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.