accessible but there's a lot going on in this and it's well worth taking time over to explore.

Before departing, a glass of Telemachus, a 10.5% ABV barley wine aged in Marsala barrels. There's a strong liqueur aroma leaving no doubt about that strength, as well as burnt caramel and dark sherry. The texture is fantastically smooth while the Marsala dominates the flavour so intensely it almost doesn't taste like beer at all. There's lots of luscious soft grapes, loads of booze and a slight chocolate sweetness. This is definitely one to finish the night on, warming the belly as it coats the palate.

Fidelity is a most welcome addition to Dublin's beer scene. I'm envisioning regular two-stop crawls between it and UnderDog in 2023.

The 10%-ers

Two beers from Rye River today, both making sure you hit your weekly units target as efficiently as possible.

The latest canned special is called A-TIPA-CAL, signifying that it's a triple IPA. High tech cryo hops are what makes it special though I'm not sure the effect comes through to my palate. It's a perfectly typical clear pale orange colour and has typical bittersweet citrus syrup flavour: marmalade and travel sweets. There's a sizeable alcohol burn -- again typical -- though it's mostly clean with a minimal residual stickiness.

As a triple IPA it's fine, and if you're already a fan of them, then you'll enjoy this. I do think, however, that it's not the best showcase for fancy-dan hopping. The boozy heat, however well done it may be, will always be too much of a distraction, I reckon. 

You wouldn't know it's a lager. That's my principal observation on Rye River's late 2022 seasonal release The Orator. It is, in fairness, a doppelbock: a strong dark beer, and stronger than usual here, that's never the most lager-like but usually exhibits a certain biscuity crispness to indicate its roots. This one, however, has been barrel aged in ex-rye whiskey casks and it adds a delicious richness and depth that screams warm fermentation at me. You get gooey chocolate, piquant whisky, vanilla cream and smooth honey, all set on a weighty, chewy base.

I drank it as an accompaniment to my Christmas dinner, and enjoyed it, but really this is optimised for pudding. The second half of the bottle was sipped by the fire in a post-turkey stupor and that's where it really belongs. Regardless of context, it's a gorgeous beer, and one of the best of these annual large-format offerings from Rye River. Get it while winter lasts, and if you miss this winter, save some for the next one.

What about a bottled otter?

Today I'm presenting a veritable smorgasbord from east Donegal's finest, Otterbank. And it's all authentic, honest, bottled Ulster product too, none of those cans they get the jackeens to lash out under the Otterbank label. Sure you wouldn't know what they put in that stuff.

First up is The Poisoned Glen, a bière de garde. I have many problems with the style rulebooks put before us by the assorted self-appointed arbiters of quality beer, and not least of them is the total lack of consideration given to how a beer sounds. The Poisoned Glen, first and foremost, sounds like a bière de garde: a busy, somewhat high-pitched crackle, bubbles swarming noisily to the surface though never quite forming a stable head. It looks like a bière de garde too: the standard slightly murky red-brown. For a style that very seldom comes my way, I seem to have very definite ideas about its attributes. Anyway, crisp and lightly fruity? Yes, it's that. Rye crackers, wholegrain bread, red apple, raisins and marmite are all in there; dry as you like, but with a plummy ripeness in contrast. If the style arbiters had invented it today they'd call it something like "86C: Amber Saison" so it's just as well the French farmers got there before them. This is a bang-on example of what bière de garde ought to be and I commend it to anyone who's never had one.

The next pair are part of series called Cake Dealer, beginning on Mango & Passionfruit, described as a "mixed fermentation pastry sour" which is not a designation one sees very often, being almost against the hallowed strictures of pastry sour. The cake comes from Yum, a local bakery, and the pair of them are doing their bit for the circular economy. But how's the beer? It's a rather dull and murky orange in the glass, not bothering with a head. The fruit smoothie is foremost in both the aroma and flavour, but there's a tang there too, a hint of Brettanomyces funk. No more than a hint ever materialises, however, and it's sweet tropical fruit all the way otherwise. What's interesting to this nerd is that, for once, the passionfruit isn't dominant and there's more mango. I wonder is some of that soft lusciousness down to the Brett. It's not especially sweet, which is good, and there's a welcome spark of black pepper on the finish. Overall it's decent and fun, expertly treading a fine line between serious and daft.

That's beginner-level Cake Dealer. The serious stuff comes in a 75cl bottle: BA Chocolate Brownie Stout, 10.5% ABV, made with chocolate brownies in the grist and then aged in mezcal barrels. That spirit side is very apparent from the aroma: it has that slightly sickly, oily smell like tequila, suggesting that a slice of lime wouldn't go amiss in here. It's very sweet to taste but not really in a stouty way. Instead it's the barrels again, with a mix of vanilla and lemon squash. It's... interesting, but I'm a bit disappointed there's no chocolate or coffee notes on offer. This is more like one of those sour stouts that you get from Belgian breweries from time to time. In fact it much more resembles a Belgian oud bruin than proper stout. As such, I'm not a fan. This tangy attenuated effort isn't what I want from something called "Cake Dealer". 

We finish on what I thought was a straight Baltic porter, albeit a strong one at 12.3% ABV, but it's not. Segway Segue is first of all a collaboration with regular Otterbank conspirator Third Barrel and has been aged in Bushmills barrels with added Brettanomyces. Phew! The result is extremely wine-like, mixing juicy red grape with dark toasted oak. Throw in a few squares of high-cocoa chocolate and sprinkle of cinnamon and you have something close to the complete picture. It's really not a whole lot like a Baltic porter, which is a little disappointing, but it's highly enjoyable as whatever the hell it ended up being. 

That's fair enough, but no hazy IPA? What are they playing at?

Beers in Brats

I hadn't made any plans to go to Bratislava, but when you're in Vienna it's just there, so in lieu of any better suggestions, off we went of a Tuesday afternoon in January. As with Vienna it had been over a decade since my last visit though luckily friend Ben had been through a few short days previously and I just followed in his footsteps, to places that didn't exist last time I was there.

That started at Fabrika, a smart but somewhat souless brewery-restaurant attached to a modern hotel a short stroll from the main station. The minimalist approach extends to their beer names, all derived from their gravity in degrees Plato.

For completeness, and because I was thirsty, I opened with Summer 8°, a lager of 2.6% ABV that looked to have outlived its proper season and survived into the depths of winter. I can see why. Despite the minuscule strength it has loads of character, beginning on husky grain and adding an assertive sharp and dry bitterness. It's not in any way watery nor even watery-looking, being a proper golden shade with a slight haze. If this genuinely is the strength they say, it's quite the achievement.

There was also a 5% ABV dark lager called F13°. This is very black and shows both dry roasted and sweet caramel sides in its aroma. Roast dominates the flavour, almost to the point of making it taste ashen, and overall rather severe for my tastes. I had expected something balanced and broadly in the tmavý style, but this is full-on Schwarzbier, and at the extreme end of that roastiness scale. It requires too much hard work to enjoy and needs just a little softening, I think.

F12° is the pilsner at 4.6% ABV. It's an attractive deep golden colour and the side-pour tap gives it a fine head. Once again there's a promising aroma, giving off light summery meadows plus a daub of honey. The texture is beautifully smooth too. For a brewpub pils, then, it's highly refined. Unfortunately that leads to blandness in the flavour. There's no foretaste as such, and the taste of malt is missing. Instead there's only a twang of grassy bitterness in the flavour, one which builds in the aftertaste as it goes, becoming intrusive by the end. This is very nearly superb but just misses the mark.

I didn't reckon their American-style pale ale would be up to much but had a go anyway. This is F14° at 5.6% ABV. Amber coloured, it's quite perfumey: a sweet and sticky malt base on which has been placed highly floral flavour and aroma hops. It lacks any kind of balancing bitterness and that makes it difficult to drink. As with yesterday's IPA in Vienna, this feels almost like a lager brewer's satire on what hoppy American ale is, and how stupid it is that it's popular. It's not an enjoyable beer, however, turning out cloying and overwrought in a way that real American pale ale never is.

I stuck with the style at the next stop, the strangely hut-like Mešuge. The short but well-chosen beer list here is heavily Czech and I went straight for one from much-missed favourite brewer Matuška: their Apollo Galaxy 13°. No orangey murk here: it's a bright golden colour with oodles of fresh and zingy grapefruit in the aroma. The mouthfeel is weighty and resinous despite it being only 5.5% ABV. It's a little on the sweet side yet still manages a satisfying citrus buzz plus some dank and resinous spicing. In most contexts it would be nothing fancy; here it was a joy to get a properly-made new-world-hopped pale ale at long last.

The dark one beside it is Pivovar Mazák Baltic Porter, another Czech. Though 6.8% ABV is perfectly orthodox for the style, the sweet creamy coffee aroma is not so much. There's no roast and no botanicals. It's more savoury on tasting with notes of red cabbage and gherkin and even a bite of espresso roast. That's more like it. It's full and smooth -- quite unlagerlike -- and I class this variation on Baltic porter as more like a foreign extra stout. As always, however, the only important part is that it's absolutely delicious.

The city's super-serious pedlar of international-grade overpriced murk is a cramped one-roomer, little more than a kiosk, called Žil Verne. What's the haziest murk you've got? Zichovec's Nectar of Happiness 17?  Well give me one of those then. This Czech IPA is 7.5% ABV and smells hot and citric, like if Lemsip were made with grapefruit instead of lemons. The flavour is creamy coconut for the most part, with a spritz of zesty orange juice. A dab of fried onion in the finish completes the picture. It's very sweet, and rendered extra tough to drink by quite a severe heat. I guess it's fine for what it is and will likely appeal to haze enthusiasts. There are none of the standard flaws, but it's not really my thing. I prefer New England-style IPA to be cleaner and cooler, if that's not a tautology.

And in the little squat round glass, the inevitable fruit-and-lactose sour ale, called GeLaTo, from FIRST, a brewery in Budapest. It's 6% ABV, hazy yellow and quite headless. The aroma is harsh and sharp, with elements of burnt grain and vinegar, neither of which is intended, I'm sure. The flavour at least has lots of mango and passionfruit, though there's an artificial plastic edge to it. On the plus side, and for a change, it is actually sour. The downside there is that it's quite thin and sharp, not the dessert it's meant to be. This is a style that's rarely well done and I'm not convinced it's worth the effort.

My going-back train beer was picked up at 100 Pív, a tiny little beer shop with tables where we didn't have time to stop. Pink City is a session IPA from the delightfully named Hellstork brewery in Myjava, north of Bratislava near the Czech border. It could be anywhere, though, because this is a bang average beer, rather strong for the style at 5% ABV and tasting heavily of dry sesame seeds and earthy grit. It's both too heavy and too astringent to be a proper session beer: one half litre can was plenty for me. Rock on, Hellstork, but next time I'll be picking a different style, and hopefully getting to pour it into a glass.

That's all from Bratislava, and indeed this trip. If there's a lesson in all this unrepresentative drinking it's that the Czechs have the edge on their neighbours as regards beer quality across a broad range of genres.

New kits

The newer brewpubs of Vienna are today's subject, or at least the ones I hadn't been to before. Mama Kraft is indeed very new: even my local guide hadn't tried it yet. It's in a handsome basement space adjacent to its parent restaurant, Mama & Bull, which also sells its beers, but you need to come down here if you want to drink next to the gleaming copper.

What to drink? We start with Helles as usual. After yesterday's disappointing headline lagers I'm pleased to report that Mama Kraft Helles is absolutely by-the-numbers for a Mitteleuropa brewpub lager. It's 4.8% ABV with a misting of haze suffusing the medium-yellow body. The body is quite full but the foretaste is fresh and clean with topnotes of lemon zest on a chewy grain base. It goes a little bit eccentric as it warms, introducing a strange beeswax funk, but you're not meant to let it warm up: this is a good quaffable conversation lager; a proper session beer.

They also do a red lager called Die Herzdame. To me this seemed very much along the lines of the signature rotbier of Nuremberg, and that's a bit of a problem for my palate. It's almost acrid in its dryness, not helped by an assertive liquorice bitterness, nor balanced by a splodge of caramel in the middle. I'll grant you that there aren't any flaws in here and I'm sure it's absolutely what the brewer set out to produce. If rotbier is your thing then it should be good news that there's somewhere in Vienna you can drink it. Me, I was glad to be merely tasting somebody else's.

They pick another country's vernacular with the third beer: Wit Bull, a witbier. This is darker than benchmarks Hoegaarden and St Bernardus and they've fully upended the herb sack, resulting in something that tastes in between Oriental stir fry and the second-cheapest bath bomb in Lush. The base beer beneath this is thick and syrupy with an off-putting sweaty tang. I think they've overreached themselves trying to do a witbier. What it needs is a tang of some sort, and orange peel would be ideal. If they used it they didn't use enough. Stick to the lager is my concluding advice to myself as regards Mama Kraft.

On a tram going along the side of the Belvedere palace grounds I noticed a sign for a brewery. That'll be the Salm one, built into the walls. I was there last time and don't need to go again. A check of the the map, however, showed me that the Belvedere has two breweries built into its perimeter: Salm was round the other side and this was the hitherto unfamiliar Stöckl im Park. Driver! Stop the tram!

This one is smart and modern, the pale wood and plate glass of an upmarket restaurant. I'm sure the views over the manicured Belvedere grounds are lovely when it's not pitch dark outside. Along an entire wall there's an impressive, though solely decorative, Salm-built brewery console from the 1950s, rescued from some large brewery that had no further need of it.

Zo, Helles? Stöckl's Helles 1924 is 4.9% ABV and a dark golden colour with only a faint haze. It tastes quite sweet with a tang of banana though subtle enough to be classed as rustic rather than flawed. It maintains its crispness despite this and shows another full and chewy texture. It's fine: hardly a showcase of the brewer's art but plain and palateable.

Across the table, something called Böhmisch G'mischtes which they claim is a unique Austrian speciality, though it must be an endangered one if so because I didn't see it anywhere else. From the name I'm guessing it has something in common with Czechia's polotmavý amber lager. To my palate it was spot on as a Bavarian-style dunkel, centred on light caramel with an oily, nutty richness, a bit of runny chocolate and a balancing edge of roasted dryness. It's wholesome and filling stuff, the essence of süffig. It's a shame that such things have gone out of fashion, presumably to be replaced by mediocre Helles.

She was having another one of those. I decided to chance the Stöckl Weizen. This looked a bit strong, being a muddy dark orange, though the ABV is only 4.9%. It's a little on the dry side but there's a decent wodge of green banana on a light body making it fresh and summery, not cloying or hot. This is a straightforward and workmanlike weissbier, easy-drinking and thirst-quenching without being any way bland. That'll do.

Our final brewpub is quite a grand affair. Kaltenhauser Botschaft Fünfhaus is built into the imposing Brauhof Wien Hotel on Mariahilfer Strasse. It's smart and spacious, though they've slightly incongruously put faux-industrial features into an airy baroque beer hall. I'm sure no small part of the smartness and slickness is because it's owned and operated by the local tentacle of Heineken.

Their Helles is named a Zwickl, hazy yellow of course, with a light 4.7% ABV. This was the best example of these I had all trip, with all the requisite features in the correct proportions. That's a freshly herbal aroma leading to a flavour of bright and zingy lemon and basil. And that's it. Quick finish and order another. It is mostly definitely designed for drinking in large measures but is perfectly sippable too.

It was quite the novelty to find a Stout on the list. 5.2% ABV looks good for the sort of thing we drink at home, likewise the aroma of roast and the flavour of dark chocolate and liquorice. Where it falls apart is the mouthfeel: it is unacceptably  light bodied and I suspect it might be cool-fermented. The result left me thinking of watered-down Baltic porter, and nobody wants that. I deem this to be not stout in either style or nature. Another reason to be glad of the decent everyday stout that so many Irish breweries make so well.

Still I persisted with unAustrian beer styles despite knowing better, and had the IPA next. This is properly American-style at 6.5% ABV with properly American Amarillo, Simcoe, Mosaic and Cascade hops. It's dark amber in colour and smells sweetly tropical, of passionfruit, pineapple and bright yellow candy chews. Again, though, it's thin bodied and the hops don't sit right on it, coming across as harshly vegetal with a strong metallic twang. The basic elements of the IPA flavour are there but the chassis simply can't carry them. It seems they just can't get the hang of warm-fermented styles here. Time to switch to something more in their wheelhouse.

That was the Wiener Lager: there hasn't been one today yet. It's a little hazy and pale copper coloured; modestly strong at 4.8% ABV. The aroma is perfect for the style, with its toasty baked melanoidins, like bourbon cream biscuits. The flavour is plainer. It's not rich but clean and crisp and very easy drinking. Despite the difference in colour and smell, the experience isn't very different to what you get with the Zwickl. That's not a complaint after the adventurous-but-wonky beers which came in between. Lager is what these people do best.

And that's it for Vienna for now. On my third trip in twenty years it's gone down a little in my estimation, beerwise, but maybe that's because of my choices. There is plentiful unpasteurised Czech lager served from the tank, and if I didn't have a blog to feed I could have happily stuck with that.

In tomorrow's post I'll be doing a quick circuit of the city next door.

Old haunts

"The less gimmicky beers will have to wait for my next visit" I wrote after drinking hemp beer, chilli beer, rauchbier and whatnot in 7 Stern on my last visit to Vienna in 2011. The place hasn't changed much since then, nor since my first time there in 2003. I suspect the fundamentals have been the same since this vast rambling premises opened its doors in 1994. It's a sound formula and there's no need to change it. The chilli beer still tastes amazing, but less gimmicky I promised, so less gimmicky I will review.

Wiener Helles is your typical brewpub kellerbier, 4.9% ABV and hazy yellow. Beginning from a very dry, almost acrid, base, it adds unsubtle perfumed hops, ramping up the bitterness as it goes. The experience is jarring, the overall flavour rough and jagged, its malt and hop elements not really melding well together. Taken together it's quite the opposite of what I look for in the beer at the top of a brewpub menu list. 7 Stern's fondness for the weird stuff leaking through inappropriately, perhaps.

I had better luck with 7 Stern Dunkles. Though only 4.9% ABV, this is a big fellow. Heaps of dark unctuous molasses is suggested by the aroma, followed by dense treacly goodness as the flavour. A vaguely herbal cola-nut bite is the only nod to complexity. But this one doesn't need complexity. It's made for chewing through and then ordering another. I wasn't there to do that but appreciate the use case nonetheless.

1516 is another 20+-year veteran of Vienna brewing, and still at it, still brewing its licensed clone of Victory Hop Devil, though the pub is now wonderfully smoke-free. I opted for something called Kimber Ale, described as being Alt-like. It looks the part: deep brown with a lagery foam on top. The foretaste is slightly roasty, giving it a porterish character. The crisp middle and caramel finish bring us back to Alt. It's fine, not very exciting, and strong for what it is at 5.2% ABV. This is another one designed for drinking, not analysis.

I figured the Dubbel Winter Ale would have more to say for itself, brewed as it is with fig, plum and cinnamon. This is a deep garnet shade and smells somewhere between a Christmas cake and a mince pie: currants and brown sugar, with a late pinch of clove spicing. For all that, it's still a bit thin and I don't think the base dubbel is up to Belgian standard, making it seem like the fruit and spices are there to cover up its shortcomings. The discussion on whether to stay for a second round was a brief one, and off we went.

While I had been back to both of these since 2003, one place from that trip I hadn't revisited was Fischerbräu. I recall drinking in the twilight of a crowded beer garden so it was a different experience late on a January afternoon, the outside space deserted and only a few of the tables inside the small inn occupied. Still, they fry a good schnitzel, and the beer...

Just two on the taps. Fischerbräu Helles is a dun hazy yellow and tastes a bit... unfinished. There's a dense malt weight and a porridgey sweetness. It's hearty fare, loading you up with honey and brown sugar, but it doesn't resemble what I understand as Helles, as was the case at 7 Stern. Maybe German brewpubs have spoiled me for Austria.

The other one was Meistertrunk: 6% ABV and red-brown, so I'm guessing some class of a winter bock. This one is also weighty but suits it better than the Helles. The flavour delivers caramel and marzipan, but in a clean way, finishing with a proper noble-hop leafy bitterness and a twist of black pepper. It's interesting and also fun, very well suited to sipping and exploring slowly.

Vienna certainly has no shortage of brewpubs and I got to try a few that were new to me as well. They'll be covered in tomorrow's post.