Dutch detour

I didn't go directly home after Brussels but instead took a Sunday morning train up to Amsterdam to pay a flying visit to some of my favourite and familiar haunts.

A burger in a randomly chosen burger place was accompanied by Jopen's Blurred Lines, a hazy IPA, of course. The brewery is generally a reliable one and they've done this well. There's decent head retention of the sort not enough beers in this style have. The juice quotient is plentiful in the flavour, and it genuinely does taste of freshly-squeezed orange. That includes a certain amount of pithy bitterness which balances it very nicely. And then there's a clean finish with no time for grit, garlic or any other nonsense. 5.3% ABV means you can order another straight after. It's not a complex or demanding beer but is very well-made. I would happily have it as a supermarket regular.

Onwards, then, to Foeders, in anticipation of some more sour goodness. Alas the menu was rather light on that front so I settled for dark and sticky goodness instead. That began with a 12% ABV imperial stout from Moersleutel in collaboration with Polish brewer Funky Fluid, called Suska Sechlońska. I would never have guessed the secret ingredient from the sweet and smoky flavour, nor the aroma like Islay whisky. In fact, there must be peated malt in this. All that the brewers own up to is smoked plums. Intensely smoked plums, if it's not from the malt. There's very good dessert stout in here, with lots of cream, coffee and chocolate, giving a certain impression of tiramisu, except smoked. The mix of gooey pudding and medicinal phenols is not unpleasant but odd and somewhat disconcerting. I wouldn't be running to order this one again.

I followed it with another from Moersleutel: a freeze-fortified stout called Magreet, at 16% ABV. For all that it appears dark and sticky in the glass, the aroma is light and bright as a summer market, heaped with fresh strawberry and cherry. The foretaste adds a pinch of almond paste to the cherry and serves it with a cup of hot, strong coffee. It's a lovely example of the complexity you can get with seriously strong stout. Stroopwafel. Raisin. Hazelnut. With a larger measure and more time I could have kept going but it was time to pay up and leave.

Obviously I'm far too grown up to go chasing cool or trendy beers, but I did notice an IPA from The Veil on the list at Beer Temple and reckoned I should check in with what the plucky Virginian brewery was up to. IdontwanttoBU³ is the name. It's 6.9% ABV and hazy as hell with no head. Its aroma is strangely herbal, presenting a mint and eucalyptus sharpness. The flavour is mostly sweet with merely a residual remnant of the savoury herbs. That gives the impression of chewing a raw hop cone, and maybe that's the point. If this is an attempt at the optimisation of beer hopping then we've gone past the point where it tastes nice. I would take Jopen's Blurred Lines over this any day.

Beer Temple is part of the MoreBeer chain, and I'll usually try the house beers on the grounds that they're only available in these pubs, and they generally tend to be worth drinking. Here there was Ninth Secret Eagle, a 5.5% ABV stout (not The Secret Eagle of the Ninth, my gritty reboot of the classic children's novel) brewed with/at Amsterdam microbrewery Walhalla. It is extremely dry, opening on crusty, dusty grain husk before moving on to green and acidic old-world hops. I also got black coffee and Shredded Wheat as other types of complexity, though all at the dry end of the spectrum. I liked it, but you really need to like your stouts bitter and dry to count this as a recommendation. Be warned.

One more MoreBeer beer here: a schwarzbier brewed by Poesiat & Kater called Schwartsmannnnnnn. It's nnnnnnnot bad at all, being lightly smoked and offering an aroma and foretaste of blackberry and plum, which is then seasoned with smoke before the dry roasted-grain finish. It's quite full-bodied, so not terribly lager-like and far from a classic schwarzbier. I think it's a worthy twist on the style, though: creative, not disruptive.

It's almost a tradition that the last beer in Amsterdam is at Arendsnest on the way to the station. I stuck with MoreBeer here and was intrigued by the listing of a lambic-like, produced with Vandenbroek, and called Mispel. Mispel is Dutch for medlar, a fruit which Wikipedia helpfully informs us is also known as "open-arse and monkey's bottom". I'm glad they didn't get too creative with the name of this beer. It's 6% ABV, amber-coloured and smells spicy with a hint of vinegar. Despite this sharpness in the aroma, the flavour is very smooth and mature, giving mulled citrus, clove and peppercorn set on a low-carbonation cask-like texture. It's an oddity, for sure, but very tasty.

I finished that fast enough to allow myself one last beer: the delightfully named Smook from Frisian brewer Het Brouwdok. It's a smoked Märzen and I'm always up for trying out a Schlenkerla clone. How do I know it's a Schlenkerla clone? Well, it's dark brown, for one thing. Doesn't anyone make Märzen-coloured smoked Märzen? The aroma of this is quite chemically, suggesting TCP and bleach. The flavour is dry and toasted with a little meatiness -- the crust of a baked ham, say, rather than proper bacon. It lacks the understated richness of Schlenkerla, which makes it such a satisfying beer to drink. This is drinkable, but will inevitably invite comparisons which aren't in its favour.

And on that note I was out the door and homeward bound. Always a pleasure, Amsterdam. See you again soon.

Decisions

Frank Boon never wanted to do retail. He was frequently advised to start -- the brewery he set up in 1975 is right beside Lembeek train station, a 30 minute hop from central Brussels: the potential for beer tourism was enormous, but he couldn't be bothered. Officially, Frank retired last year, passing the brewery to his two sons, who decided early on that retail was the way to go. Now, at the brewery's front office, you'll find a shop for bottles, merchandise and guided tour bookings, and upstairs a tasting bar where the range can be sampled.

Above that there's a hospitality suite where I spent two days at the spring 2023 meeting of the European Beer Consumer's Union. There were occasional forays down the stairs to see what's on the bar.

I've had their straight 2-year-old lambic on draught but didn't know that they also do a draught version of their geuze: Geuze Boon Sélection. This has been conditioned in the keg and is slightly lower strength than the bottled version, at 6.3% ABV. The brewery claims it tastes different: less soft, more spiky. I didn't try it side-by-side but I couldn't detect any variation. All the wonderful features of bottled Oude Geuze are here: the same waxy bitterness, mild funk and flinty spices. It's lovely, and if it gets the geuze out into more places, I'm all for it.

I'm less familiar with Boon's Oude Kriek, but there's a draught equivalent of that too, called Kriek Boon Sélection. This is 6.5% ABV, so identical to the bottle. Tasting it made me realise why I don't drink as much of it: there's a stale sweaty side that I didn't care for, the cherries (from Poland, mostly) thoroughly macerated and funked up. The finish is gentler, offering warming mulled wine spices, plus a residual trace of the base geuze's mineral bitterness. It's fine, but I think I would need to be in the mood for it.

Boon Faro is not one I had tried before. They say this is one of their weaker beers, but it's still substantial at 5% ABV. It pours a tawny amber colour and tastes very dry and tannic, with added sweetness for a sugary tea effect. The blurb says that as well as sugar and water, they've added spices to the blend, but I couldn't tell you what they are. This is simple fare, designed to be refreshing, and doing an extremely good job of it. Don't expect much of the base lambic to have survived in the flavour here, but it's good fun in its own right, and far from a silly novelty or a compromised take on geuze.

From the shop I picked up a bottle of Apogee, the geuze created to mark the transition of ownership to the next generation of Boons. The hefty €20 price tag presumably goes straight into Frank's retirement fund. When I got it open I found something not madly dissimilar to Boon's magical Mariage Parfait. It shows the same rounded maturity; wood, but smoothed by time; a sprinkling of juicy peach and a seasoning of peppery spices. While it's absolutely beautiful I couldn't really detect anything distinctive about it: you know you're drinking a quality Boon geuze. Nice to try, but a couple of bottles of Mariage is the better play.

That's it for Boon, but before I leave the lambic for today, a note on one which was waiting when I got back to Dublin: Oud Beersel's Earl Gray Tea Infused Lambic. Beersel has a whole series of these lambics flavoured with odd stuff, and some of them work and some of them don't. Earl Gray is an excellent choice of adjunct as it complements the base beer (from Boon, of course) very nicely, enhancing the citrus spritz that's already there, making it the centre of the flavour without losing any of the tartness or spicing that is the style's hallmarks.

But back to Brussels, and from Boon, Reuben and I passed straight through the city centre and alighted at Bruxelles-Nord, to visit the Brasserie de la Senne taproom. It's been 18 months since my first visit, and the redevelopment of the neighbourhood doesn't seem to have kicked in yet: the beer garden still overlooks vast expanses of waste ground. There was plenty of interest on the menu.

For one thing, they've done a collaboration with American witbier icons Allagash. Of course it's a witbier, and called Zennegash: 5.7% ABV and dry hopped. It's bright yellow and emphasised the herbs rather than the hops, I thought, with lots of coriander plus more floral bath-salts vibes. Beyond that, like many a microbrewed witbier, it just tastes like a witbier: refreshing and lemony, ideal for thirst-quenching, but not something to spend time analysing. Was it worth Allagash's time to come to Belgium and make this? It got me buying it, so maybe.

My next one was a 9.5% ABV strong ale named Coucou Puissant. This hazy orange number is packed with spices, giving me sandalwood, clove, black pepper and pine resin. Fruity orangey top notes prevent it from turning harsh. The brewery claims it works as a warmer, but sitting outside in 6°C temperatures, I wasn't feeling it. The alcohol is well hidden. It's still an enjoyable example of what it is, lacking the boozy thickness of a barley wine or quadrupel and showing off other fun features instead.

For the road, then, I had a Vent du Sud, brewed at de la Senne for Brasserie des 4 Vents, seemingly a side project of Jean van Roy of Cantillon fame. I don't know whether to be surprised or not that JvR is going to other breweries to make sour beer, but this is one, and while the head retention is poor, the flavour is a fantastically complex mix of succulent Bretty peach and a light dusting of spice. Though it's a full 5.5% ABV it's light and clean, finishing respectfully quickly. While not a geuze, there's clearly some mixed-fermentation magic at work here.

Reuben's beer, with the much more handsome foam, is the one on the left of the picture. This is another collaboration, with new Brussels brewery Mule, and is called Zinne-Lager. It was created as part of the 25th anniversary celebrations of de la Senne flagship Zinnebir and follows the recipe exactly until pitching time, when they've used a lager yeast instead of an ale one. The result is pale and hazy with a biscuit aroma and tonnes of noble hop character. I get rocket, celery and a musty dry grass effect. It's interesting, but not the lager for me. Where Zinnebir has lots of fun new-world character this is strictly Germanic and quite different.

That completes this short bimble through Brussels and environs. I decided, however, that I would take the long way home.

On the mean streets of Brussels

EBCU business brought me to Brussels a couple of weeks ago. And of course, in between meetings there was a chance to drop in at some favourite pubs and breweries around the city. Assembly point on the first evening was Brussels Beer Project's wild-beer brewery and taproom on Rue Dansaert.

Here I started on something with the wonderful name of You're A Time Machine, Change The Future. It's a blend of lambic and saison, flavoured with rhubarb, 5.5% ABV and a murky orange colour in the glass. It's nicely tart while still leaving room for a proper rhubarb flavour. There's enough of a body to make that rounded and rich, like a rhubarb pie. Lambic complexity is a little lacking, and there's no funk, only touches of salt and spice. This is good though not spectacular, and it would be interesting to find out what a little further ageing would do for it.

Reuben, meanwhile, was drinking Arctic Summer, BBP's cold IPA. This is an excellent example of the style -- a clear golden colour and using its incredibly clean flavour profile to boost big dank and pithy hop elements. Though a relatively modest 6% ABV it tastes more like the 7%+ ABV IPAs that made the west coast famous.

I stayed sour for my next one, Sonic Freefall, another blend of saison and lambic, this time flavoured with apple pomace and a powerful 7.3% ABV. The aroma is a rustic autumnal mix of damp oak and ripe apple. There's a kick of sourness at the opening of the flavour but no sign of that alcohol, and the central taste is predominantly a raw and sappy wood character. It's subtle in a way I wasn't expecting, and I don't think that makes it a better beer. There was definitely room for something more interesting here. Maybe they don't have enough spontaneously-fermented stock to release the pure product yet. I found the half-way approach a little dissatisfying.

Something a bit more normal to follow: Lutra, a dark lager. This 5% ABV job is quite amber coloured and has a seriously roasty aroma. The flavour is bang on for a German-style schwarzbier, being deliciously dry with an interesting nutty complexity to provide a modicum of balancing sweetness. It's one of those where there's not much to say -- it's just lovely: a classically-styled drinking beer.

L-R: Lutra, Slowmo, TRPL IPA

TRPL IPA is the opposite: a 10.5% ABV triple IPA built for sipping. It's still good, though, having the warming orangey thickness of the original American double IPAs. The bitterness level goes with that, being a punchy citrus and pine at the very front. At the tail end, however, it evolves into something more modern, introducing a differently pleasant juice quality. €10 gets you a half litre glass of this if you are so-minded. It's perfect in small measures, however.

Finally for here, I'm always strangely attracted to beetroot beers, mainly for the novelty value, so I finished with Slowmo, a saison made with beetroot and pear. There's a very full-on earthy aroma, beetroot's signature, and then a flavour of two halves. The beetroot continues doing its thing, giving it a rough and bitter taste with more than a hint of dry soil. Then that all goes away and a light and refreshing pear side arrives. This is fun, if a little route-one in the execution: you asked for pear and beetroot and that's exactly what you get; no more, no less.

GIST was convenient to where we were saying so we spent a bit of time there. I indulged heavily in their handpumped Stouterik by Brasserie de la Senne which was tasting superb. For ticking purposes there were a few interesting-looking ones by Brasserie Minne.

That began with the grandly-titled Ardenne Spirit, in the old ale style and 9.5% ABV. I had a fairly clear picture in my head of what I wanted from this: something warm and mature and plummy, but that's not what I got. It doesn't appear to be aged in or on wood but there was a major oaky tang, like substandard Rioja wine. It's dry and sappy, which is coupled with a rough and dusty mustiness. The brewery boasts of using Orval's yeast strain but it lacks the balanced charm of Orval. It's the wrong kind of funk.

The beer behind it in the photo is Woody Wood Gewürztraminer from the same brewery. This is a blend of grape ale with lambic and is 8.5% ABV. It offers a decent kick of lambic spice but in a slightly watered-down sense that's not as good as the real thing. The grape side is very obvious, being a little sickly in the Gewürztraminer way. I like the idea but I think these two excellent beer styles work better separately.

I stuck to Minne for the second round, opting for Rouge Ardenne, their take on Flanders red. This is 7% ABV and a crystal-clear red colour. That's pretty much where the style fidelty ends because for one thing it is not sour. The main flavour is raspberry jam and pink lollipops. There's a vague dryness to it but nothing like the puckering acidity of the mainstream reds. It almost tastes like a protest against them.

This time the blond beer in the background is the Old Style Saison from Drogenbos. This 6%-er has been barrel-aged and given the Brettanomyces treatment, and here you can taste similarities with Brett classic Orval: the same kind of farmyard horsey funk. There's a large wood character but it's better used than in some of the beers above, adding a dry complexity but not preventing the beer from being clean and drinkable. A white pepper spice arrives late on, plus a zingy tartness. It's an excellent use of saison as the canvas onto which other flavour elements are projected, and it all works harmoniously despite the many moving parts.

A crawl of old favourites brought us, of course, to Toone, where Dikkenek by Lefebvre was the only unfamiliar beer on the list. This is a Belgian IPA at 6.7% ABV, clear amber with an aroma of breadcrust, leading on to a dry and tannic opening flavour. Nothing good comes after that: soap, marker pens and a raw leafy hop character. Belgian esters feature but aren't in any way complementary to the hops. I've said before that Belgian brewers aren't generally very good at making Belgian-style IPAs and this is a very clear illustration of what tends to go wrong.

Carlsberg doesn't have much of a presence in Belgium, but they do have an abbey brand, St Hubertus, and I tried the Tripel Ambrée. This is 7.2% ABV, so a bit light for a tripel, and a warm red colour with a very slight haze. As might be expected it's very malt-driven, showing a little toffee but also a clean profile, minimising the fruity esters and coming across almost like a dark lager. There's a little blackcurrant but no pepper or honey as tripel usually gives. You can tell it's mass-produced but I think it's just interesting enough to be worth drinking when there's nothing better available.

Today's last beer was chosen solely for its label: Lelijke Das -- "ugly badger". It's a pale ale of 6.2% ABV and quite a sweet example, tasting of hard orange candy, spritzed up a little with fresh lemon zest and tropical pineapple, while also weighty and rounded in the Belgian way. It gets a little cloying as it warms, though also has a touch of tannin to help offset that. I wasn't sure at the outset if I was going to enjoy it, but I did.

The trip continues tomorrow. Did you know they have a taproom at Boon?

A date with density

I'm hearing that Hopfully has been doing well for itself locally since setting up in Waterford as its forever home. That's good news, both for the drinkers of the sunny south-east, and for me as a regular consumer of their canned special editions. I have four such for today's deliberations.

The first is a micro IPA, only 3.2% ABV, called Dive In. Although it's very pale, the haze and froth does at least give it an appearance of substance. The hops are a Pacific combination of Strata, Citra and Motueka, which I feared might be a bit harsh but smells deliciously soft and tropical. So goes the flavour, conjuring mango and mandarin in no small measure, plus a cheeky diesel minerality from the Motueka. Only the quick finish gives away the strength: the body is properly full, the flavours rounded and balanced. Naturally there's not much malt character, but it's a hazy IPA so that's to be expected. Overall it's a very clever trick -- successfully getting all the good features of a well-made hazy pale ale into an extremely modest package. If it's still around in the summer it could make for excellent sessioning in the sunshine.

Something similarly suited for that purpose is witbier, and Hopfully released a new one of those, called Fountain. The ABV is a smidge low at 4.9%, and it's a deeper more serious orange colour compared to the sunny yellow of mainstream ones. Orange and coriander are included, as is a bit of lemon zest too. It smells deliciously spicy, the herbs and Belgian yeast doing what they're there for. To taste, it's quite sweet, piling in the citrus to concentrated cordial levels. It's not overdone, however, and the coriander does help balance it well. The carbonation is atypically low, and while I think it still would work as a sunny-day refresher, a little more sparkle would have helped it on that front. In general it's that rare example of a microbrewed witbier which is as enjoyable as Hoegaarden.

For St Patrick's Day they released a hazy IPA called Between the Ditches, and it is very hazy, looking just like beaten egg. I feared grit but it is very clean tasting. It's maybe a little plain for a big IPA at 6.5% ABV but there's complexity discernible if you take your time with it. Mandarin juice and lemon peel are at the front of the queue, and then there's a background spicing: a little peppercorn and a little gunpowder. A weighty mouthfeel helps carry all of this through to a decently long finish, while the aroma offers an enticing preview of the fruit and spice to come. As someone who drinks a fair few beers like this, and not because I especially appreciate the style, this is a good one and has something for everyone to enjoy.

The script flips for Superhero, this one a powerhouse imperial stout with salted caramel. It's 9.5% ABV and brewed with caramel and sea salt, as you might expect. Here too there's no danger of thinness: it is properly viscous and could pass for even higher gravity than it is. This is definitely built for dessert, and to me tastes predominantly like tiramisu: you get a solid jolt of coffee with your dark and sticky boozy sugars, all down to the combination of dark malts the brewery has employed. As well as the oily bean flavour, there's a strong roasted component, a bitterness that goes some way to balancing the intense caramel sweetness, without actually interfering with the beer's headline feature. It's no one-note pony either, adding in cherry and raisin elements for bonus complexity. This one isn't one for the summer sessions but is a very good example of what it is, and on a par with the big stouts produced by the European continent's finest.

Superb work from Hopfully here, and Waterford is lucky to have them. All four of these are testaments to the importance of mouthfeel to the good-beer experience. Get that right and rest is easy.

The murky world of BrewDog

My excuse? BrewDog Cork is right opposite my employer's Cork office, and most of Cork's good beer pubs, including nearby Impala, don't open until evening. With twenty spare minutes at lunchtime it was the only practical option, and I was hoping I might find something on tap from Original 7. Alas, BrewDog's own beers were as good as it got.

So I ended up with Hazy Jane Guava, a fruited version of their flagship hazy IPA. The beer side didn't stand much of a chance against the concentrate and the result is pure breakfast juice as the opening flavour. That's not unpleasant, especially since it's set on a fun and fluffy body, but it's by no means a grown-up beer experience. It's mostly very refreshing, though has a little bit of a hot aftereffect, odd as it's only 5% ABV. This is decent overall, if somewhat gimmicky and artificial. Drink in smaller measures than a pint, and cold.

I didn't think that warranted a blog post all of its own so I picked up something related to round things out. This is Triple Hazy, I guess similar in recipe to Hazy Jane but boosted in strength to 9.5% ABV. It looks quite an innocent cloudy orange colour. It smells hot, and with a concentrated orange-cordial sweetness. Any perception that this might be an easy drinker is banished with one sniff. The burn is real on tasting -- fruit arrives first but gets immediately scorched off the tongue by the alcohol. Again, it's not an unpleasant sensation, but it's a striking one. The flavour itself is a bit basic. One might reasonably expect the booze to act as a flavour carrier for the hops but it doesn't really: the sweet orangey syrup thing is pretty much all you get. This is fine but doesn't have much going on, so it's for when you want an awesome mind-blowing powerhouse of a beer, but not one that's especially challenging.

I usually enjoy BrewDog beers more than I enjoyed either of these. That's what I get for going hazy, I suppose.

This must be the place

When I ran the numbers for last year, it turned out I had drank more beers from DOT than any other producer. It's possibly not surprising as they're a busy lot, utilising multiple breweries for production (mostly Hope and Third Barrel these days) and having a cosy arrangement with Teeling Whiskey for the supply of interesting barrels. Company headquarters is not far from my house and I paid a visit last month in the company of some other Beoir members. Shane gave us a look inside the maturation and blending operations, as well as a few generous samples and previews of coming attractions to complement the year-to-date DOT stock already in my fridge.

That included their new Non-Alcoholic Fruit Ale, 0.3% ABV and a polished-copper pink colour. It really lays on the fruit, and I was picking up notes of Fanta orange, raspberry jam and tart juicy redcurrants at different points on the way through. It has a softly effervescent texture and an edge of soda-water dryness to balance the fruit. My usual point of assessment for beers of this strength are whether they taste convincingly like beer. This one sort-of does, though the heavy fruit presence makes it taste like a beer which doesn't taste much like beer. A win on a technicality. Anyway, this is an interesting addition to the range of non-alcoholic beers now available, and one that is genuinely enjoyable to drink.

It has a sibling too: Non-Alcoholic IPA. This is a hazy one, looking a little wan and watery in the glass. "Fruity aromatics" are promised, and it does indeed have more than a hint of the tropics about the nose. It goes a bit more northern on tasting, with pear the main flavour, accompanied by some gentle apple and honey. There's a sharp resinous burn on the finish which helps the whole thing be convincingly beer-like; likewise a rough grittiness that tastes very New-England to me. Indeed, this is a very rare example of a non-alcoholic beer that could pass for the real thing. It's certainly flavoursome, and while predominantly sweet, not unpleasantly worty. As long as you don't mind the slightly intrusive murk, this is well worth a go.

From virtually no alcohol to just a bit: Bad Behaviour is a micro IPA of 3.2% ABV. No compromise is apparent. Ordinarily I would be expecting a thin body and a harshness in the hopping but here it's full and rounded and proper, while the flavour is a multilayered mix of tropical pineapple and mango on a sweet vanilla base, spiced with clove and nutmeg A sprinkling of earthy, murky grit finishes it. I like what it does. Except for that slightly rough closing move, it's a clean and bright-tasting modern IPA. That the ABV is in its boots is to the good.

That arrived at the same time as Sour Smash, a mixed fermentation beer with raspberry and cherry. This is 4.4% ABV and properly red, like the Belgian summer-fruit beer of your choice. The base is very, well, basic: a dry and crisp wheat-cracker effort with minimal sourness, more like what passes for Berliner weisse in the craft world. On top of that is a thick and rich fruit-gum flavour, presenting the two advertised berries in abundance. It's simple summery fun, not at all a complex multi-strain Brussels-style job. It just misses the mark on being palate-cleansing because of the plentiful residual sugar. Perhaps something more voracious in the fermentation mix would improve it. 

Simply Simcoe proclaims the brewer, in an experiment with Cryopop hops: a lightly hazy IPA of 6% ABV. It smells very dank and weedy, but fresh with it, promising lots of tropical juice into the bargain. Orange-fleshed varieties come to mind on tasting: cantaloupe, guava and papaya. Although, quickly after the initial sweetness it turns very dry, with a chalky minerality in the finish. The soft texture that's typical of hazy IPA is absent, and in fact it's a bit thin. As a showcase for the hop, I'm sure it's doing its job; as an IPA for drinking, however, I found it quite severe. It needs bulking up with something to balance those hops.

The next IPA is a step down in strength to 5% ABV. It's called Thiol Toll so presumably uses that fancy new hop-boosting yeast. The hops in question are Nelson Sauvin and Idaho 7, so well worth boosting. It's an eggy yellow in the glass and smells quite hoppy but not very hoppy, of mango and red apple. The flavour is similarly understated, but clean, and the overall impression is of something refreshing and sessionable. There's a hint of Nelson's white grape and diesel on the finish, while the middle is a dry tannic effect, more like you'd find in English bitter than hazy IPA. Were it not for the specs I would be pleased with this, but I think I expected more of a hop boom from it. Where's the boost?

Before we go dark, a double IPA called Closing Time. This is hazy, 8.2% ABV and hopped with Centennial and Idaho 7 -- nothing there we haven't seen before. The aroma is nicely juicy, mandarins specifically, with only a faint brush of white onion to disturb it. My first impression on tasting was surprise at the light and drinkable texture and lack of heat. Even letting it warm up a little it doesn't get hot or any way boozy. I approve. The taste is still juice-driven and very low on bitterness: orange sherbet and mandarin pith. The alium hasn't gone away, however, and there's still a garlicky buzz in the finish. The cleanness saves it, however. Some may complain that it's a little bland for a powerhouse IPA; this snowflake appreciated its soft touch.

Brown not black and almost completely flat: the early signs weren't good for the Banyuls Barrel Aged Imp Stout that DOT produced for Redmond's of Ranelagh. Neither is a problem, however. The beer, a full 11.6% ABV, is still thickly textured and strongly flavoured, just as it should be. I have limited experience of Banyuls wine, preferring my dessert wine to be pale -- though I was still surprised how savoury and herbal this beer is, showing notes of rosemary, basil and wild garlic. That's not dessert at all, but I'm not really a dessert person. It's more like a vermouth-based aperitif, and the special effects are much more pronounced than the underlying beer: don't expect any coffee or toffee. It's quite delicious, though, and is a very grown-up sort of barrel-aged stout, avoiding all the clichés and heading in a direction of its own. DOT's Redmond's series have mostly been stellar and here's another which is.

Similarly flat was the eighth iteration of Joël's Barrel Aged Vietnamese Coffee Stout, produced each winter for Blackrock Cellar. This is 10.2% ABV but doesn't provide the richness which should come with that, being a little on the thin side. The coffee is front and centre, mixing sweet fondant with notes of cherry and hazelnut to begin, turning savoury and herbal late: cola and chicory. It's a bit strange how the low density also means little alcohol heat or sticky sweetness, but both of those are in the beer's favour, letting the ingredients do the talking. It's best to leave your expectations behind when opening this, and simply enjoy where it takes you.

Coming to the end of its in-can maturation time was Rum Red Dark Batch XV. As usual it's a strong red ale, and although the ABV varies, this one's 8.6% is shared by several previous iterations. Rum barrels feature in the blending, as do Teeling barrels of the regular and peated whiskey sorts. It does look a little young, quite opaque, a bit like a sample from the tank. The aroma is mildly sweet, offering glimpses of caramel and herbs, but nothing very loud. Despite the tall head it's quite smooth, full-bodied as befits the strength but not hot or heavy. The flavour is surprisingly subtle. Rolling it around I get the dark malt base of soft caramel and milk chocolate, studded with some fun summer fruits, strawberry in particular. And then gently seasoned with spices of oak, nutmeg and white pepper. I was expecting a crazy powerhouse of crystal malt and whiskey but it's much more genteel than that, one for slow sipping and patient exploration.

We finish back at the barrel store, and a sneaky taster of a beer destined primarily for export: Oak Conditioned Extra Milk Stout. Many a brewery would call this "imperial" rather than just "extra" as it's 9.2% ABV. For all that, it's not the most complex of creatures, opening with a straightforward coffee aroma and tasting sweet and smooth, as one might expect, though without any heat from the alcohol. The wood does add a little character of its own, by turns a fresh and sappy wood tang, but also an old-leather buzz in the aftertaste. On the one hand I'm not sure these are positive additions; on the other they do prevent you from drinking it too quickly. For the most part, this is a decent and unfussy beer, doing what it says in the name without going overboard.

A huge thanks to Shane for accommodating the visit, and on this showing I wouldn't be surprised if DOT is my most-drank brewer for 2023 as well. I will certainly keep buying the beers.

The single Irish

Poking around in the back of the fridge for something suitable to post about on St Patrick's Day, I noticed a few long-term residents in there, standalone beers from Irish breweries that I hadn't managed to fit into a post yet. I thought it might be appropriate to bring them together for the national festivity. Of interest (possibly to nobody else but me) is that they're all on the dark and malty end of the spectrum. It sometimes seems like new Irish beer these days is an endless parade of IPAs, but these aren't.

The nearest to an IPA, in fact, is Full Power from Lough Gill, an "extra special bitter" at 5% ABV, making it the third Irish ESB in a row to do the electrical pun thing. I initially suspected some relabelling shenanigans here because the brewery released a beer in the same style, at the same strength, as an Aldi exclusive last year, called Watt. Have they simply taken it in house? Watt's signature feature was a hard bitter astringency, and I'm not getting that here. It's a soft beer, from the cask-like gentle sparkle to the biscuit malt sweetness. The tannins and English bittering hops wait their turn and appear only in the finish. Before that it's chewy and sweet, subtly blending caramel, chocolate and berries into a highly drinkable combination. Proper bitter, then. I like. If it was a deliberate attempt to improve on Watt then it worked.

The punning continues with the next one from Wicklow Wolf, though you'll need your cúpla focal to get it. Another Nut is a pastry stout, channelling the world's favourite chocolate and hazelnut spread. It's fully black though relatively light at only 5.5% ABV. The aroma really brings the nuts: not hazelnut specifically, but also overtones of peanut and coconut, oily and both savoury and sweet. I've never known a nut-flavoured beer to smell so absolutely nutty. That's present in the flavour too, though here it's joined by the chocolate, and I think of Bounty and Snickers bars ahead of spread. It's not full pastry either, delivering a more serious hop bite at the end. They've brewed this to be fun, and it absolutely is, though there's a well-crafted balance in it as well, keeping the sweetness in check in a way pastry stout brewers rarely do. Like the above there's a lot of understated excellence on display here.

The alcohol level steps up a gear with Kinnegar's Brewers At Play 28: Barleywine. They've set this at 9.5% ABV and it's the requisite deep ochre colour. Indeed, it's requisite all the way down. I sometimes worry that "At Play" can mean doing silly things with recipes in the hope of no consequences, but this is absolutely to-style for an Americanesque barley wine and bloody lovely as a result. There's the dense cakey pudding thing, sharply bittersweet red liquorice ropes and a mix of tangy herb topnotes. The body is as viscous as this requires but all the flavours are clean and distinct; the after-effect warming, not hot. It isn't quite the hop bomb that, say, Bigfoot is, but there's plenty to keep you entertained as you sip.

Last in is Valhalla, described by Wide Street as a dark sour ale. It's certainly dark: a deep black/brown shade, and strong too at 9.7% ABV. I can't think of anything from the mainstream or larger breweries designed to be like this. The aroma isn't far from Flanders red: sour with hints of cherry and raspberry. There's a bit more of a stout character on tasting -- it's still sour but there's some chocolate as well. It has a bright and brisk sparkle, so isn't one of those dense and boozy strong sour beers, and hides the alcohol extremely well. It's a subtle and easy-going affair, well balanced and classy, going to no extremes, other than the hefty €8.50 price tag. The oak ageing does its job, though I would be interested to find out how that develops after another couple of years. We'll get some interesting things when Wide Street has a cellar full of foeders.

That's all for now. Enjoy your St Patrick's Day, and any Irish beers it sends your way.

A different hymnsheet

Like any right-thinking drinker of Belgian beer, I consider Troubadour Magma to be one of the greats, taking strong influence from powerhouse American IPA and giving it just a little bit of a classy Belgian twist. I'm not the only one who thinks so highly of it, as evidenced by the brewery's insistence on releasing brand extensions. So far, only the Brettanomyces-spiked one has been worthy of the name, in my estimation, but here's another one to try: the inevitable Magma NEIPA.

It doesn't look especially different from its parent beer, being bright orange and hazy rather than yellow and hazy. The ABV is rather lower, however, at only 6.5%. There's a very fun mix of satsuma juiciness and a peppery Belgian spice, a bit more like a saison than an IPA. I'll take it. The flavour doesn't go in any significantly different direction, though the spice here is a little muted, becoming more of a medicine-cabinet herbal effect. It's still good though. Nothing fancy, and certainly not a typical New England-style IPA on any front, but it's very much a Belgian Belgian-style IPA, and a more enjoyable example than most I've tried. Magma finally has a respectable lower-strength version.

I'm not exactly sure what the Troubadour range of beers is meant to represent. The brewery, The Musketeers, also produces plenty of non-Troubadour beers and I've never been able to spot a pattern or connection between either range. Anyway, from fiercely modern hazy IPA, the second Troubadour beer today is a resolutely traditional Imperial Stout.

I don't use the description lightly. There's no gimmickry or tricks here: it's 9.5% ABV and tastes, in a very straightforward way, of strong coffee, high-cocoa chocolate and dark toast. Sweetness is in short supply, though so is hop bittering. I'm partial to both in imperial stout yet I don't miss either here. This is streamlined; slick, smooth and extremely classy. There's a tiny estery twang in the finish, but in general it's a lot cleaner than the Belgians tend to make their stouts, and better for that.

There have been problems with Troubadour beers in bottles before, something I only remembered as I was bringing these home. Whatever the root cause then, it seems to have been fixed now. Both of these were top notch.

From Sweden with bugs

My erstwhile Swedish drinking buddy Mats arrived over in Dublin several months ago with a handful of cans he thought I ought to try. There was a general wild-ish theme about them, which is fair enough. Let's go!

We start on a no-frills gose created for, and called, Great Swedish Beer Festival 2022. It's a three-way collaboration between Brekeriet and two other breweries whose names I had no compunction about copying and pasting: Snausarve Gårdsbryggeri and Svartbergets Fjällbryggeri. Nobody brought any silly ideas to the table as this is very straight up and all the better for that. It's 4.4% ABV and a slightly hazy yellow. The hopping is perhaps higher than the norm as I detected a new-world lemon sherbet effect on top of the faint sour tang and a herbal bitterness. No fireworks, but a very refreshing glassful. Made for a beer festival and perfect as a mid-session palate-cleanser.

Brekeriet remains in charge for the next two. Tristron is made with blackcurrants and looks like Ribena in the glass: purple and pretty much completely flat and headless. The aroma gives a major impression of diluted cordial too: forest fruit but on a thin and watery base. I hoped for better on tasting, even though it's only 4.8% ABV. The series is called "The Sour Patch" and it definitely has a ring of sour candy about it, being puckeringly tart in an unsubtle way, then trying to balance it with equally unsubtle sugar. There is a certain depth and complexity which comes from it being mixed-fermentation rather than soured in the kettle -- a certain farmyard funk and some floral high notes to add a modicum of seriousness. I'd prefer it to be more serious, however. I think a gravity boost might have helped round it out. As is, it's a basic decent blackcurrant sour beer.

The companion piece is called Lusse Lelle, and the added ingredient here is saffron: not something I've encountered in beer before. The gravity does get a boost here and the ABV is 6.5%. It's a lurid amber colour and properly carbonated, the short-lived headed tinted by the saffron. It smells rather harsh and medicinal, with eucalyptus meeting antiseptic phenols. The flavour leads on a peachiness which I'm guessing is the Brettanomyces, dropping its funky aspect this time, and then there's the savoury addition of the saffron, feeling quite tacked on to the rest. The lingering aftertaste, wherever it comes from, is the Listerine phenols and isn't pleasant. I honestly couldn't say if something's gone wrong here or if it's part of the complexity. The mouthfeel is once again thin. I found it hard to enjoy, beyond the initial juicy lusciousness. I think it's safe to say the saffron adds nothing positive.

The final one isn't sour and comes from Stigbergets: Pacific Northwest Coast, a name which sets a certain stylistic expectation which it immediately confounds by being a densely opaque eggy yellow. There's a good old blast of raw garlic from the aroma, something I haven't got from a hazy IPA for a while. How delightfully retro. That's not so pronounced on tasting, thankfully. Here it's juice and pith in a 50/50 mix of lemon and orange. A slightly dry and crisp note in the finish is a little out of character but better than cloying vanilla. That makes it an easy drinker, which is a bit dangerous at 7.2% ABV -- there's no significant body nor heat to signal the strength. Overall it's fine: an inoffensive can of haze which will be of interest most to those already predisposed.

Not to look four gift horses in their mouths, but this was a bit of a disappointing set, especially the Sour Patch jobs. Keep making the gose, though, Brekeriet: you've got the hang of that.