Return to the wild

One month isn't too much of a delay? Swifty Simon was critical of my general tardiness in writing up beer events when we met at the second Mullingar Wild Beer Festival. If there's one thing all the brewers there understood, it's that you can't rush quality.

Nobody demonstrated that better than Land & Labour, which had a sizeable line-up of old favourites and exciting new offers. The Spon 4-Year Blend which impressed me at BXL last year was back with a new season-specific name -- Geimhreadh -- and was still tasting marvellous. Irish winter is followed by Irish summer, and Samradh is brewed with elderflower and gooseberry. It gets a superb complexity from that, the elderflower very prominent amongst the flinty sour notes, with added peach and apricot soft stonefruit. There's a very slight sweaty tang in the finish but it doesn't spoil things: the whole remains calm, integrated and very classy.

Also new for me from the Land & Labour stall was Aibreoga, a geuzealike with actual apricot. This didn't work so well for me, tasting powerfully sour, like spirit vinegar. It does taste of apricot but only as an afterthought past the initial acidic rush. I took a while over it to figure out exactly what's missing, and I think the answer is mellowness. There's none of the rounded mature oak flavour that is an essential, but often overlooked, aspect of the good sour beer experience. Maybe a few more years will fix that. I'll come back to it then.

Land & Labour played host to Wide Street when they collaborated on Many Hands, a blend of mixed-fermentation saisons from both breweries given two years of ageing. The result is magnificent: light-bodied and golden, the flavour opening on a fun and refreshing spritzy citrus. This turns funky quite quickly, summer zest giving away to cool misty orchards and strong warming tea. I liked that it has all the in-depth multi-faceted nature of serious sour beer for chin-stroking grown-ups while also being zippy and zingy and happy to drink. That can't be easy to achieve.

Wide Street had also given their Mill Pils the wild treatment with an addition of Brett to make it Brett Pils. That does seem to have thoroughly removed any proper pils-like elements: no crispness and no grass is on display here. Instead the Brett brings a combination of ripe peaches and spicy pepper in the fortaste, turning to bitter grapefruit and a hint of soggy cardboard late on. I liked it, but the expectation of calling it a pilsner wasn't met -- it has become something else and the name should reflect that.

Otterbank missed the festival last year, so it and I had a lot of catching up to do. The cask engine on the bar was serving a new version of the Cake Dealer Chocolate Brownie imperial stout. The first version had been aged in mezcal barrels while this one, still 10.5% ABV, was treated to rye whiskey. It worked much better. The mezcal brought too much of a sourness whereas this let the stout speak for itself, with a glass of whiskey to hand. The overall effect is similar to an Old Fashioned, bittersweet and spirit laden, with added elements of espresso and gooey chocolate sauce. That all sounds a bit busy, and it is, but it's an excellent sipping beer to take time over. Not that I did.

As plainer fare, Otterbank had Just the One, and I wasn't sure if the name was meant to be ironic or not because although it's a substantial 6.7% ABV it's quite thin and poured a little flat. The flavour, however, is spot on for something attempting to be lambic: all the damp and bricky nitre spices backed by citrus pith and hard bitter wax before a quick, clean and refreshing finish. It doesn't really bring the firework intensity of geuze but would pass as a good example of straight and uncomplicated lambic. That's still damn impressive. I'd love to see something like this become a readily available core beer from some Irish brewery.

There were a couple of stronger and darker offerings from the Donegal brewer, including A Wee Drop: kveik fermented, soured with Roeselare yeast, funked up with Brettanomyces and aged for two years in whiskey barrels. House! The result is 7.1% ABV and does manage to cram in elements from all of its convoluted production history, tasting a lot like an Irish coffee with a glass of blousey Spanish red wine on the side. I was rushing a bit by the time I came to this one so may not have fully fathomed what it was offering, but I liked what I found.

And stronger still was the Burgundy coloured Brothers, aged in and blended from actual Burgundy barrels. It's broadly in the Flanders red category, and raspberry notes feature big on both the flavour and aroma. In the latter that mixes with heady forest resins while in the flavour it accompanies rich and smooth notes of cherry and dark chocolate. 8.2% ABV makes this one not a beer to rush, and as I sipped I appreciated the smooth and round maturity, where the sourness is brisk but not sharp, staying mellow from end to end. If it were a Flanders red it would be one of the special edtions in the 75cl bottles. Not for the first time on the day I felt that lashing through these to get to my train wasn't really the appropriate context for the beers on offer.

That was it for the Irish beers on show but four UK breweries also brought, or sent, beers for the gig. The brewer from Glasgow's Epochal did a good job of selling The Primum Mobile stout to punters (me) as they gathered early doors. This is 8.8% ABV, loaded with Brettanomyces and apparently based on an historical recipe from a Glasgow brewery. It didn't work for me, in the way that soured stouts generally don't. The Brett is fully in control, bringing busy and cloying notes of aftershave and sweaty horses, much like Orval, although quite thin as well. There's chocolate next to that, but who wants watered-down chocolate-flavoured Orval? Not me. A small glass was OK, and let me appreciate the many things happening in the flavour, but I doubt I could handle any more of its busy antics.

There were two offerings from Cambridgeshire brewery Pastore and I got to try them side-by-side. The darker one on the left is Black Shuck, breaking my rule that beer with a colour in the name should be actually that colour. This 6%-er  was aged in sherry barrels but unfortunately doesn't taste of sherry, being very tart and mixing balsamic vinegar, sweet white wine and citrus zest. Mostly, though, it's just sour for sour's sake, lacking any deeper or more interesting character. Meh.

Sometimes, beers with complex production process do get away with a lack of complexity, and Pastore's other offer was a case in point. Cuvée di Rabarbaro is, as the name suggests, a rhubarb beer. And it is extremely rhubarb, to the point of tasting squeaky. There's a little bit of vanilla for complementary balance, but that's your lot: rhubarb is offered and rhubarb is delivered, in bulk. I liked the single-mindedness of the flavour profile and enjoyed the beer as a result.

Little Earth Project sent a strong but sippable beer in the form of White Horse Reserve (right of picture), an amber-coloured mixed fermentation saison at 7.4% ABV, given 18 months of barrel ageing. A spicy geuze-like aroma contrasts with a substantial, but welcome, hop bitterness and then a touch of coconut in the finish. Though the flavour is sharp, the texture is smooth and it makes for relaxing drinking. It feels like they've taken a very traditional geuze recipe in an interesting and different direction. I'm here for that, when it's done this well.

Finally, I was faced with a choice for my single Burning Sky beer. It was late enough at this point that I eschewed the Table Beer and went instead for Wild Rose at 6.5% ABV, another mixed fermentation saison. It's a hazy golden colour and has a wonderful balmy-summer aroma of elderflower and meadowy herbs. The flavour is rich and fruity, suggesting white grape to me, concentrated and tasting almost botrytised. It's absolutely delicious and I wasn't long getting though it despite the heft.

That brings MWBF II to a close, and not a Rennie in sight. The organisers did a great job in improving on the original, expanding the offer while maintaining the boutique atmosphere. I'm not sure how much space for further expansion there is in Smiddy's but you might get a few more tap lines, and it would be fun to have other international guests of the same calibre swapped in. One suggestion I would make, if it's feasible, is to have more/some information available on the beers: perhaps a printed guide. Regardless, all going well, I will be back for round three.