Some stouts

Just because it's high summer doesn't mean you can't drink stout. Here's two that came my way recently.

The first is a chocolate oatmeal stout from Lineman, called Smudge. It looks full-bodied to begin with but after a few minutes in the glass the head fades away to nothing, leaving it looking flat and thin. It smells nicely rich, however, full of smooth milk chocolate. The mouthfeel is a little on the thin side for 5.2% ABV, going for crisp chocolate wafer with some bonus charcoal roast. Still it's lovely and clean, suffering from none of the hot vapours which can sometimes plague beers like these. I expected sweeter, and am a little let down by the lack of candy or fudge. I feel bad about it though: this is a typically grown-up Lineman beer, a work of high quality and understatement, not a daft novelty. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

We go up to imperial level with Raglan Road, from Brehon. This is not to be confused with the Raglan Road red ale which the brewery badges for Lidl and Wetherspoon. I suppose there's only so much Kavanagh material available. Here, it's an 8.8% ABV imperial stout aged in whiskey barrels, provided via the Jack Ryan whiskey brand. It's fully black and there's a lasting head the colour of old ivory. This is quite a sweet and wholesome affair, tasting above all nutritious, of honey and porridge and home-baked fruitcake. There's a bit of liqueur-filled chocolates too, for something fancier. That leads to a more serious concentrated booze element in the finish, almost akin to marker-pen solvent, but which adds to the warm richness rather than interrupting anything. The advertised strength seems like a bit of a low-ball: it could pass for double figures, easily. It's excellent stuff, though. I'm not sure how commonplace it is (my bottle came from Molloy's) but it's worth keeping an eye out for.

When you're done with your sour fruities and your cold sessions, stout will still be here for you.

The red with the green

It was a surprise to find Reel Deel's Mayo Red in a local off licence. We don't really see much from the Crossmolina microbrewery over here, more's the pity. The beer has been around for ages and this was the first time it crossed my path, so even though I don't usually go to bat for reds there was no question of letting this one get away. 

Independently brewed examples which are weaker than the 3.7% ABV archetype are extremely rare, but here we have a mere 3.5%. Still, it doesn't look watery, being a dark copper shade, and slightly murky with an off-white head. The texture is light but not thin: in my hypervigilant state I was on the lookout for flaws but I would never have known it's the strength it is.

And it goes on to match the style's other attributes very well. The aroma deftly balances softly sweet caramel with dry coffee roast, plus a fruitier hint of apple. The initial hit on tasting is fizzy, but it settles and turns surprisingly creamy. To the toffee and coffee, the flavour adds a little chocolate and a tang of crunchy green veg.

I don't know if Marcus the brewer-patron is a fan of red ale, but this comes across to me as a carefully thought-out example, drawing in all the important elements and ensuring they each get a say. Myself, I won't be rushing back for a second bottle but I commend it to those who complain that Ireland lacks a sufficient range of quality red and brown beers.

Park life

It had been a whole six years since I was last at Bloom, Dublin's garden festival with a food-and-drink twist. The lovely people of Kinsale Mead (Drink the Atlantic Dry!™) were kind enough to supply me with a ticket and I went along on the Saturday morning of the June bank holiday weekend. Little seems to have changed so I wisely skipped the show gardens and headed straight for The Bloom Inn.

It was a brave move by Ballykilcavan to bring casks of their Blackwell Stout on such a sunny day, but it still tasted fantastic. I also availed of rare opportunities to drink Legacy cider and Connemara Lager on draught in Dublin. One local brewery took the opportunity to launch a raft of new and reformulated beers: Hope.

By coincidence, it was on my previous visit to Bloom in 2017 that I first tried Hope's lager, Underdog, and I don't think I've had it since. It seems that it was originally one of those beers created to fill a lager-shaped gap in the range but wasn't really a lager. Now it is. The new version uses classic pilsner hops Saaz and Mittelfrüh leading to a big grass aroma. Brewer Richie said they were going for something a bit north German in style but to me it tasted softer, with the gentle golden-syrup and fine candyfloss sweetness of a Czech světlý ležák. The body is certainly weighty for 4.8% ABV but it remains thirst quenching and very drinkable, so the redesign has been a success.

Next under the blade was Grunt, originally a saison, latterly a "spiced wheat beer" and now a witbier. Unhappy with the negative connotations of the name, they've decided to change that as well, opting for the much more positive and life-affirming Overboard. One of the few remaining timbers of this particular Ship of Theseus is the use of juniper, swapped in for the more traditional but divisive coriander. It still tastes very herbal and savoury, accentuated by a very dry base. Balance comes via the oranges in a concentrated marmalade effect. Like the Underdog, it's 4.8% ABV and well designed for summer drinking, even if it's not a cask stout.

Doubling down on the sunny vibes is the beer they produced especially for the gig: Bloom Lagerita. To create it, a lager was treated to a souring culture and given extra lime and agave syrup. The result is pale, greenish and 5% ABV. The lime is extremely dominant, tasting of sticky cordial rather than the real thing: if I got that in a Margarita I would be sending it back. What citric tang there is elides with the sour culture and there's only really a token appearance from both. Yes, it's another beer built primarily to be refreshing, but I would choose either of the other two ahead of it.

Or indeed the flagship session IPA, Hop-On. It now has a less-fun, alcohol-free sibling named Hop Off. I wasn't keen. The tell-tale wortiness is there, but there's also honey and a caramelised toffee popcorn thing which shouldn't be present in any kind of pale ale, as well as a damp, funky, sweaty, fermented silage sort of effect. It's like they've had a go at balancing the sweet and bitter sides, but the component elements wouldn't play along. I guess we must be at the stage now where there's a market segment which understands and appreciates all the varieties of non-alcoholic beer there are out there. For me, similarity to proper beer is the single important criterion and this is yet another one which doesn't manage it.

At that point I gave up Hope and headed for Kinnegar. Libby had the newest Tap Room Only special on the go: Raspberry Basil Saison. Despite every brewery and its hyperactive nephew putting out stuff like this these days, there was a genuine air of experimentation and innovation with this one. I was expecting dry and herbal but it's actually the raspberry that leads the flavour: tangy and little bit jammy, complementing a full and slightly sticky mouthfeel. It's only 4.3% ABV but was still no throat-washing quencher and demanded some time and attention. I don't think I would have identified the late-arriving savoury herb as basil, but I guess any sweet effect will have been overshadowed by the raspberry. Still it adds a character of its own, as does the very late-arriving saison spicing. There's lots to find in here but it'll make you wait.

Cheers to all the brewers who tolerated my blather for the afternoon. And if it's more Hope that you need, I'll be looking at the latest in their Limited Edition series very soon.

Donkey derby

About a year ago I had my first encounter with Black Donkey's Underworld series, beers fermented with wild yeast harvested from a cave local to the brewery. That was the red ale, Rua, and now I've got my hands on a few more wild-fermented specials.

Rua's pale companion piece is called Allta and is 4.6% ABV. It was mostly clear until I came towards the end of the bottle while pouring. Finished, it's a dark shade of orange with a substantial cloudiness. I'm guessing it's broadly a saison, though one of the gentler fruity sort if so, with lots of mango and nectarine in the aroma. The flavour is subtle, reflecting the strength, but has some very interesting features on display: I got the tropical fruit again, but also spearmint, clove and some drier white pepper. It's a light-touch sort of Brett-esque taste, enabling the beer to stay drinkable and refreshing while also highly complex. I think I would have liked it a bit bigger and bolder, but I have few complaints here.

Blackrock Cellar has exclusivity over a barrel-aged version of Rua, given time in Irish whiskey and then Italian Recioto barrels, creating Ruacioto. It's a similar shade of dark garnet, though the ABV gets a boost, from 6% to 6.8%. The wine makes a modest contribution to the aroma while the whiskey, talked down in the brewer's description, is very present in the foretaste: hot, sweet malt, seasoned with oak and honey. With DOT's Recioto beer I was very impressed by the herbal characteristics. This doesn't really have anything similar, though there is a strong savoury element, tasting dry and salty. I don't know that it's really an improvement on the original. It's a bit sweaty to begin but rounds out as it warms. While the succulent red grape and summer berry side grows in prominence, it never quite manages to take over, leaving the beer dry and sappy throughout. Overall, it's OK, but it left me wanting more from the wine element.

There's a bit of cross-lingual punning going on in our final beer. Phraseology is a rye saison flavoured with strawberries and aged in barrels for two years. The result is 6.5% ABV and a medium orange colour, not pink. It smells quite sharp, the wild yeast I'm guessing is doing its bit to ferment out all the sugar it can. Surprisingly, there's enough sugar left to carry the strawberry, creating a certain jammyness in the centre. It's a proper sour beer around the edges, however, with notes of nitre brick, soda-water minerals and resinous wood. More spicing would be nice, but I'm happy with how this blends the fruit and barrel sides to create something complex while still lots of fun. 

Black Donkey has certainly been getting its money's worth out of the yeast it happened across in Oweynagat cave. I sense there's room for much more experimentation still to come.

Cracked it

Following a smattering of collaborations, Craic Beer Community has made the leap to full-fledged beer brand, sourcing its brewing plans from the community itself. Here are the first two, both brewed in Dublin by Hope.

Shadows is an extra special bitter of 5.8% ABV. As it happened, I drank it a day after the Whiplash one I grumbled about a while ago, and while this had similarities it gave me no such cause.

It's softly carbonated and has a properly dry backbone, meaning that despite everything that happens next, and the strength, it remains thirst-quenching and very drinkable. The next is fruit, but it's calmer and better balanced than the Whiplash, without any of the hot and squashy banana. Instead it's a cosy autumnal blend of damson, blackberry and blackcurrant with a slight dusting of milk chocolate and caramel to add a balancing sweetness.

It took a bit of work to pick all of that out as it's seamlessly integrated into a single piece, just like the best English brewers of this kind of thing do it. That said, they manage to get it clear, and the visuals here are let down a little by the murk. But I didn't buy it to look at it: great job overall.

It's much harder to impress me with a red IPA. I'm sure I've written here extensively about how they don't really work for me. So we come to Fragments: 6.5% ABV, a dark and brackish browny-red.

And yes, let me count the ways it doesn't suit my palate. The aroma is harshly astringent, almost a beginner-homebrewer lesson in why not to squeeze your grains. A hard, metallic bitterness opens the flavour and immediately crashes into a raspberry or cherry sweetness which it rolls over the top of and keeps going into the finish. Once the bitterness fades, the aftertaste offers a heavy resinous hop flavour which isn't unpleasant but would work so much better in a cleaner, paler beer. So yes: I would like if red IPA were actually west coast IPA. That's just where we are now and I'm completely comfortable with it. In its favour, it's not cloyingly sweet to boot, which is a frequent problem with red IPAs, but that's small consolation.

I have no doubt that this is exactly as the recipe designer and brewer intended, and maybe I'm being a bit unfair because it's not a bad beer. But it's not for me. Perhaps it's best that the Community got it out of their system early and now we never have to deal with it again.

Next?

Bull market

Belfast's Bullhouse is a brewery on the up. After a couple of years off the shelves Down Here they made a triumphant return in the spring with a host of new beers and a tap takeover at UnderDog. Here's my account of their recent offerings.

Pie Face is badged as a west coast pale ale and mirable dictu is actually clear. At 3.8% ABV it's not especially American, spec-wise. Dank and funky resins greet the nose although there's nothing similarly greasy about the mouthfeel, which is thin. Too thin for the hops, I think, as there's a harsh metallic tang in the centre of the flavour and none of the balanced richness of proper American pale ale. Points, I guess, for being refreshing in an English bitter sort of way, but this didn't work for me.

There was a plethora of hazy options at the tap takeover. My first foray into that was Exhale, a 6.5% ABV IPA. And... nope, not for me. It's dirty and dreggy, backed by garlic and scallions. The bitterness is strong and punchy but neither clean nor refreshing. It improved a little as it warmed, smoothing out and becoming somewhat fruitier thanks to Belma's strawberry character, but not to any great extent. This was a struggle to get through a half of. Plenty of breweries turn out beers exactly like this, so they must sell, but this isn't how I want my haze.

Much as I generally enjoy sour IPAs, I was sceptical about a double version, but that's what Double Dip is, all of 8% ABV. It's a very sickly yellow colour and completely opaque. I was expecting hot 'n' gritty so was very pleasantly surprised to find it clean and tart with very little sign of the alcohol. The flavour is a blend of lemon juice and pine resin, a little basic-kettle-sour, but nice with it. I guess the question is why make it so strong? One could consider a refreshing powerhouse IPA to be a daft idea but I'm not objecting because I enjoyed drinking this one. 

For home drinking I picked up a can of their table beer, Yeast Belfast. At 2.5% ABV it's weak even for this weakest of common craft styles. It looks like your classic London murky of old: orange and dense with barely an effort at a head. The aroma is alluring, however, bringing fresh jaffa zest and a pinch of dessertish coconut. Both of those accelerate in the flavour, though the coconut much more than the zest. There's a fun creamy side to the mouthfeel, which I suspect the coconut taste may be contributing to, and then a raw hop-leaf bitterness in the finish, which is understandable in a super low-strength, heavily-hopped beer, and is nowhere near as bad as it could be. In fact, I think this is the best of today's bunch -- lots going on and pretty much all of it good. 

Another hazy IPA for good measure? G'wan then. This is Rolling Papers, at a modest 5.2% ABV. Custard yellow? Yep, that. The aroma is a kind of warm peach pie effect while the flavour leans nicely into the fruit side, a summer basket of strawberry, raspberry and sweet black cherry. It's not quite juice but it's sweet and succulent and, for the most part, clean, which is a big plus and some distance away from the dreggy earthy bitterness of this kind of beer done wrong (see above). This is no master of complexity, but perhaps that's in its favour: no dregs, no garlic is a good rule for IPA in general.

I gather from this that Bullhouse isn't especially interested in making beer for my precise tastes and I won't hold my breath for their first Schwarzbier. Still, this haze business must be nearing the end of its shelf life by now, right?

Art and craft

The reason I was in the Netherlands at the end of May was to attend the once-in-a-lifetime Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum. With that out of the way early, the rest of the museum sauntered through and the craft market outside perused, it was beer time. It wasn't the first time I've showed up at Beer Temple just as the doors opened on a Sunday afternoon.

I would likely have been here regardless, but the dark beer selection on the day was a particular draw. Round one brought a 7.2% ABV "fudge stout" from Ohio brewery DankHouse, called Little Dabbie. It goes pretty much down the line with that, offering a strong cocoa aroma and following it through with a silky texture, lactose sweetness, milk chocolate of course, and then some more interesting hints of hazelnut, raspberry and blueberry around the edges. It manages to stay subtle and balanced all the way along, resisting the temptation to go full chocolate foghorn with it. There's a worthwhile lesson here for other brewers of novelty candy beer.

To the right of it, with a more generous head, is Born To Die, a double black IPA by Third Moon of Milton, Ontario. While 10% ABV and full-on black, there's only a mild buzz of green cabbage bitterness from the aroma. The flavour is subtle too, and the alcohol heat, while not excessive, is more immediately noticeable than malt or hops. They do hold up their side eventually: grass and grapefruit with chocolate in the background. It's not at all dissimilar to the similarly-spec'd Jopen beer I mentioned in Monday's post. Maybe that's just what double black IPAs are now. We might consider ourselves lucky when we get two in one weekend but I'd still like more oomph from them. Make it worth my while.

Third Moon were back in the next round, this time with a coffee imperial stout, though a weak one at only 8.5% ABV. It's called Each Beast a God, and the aroma offers a chocolate wafer biscuit to go with your coffee, but not the actual coffee itself. It does arrive in the taste as a fresh espresso kick, though very much playing a supporting role to the basic and good chocolatey stout flavours. This is another gentle fellow, and that's perhaps more understandable here given the cut-down strength. Once again I find myself in search of more wallop than the beer delivers.

A token IPA sneaks in here: Altered State Machine, a hazy double New England job from Spyglass of New Hampshire. There's an odd mix of fun and serious, the 8.4% ABV well hidden and the flavours very clean and distinct. It's just strange that one side is all fruit chews and pink bubblegum while the other is weighty, sulphurous garlic. I tried to focus on the former but the latter ultimately wins out, unfortunately. At least I did get further confirmation of my theory that there's nothing particularly special about the way these are produced in New England: the ones from your local haze brewery are just the same.

I had enjoyed a variant of Epic's Big Bad Baptist imperial stout at a festival in Sweden a few years ago and wasn't going to pass up the chance to try another. This was the Barrel Strength edition, stronger than the basic, at 13.3% ABV. Coffee, once again, is an ingredient, though the aroma is strongly redolent of coconut. The hallmark of the two versions I've had has been the warm and smooth body and an expert balance between severe dry bitterness and warm cuddly wood-matured spirit alcohol. The flavour presents the coffee freshly, alongside more coconut and high-cocoa dark chocolate. While there's not a thing wrong with having it on draught, I got a strong impression that this really deserves to be poured from a 75cl bottle into a balloon-shaped sipping glass.

The beer on the right this time is almost the same strength -- 13% ABV -- though looks considerably paler, brown rather than black, even though it too is a stout. It's called Oatipus Complex, and is by Texan brewery Turning Point. As the colour implies, it's a rather wan affair, plain and porridgey, which at least means it gets value out of the oatmeal component but I'm sure that wasn't the point. A faint hint of chocolate cake is its one nod to good imperial stout taste, otherwise it's extremely forgettable. Them's the breaks picking random beers of any sort from anywhere.

That lot killed off the couple of hours before we could ascend to Walhalla. I had visited this teeny taproom in the northern suburbs back in 2018 and thought I'd like another look since we had the time. It's much the same, occupying half of an industrial unit (the other half holds the brewery) with tables spilling out into a scruffy backstreet. Still, it seems to command a decent-sized client base on a sunny but cool Sunday afternoon.

For the first round we went retro, which is always a nice option to have. The clear gold one on the left of the picture is Zephyros, described as a "west coast India pale lager" and a modest 5.5% ABV. It's surprisingly heavy for all that, and not at all lager-like. I guess the "west coast" bit is meant to signify a degree of malt sweetness as well as the clarity. That does provide a suitable base for piling in the hops, and it has a serious dank and weedy aroma and a flavour loaded with piney resins. On the down side, this turns it a little sweaty as it goes along, and I would have liked a cleaner sort of zing. I could see it working well as a late-session sipper, however: you definitely get a fun C-hop buzz, very welcome after a sequence of sweeter dark beers.

The slightly darker beer on the right is a 5.6% ABV Vienna lager called Brynhild. This gave me the lager vibes I was after: perfectly crisp and clean, and extremely drinkable. Not that the flavour is plain. There's a beautiful balance between brown bread and pale caramel from the malt and topnotes of asparagus and broccoli florets. Both sides are strongly represented in the overall picture, making it enjoyably characterful. Sometimes beers like this can feel like an exercise by the brewer in precision and meeting specifications. If so, this one was a success.

It was back to the stout next, because Izanami looked interesting: a 7.8% ABV export job, hopped with Sorachi Ace. I like a solid dose of bitterness in these, and it delivered in spades, piling in the roast and green vegetable notes. The Sorachi is busy as well, I'm happy to say, and the strong coconut aroma and flavour adds a fun tropical dimension to something that's otherwise very old-world traditional. Everything here was present and correct, as billed.

There was also a piña-colada-inspired sour ale, called Yaya, which I picked solely because The White Hag has done something very similar for this summer, as covered on Friday last. This is a much heavier affair, at 6.3% ABV. That's problematic because it's plainly trying to be refreshing but not managing it very well, being dense and flabby. There's lots of coconut and lime, in fairness to it, as well as late-arriving pineapple, but not much of a sour character. The marks here are all for recreating the cocktail's profile but none for making a tasty beer.

Walhalla was the destination but Oedipus is only around the corner so it would have been rude to leave the neighbourhood without stopping by. This rough-and-ready taproom has changed pleasingly little since Heineken became a major shareholder in 2019.

Here's another retro style: California common, in the form of amber-coloured Dodo. I thought it was spot on for the spec, toasty and crisp, with a decent buzz of spinach-like noble hops and some more new-worldish mango and grapefruit to give it a modern twist. Whatever about the flavour, it was the sheer down-the-hatch refreshment power that I liked most about it.

Oedipus's beer names aren't always in great taste and I've no idea why they decided to call a stout Panty. It's nothing fancy, being a solid 6%-er, packed with roasted grain notes plus hints of coffee bean and very dark chocolate. Quality stuff, and possibly even sessionable, given the chance. I would perhaps have been more impressed if beers like this weren't so readily available where I live. Oedipus deserves props for putting one out.

Just as Sunday bimbles through Amsterdam tend to begin at Beer Temple, they tend to end at its sibling, Arendsnest. We finished here with two on the terrace.

In the tall stemmed glass, Kaapse Hanz, a powerhouse Baltic porter that Kaapse created with Baxbier. It has a big and sticky body, not that of a lager. I guess you can forget about clean crispness when you reach 11.5% ABV. A big caramel and treacle flavour comes with this, but there are nuances too: meadowy violet and lavender from the aroma; rosewater and honeysuckle around the periphery of the taste. You need to like that floral aspect which some dark beers have -- it's one I associate most with The Kernel, and I like it a lot. This didn't scratch any Baltic porter itch but was still delicious.

And we wind down with a clear and golden house session IPA called Zeearend, brewed for the chain's Morebeer brand by Homeland, a brewery in the Amsterdam docklands that's on the agenda for a visit when the opportunity arises next. It's pretty good, clean and clear, with very typical lemon and grapefruit American hops while still low on bitterness and favouring refreshing zest instead. I'd be surprised if many punters come to Arendsnest for a session on the same beer, but it would be perfectly feasible with this.

I hope that the range, the quality, and the suitability to my personal beer tastes go some way to demonstrating why my Amsterdam pub crawls often show up the same handful of places. Some day I'll explore the city and its beer more thoroughly.

An oversight

Affligem is, if not quite ubiquitous in the Low Countries, at least commonplace. It's an abbey brand owned by Heineken and benefits from the distribution clout which comes with that. Finding it is not difficult, which may be why it has barely featured in this blog. Affligem Dubbel, in this post from 2007, is the sole appearance of the brand. As it happened, on my recent trip to the Netherlands, I had an opportunity to begin putting things right.

A short hop west from our base in Haarlem brought us to Zandvoort-aan-Zee, which serves as a beach resort town for Amsterdam and surrounds. On the beach itself are a string of terraced bar/restaurants, and on our Tuesday afternoon, PlaZand was open. The beer list is far from extensive but, oh, Affligem Blond: I'll give that a go.

What would one expect from The Big H, other than a straightforward interpretation of the style? It's 6.7% ABV so maybe a little on the strong side. Notes of banana and clove show that we've come a long way from the pilsners from which blonde ales like this evolved. The weissbier similarities continue with hints of celery and butane on the finish. It's unchallenging, sure, but it's not dull. I can see this being a safe bet when options are limited.

Downhill from the coast (Netherlands!), Zandvoort town centre has a string of bars and cafés, all poised and ready for peak holiday season or when the Grand Prix rolls noisily into town. For a last beer before the train back to Haarlem, we picked one, where I ordered Affligem Tripel.

Again, there was no surprise with what I got. The basics are all there, at a standard 9% ABV. You get more of that clove from the Blonde, plus more savoury and bitter herbs, and a sticky candy base. The higher-end tripels of Belgium tend to be cooler and cleaner, with maybe more of the hop and spice and less of the candy. Nevertheless, the Affligem is a viable alternative when required.

Thus ends your formal introduction to the House of Affligem. Normal meanderings in the Netherlands will resume, next.

Haarlem shuffling

I found myself in Haarlem for a few days last month. Amsterdam's neighbour to the west is a compact town but scores well in the drinking leagues with a number of interesting places in which to get a beer.

Uiltje's bar is still going, though looking decidedly more lived-in these days than when I visited it, new and pristine, in 2015. And although the brewery produces a vast array of beers, round one went to the guest taps. For me, Lisbon's Burning, a hazy IPA from Portugal's Dois Corvos. The aroma here is quite dry and savoury, which isn't a good start, but the taste takes things in an altogether better direction. Mandarin juice is the first flavour to arrive, and then instead of doubling down on the juice it offers oily rosemary and piquant peppercorns. That's fun and interesting, but unfortunately doesn't last long, tailing off quickly leaving a gritty bitter finish. The first few sips are a delight, but it turns a bit average after that.

A stout for the lady: Chocolate Bunny is an 8% ABV milk stout from Funky Fluid in Poland. It delivers on the promise of the name, with lots of strong cocoa and fudge in the aroma, while the flavour is saturated in milk chocolate, even including the mild salty tang one gets from a bar of Galaxy or Dairy Milk. Given the strength it's surprisingly light-bodied, and this helps with drinkability when the flavour is such a one-note. This is a chocolate beer for people who really really like the taste of chocolate in their beer, and who have few other demands in life.

Haarlem's other major beer landmark is the Jopenkerk, a brewpub and brand home for the local large microbrewery, Jopen. Though the menu board is all flashy digital visuals, there was no indication of what, if anything, had been brewed on site, though the kit was being tended to by a brewer so must still be doing something. Regardless, I took the opportunity to catch up on a couple of Jopen flagships.

The first was Juicy Lager. At 5.5% ABV this looked to me like it's a bit strong for what it is, and the mouthfeel is accordingly heavy. That means that the juice -- and there is juice -- is of the sticky sort, shading towards cordial. The flavour and aroma are enjoyable, though, showing lots of orangey pith and peel, finishing more savoury and resinous. As a thirsty punter, for me this did the job of being both interesting and refreshing, if not exactly as expected.

The brewery's other current core-range lager is called Craft Pilsener, this one a more orthodox 4.9% ABV. A strongly grassy aroma says "pils" while a slight misting of the yellow colour says "craft". The texture is as light and crisp as I was hoping the Juicy Lager would be, so perhaps I should have started on this one. A fun lemongrass foretaste fades quickly leaving a tang of zinc and a touch of the musty vegetal effect I often get from noble hopped beers and do not care for. My tastes aside, this does get the basics of pilsner correct, though is not a stellar example of it. I suspect it's designed to be pitched at the drinkers of mainstream Dutch lagers, and I don't particularly rate those either, so no surprise.

The tall dark fellow beside it is Meesterstuk 2019 -- an example of the Jopenkerk's fondness for vintages of its own beers: there's a sizeable bottled selection in the shop upstairs. The recipe changes each year and in 2019 it was a "Doppelsticke", not a style I've encountered before but which I'm guessing is a kind of strong Altbier. It's 10% ABV and flavoured with pine tips. It doesn't taste of pine, however, exuding instead a spicy, Christmassy, gingerbread aroma which follows directly into the flavour where your gingerbread gets a generous dusting of cinnamon and a fringe of chocolate icing. It was brewed in November for the winter season, for which it was doubtless well suited, but even sipping it on a sunny day was highly enjoyable.

The final round included Nederwit, Jopen's white IPA. This looked like a pale witbier, and has the strength of one at 5.5% ABV. The aroma of zest and coriander doesn't say IPA either but the flavour delivers, bringing fresh and juicy mandarin and nectarine followed by a more serious savoury herbal side. Cashmere and Simcoe are the parties responsible, and they work well together here. I often find there's a clash between herb and hop in white IPAs but here they do their own things in turn and very nicely.

In a change to the usual proceedings, the strong dark beer of the pair was mine. I had clocked the double black IPA on the board as soon as I sat down but was saving it for the end as it's 8.5% ABV. While I'm used to the Dutch people's effortless fluency in English, I'm not sure that Black It Up! was a great name for the beer. Echoes of Zwarte Piet linger there. I liked the tarry bitterness in the aroma here, presented with a little black pepper spice. It was unfortunately rather more ordinary to taste: dry and roasty with only a token treacle effect to thicken and sweeten it, and no proper hop wallop. I feel that something of this nature should be delivering wallop aplenty; instead this is calm, restrained and frankly a bit boring. Oh well.

Across town, and new to me, was the bar De Uiver (not to be confused with the nearby, but unrelated, restaurant of the same name), where we just had time to get a couple of beers in, between its Tuesday afternoon opening and having to leave for the airport.

Herself picked a dubbel from the well-designed rotating beer menu: Mooie Madam by Maallust. This arrived a mucky brown colour but smelled temptingly of chocolate and toffee. Thick and syrupy cereal malt hits against a leafy brassica bitterness. That's OK as it goes, but the quintessentially Belgian element is missing: no fruity fruitcake, no plums or raisins, and no spice. Even though it's only 7% ABV I got the impression that it would be a bit of a plod to drink.

I went for an imperial pastry stout, Black Hole, imported from Brussels Beer Project. This wasn't loaded with sickly sweetness but had a much more grown-up aniseed and lavender taste at the centre. There's a little bit of candy, and the mouthfeel certainly matched its 10.5% ABV. It's predominantly dry and bitter, so if I were marking it to style it would likely score low, but I would personally love to see more "pastry" stouts done like this. Lead the way, BBP!

The one for the road was another dark Belgian: Delirium Black Barrel Aged, an 11.5% ABV powerhouse from the pink elephant people. It's brown, rather than black, looking like a dubbel or quadrupel. It's beautifully smooth and uses the alcohol and barrels well to deliver a sumptuous oaky heat. Behind it I could discern walnut, coconut, dark rum and vanilla -- but not too much vanilla. On the one hand it tasted more like a rum and Coke than any familiar Belgian, but on the other it's gorgeous and classy, and on a par with the similar beers released by Brouwerij Het Anker under their Gouden Carolus range. Not what I expected from Huyghe, but I'll take it without complaint.

The town has an excellent all-purpose drinks shop in Melger's, carrying a wide range of Dutch, Belgian and German beers, as well a few colourful cans from further east in Europe. From them I picked one from Poland's Magic Road: Black Pretty, intriguingly described as a "salted caramel and cherry black pastry sour", and a modest 4.8% ABV. It's a dark purple colour, more than black, with a violet tint to the head. The texture is light and smooth, like a yoghurt drink, and it tastes like one too: sweet black cherries, pulped and treated with a sour culture. I had been looking for something thirst-quenching and this hit the target very nicely. Yes, it's rather one dimensional and very un-beer-like but in a perfectly pleasant way.

Two less craft-focused Haarlem bars to finish up. One is The Wolfhound, Irish-themed, of course, but with an intriguing locally-produced house beer called Thor's Cauldron. They describe it as a "burnt pale ale". Eh? What arrived was 6.5% ABV and a dark brown colour. The dry and roasted aroma says yes, it is indeed burnt, but there's more to it than that. A mix of red cabbage, white pepper, damp grass and rosewater puts this squarely in the black IPA bracket. It's maybe a bit less intense than the usual, which may be why they didn't call it that, but it still had more to it than the Jopen one. Anyway, it's recommended, and there's plenty of other decent beer at The Wolfhound to make it further worth your while.

I picked DeDakkas for after-dinner drinks one evening purely based on its location, perched on the roof of a multistorey car park and commanding beautiful views of the town. There's a house beer here too, Dakuil, a weissbier brewed by Uiltje. It's a light-bodied one and only 5% ABV. Otherwise it's classically constructed, balancing sweet banana and spicy clove deftly and effortlessly. As a house beer it's not meant to do anything fancy, and this definitely doesn't, leaving you to give the sunset your full attention.

From Haarlem we go further afield, next.

Two sour

It must be summer. There are new fruited sour beers from Irish breweries.

First today is the latest in The White Hag's once-annual series of mixed fermentation fruited jobs. The last one was with pineapple and here they've added coconut as well, for Púca Piña Colada. It's 3.5% ABV as usual and a pale white-gold colour. That coconut is right there in the aroma, alongside a sharp lemon pinch of sourness. This follows directly into the flavour, all dessertish and creamy. Still the bugs hold their own, and after that initial cake hit there's a properly sharp and tart element, scrubbing away any sugary excesses. Overall it's a bit silly but highly enjoyable and well suited for al fresco drinking on evenings when nothing is meant to be taken seriously. 

Rye River, meanwhile, offers Revelry Red Lemonade, a gose with added lemon, raspberry and cherry, produced in collaboration with Siren. From the name I was expecting it to be clear, and kind of brown, but it's actually a pink emulsion, looking like finger paint, or one of those ghastly sticky lactose non-sour "sours". I'm happy to say it tastes like neither, and while it lacks the kick of finger paint, it makes up for it with a beautifully clean and tangy citric sharpness, the lemon and the souring culture teaming up and making it fabulously refreshing. I couldn't taste much by way of raspberry or cherry, but in the back there's a fun spice or herb thing, like cola or ohhhhh: red lemonade. We got there eventually. This is another light one, at just 4.5% ABV, but I think it's possibly a bit too tart to be quaffable. Regardless it's a good one for sipping in the sun.

So that's your summer sorted, drinks wise.

No question

It's another new IPA from Hopfully today, collaboratively brewed with Belfast's Bullhouse and named, I assume, after Norn Iron's finest '90s rock band: Therapy.

Oats and wheat make it hazy while Nelson Sauvin and Motueka hops make it New Zealand-style. It's on the darker side of hazy, a Sunny Delight shade of orange. I wouldn't normally associate Kiwi hops with juiciness but this smells just so, like a glass of orange juice, blended with a smaller amount of something greener, like a lovely healthy smoothie.

There's less messing about in the flavour. Motueka's damp grass and raw spinach bitterness is right there, as is the soft stonefruit aspect of Nelson, giving us apricot and lychee. The harder mineral side puts in a token appearance at the end, offsetting a little of the nursery fruit taste with a more grown-up complexity. 6% ABV and the soft fluffy texture give the sweet side a boost and the whole thing is highly enjoyable.

We don't seem short of New Zealand-hopped Irish beers these days, but even still, this is one for fans of the varieties not to miss.

Don't play the hits

A welcome new development at Whiplash is the re-brewing of selected parts of their beer repertoire. Trying to keep up with everything they put out is exhausting, and their dedicating some of their energy to beers I don't feel obliged to seek out and tick is a welcome respite. Normal drinkers might get a thrill out of seeing favourites return, too, which is nice for them.

That said, I was very pleased to see Emerald Rush, specifically, make a return to the roster as I missed it first time out. This is a 6.8% ABV hazy yellow IPA hopped with Riwaka and Ekuanot. I'm coming to realisation that minerally, grassy, Kiwi hops are great for this style, offsetting the soft sweet side with harder flint and herbs. So it very much is with this one, the Riwaka spewing vapours of kerosene and lawn clippings like the underside of a jet-powered lawnmower. A proper serious bitterness follows in the flavour: hard and acidic boiled brassicas with green medicinal notes of eucalyptus and star anise. Anyone looking for juice will be sorely disappointed. I should be gleeful about the audacious iconoclasm on show here, but... there's a gritty harsh element behind the hops, something of a stereotypical flaw in these, but one that Whiplash usually avoids in theirs. There's a charm to its boldness, but one can was plenty.

It's off to Fidelty next, to see what's on tap. The Joyce theme evidenced by The Dead is continued with Nausicaa. This is a quadrupel at 10.6% ABV and bourbon barrel aged. As such, it's one of those bourbon beers, and not my first, which tastes of red wine more than American whisky, of which I wholeheartedly approve. Beyond that it's a deep brown colour and on draught has a wonderful smooth mouthfeel. The pub's high tech temperature control gave it to me several degrees above cold which really helped bring out the complexity. Because it is also a proper quadrupel, with biscuits, treacle, raisin and all that good stuff. And despite the barrel effect it doesn't taste harsh or hot, though it is perhaps a little sweet in the finish, with a spoon or two more of brown sugar than is necessary. Still, it makes for excellent, relaxing sipping fare.

"Bruges Rouges" is how Whiplash describes Alcoves. It's a red ale served on nitrogen and is 5.6% ABV, and I'm a bit flummoxed by what they mean. Bruges isn't even French-speaking. Anyway, I bought a pint: always the best way to figure out what a brewery means. There was nothing Belgian about the willibecher it was served in, looking like a posh pint of Kilkenny. That's not how it tastes, but it's not far off either. Of hops there are none, and I think the nitrogen has deadened the malt too, leaving only a vague breadcrust dryness. Searching for more to write about I could only find a strange fishy tang which wasn't offputting until I noticed it and then couldn't ignore it. As it warms there's nearly a little white pepper and stonefruit which suggests that without the flavour-killing gas mix, this might be interesting. For me, though, it's not far enough away from the Kilkenny-Caffreys axis of awful. Is it meant to taste like De Koninck? Could be, as I don't particularly like that beer either.

On to collaborations, and Left Handed Giant co-produced something that sounds very like a Whiplash solo run: an 1840s-recipe decoction-mashed porter. It's called, prosaically, Keeping Porter and is 6.1% ABV. It's obsidian-black in the glass and smells of coffee and caramel, suggesting that brown malt is a major part of the recipe. That's also the foretaste, one which is followed by softer milk chocolate and hints of flowers and summer fruit. A light dusting of ashen roast ensures that the sweetness doesn't get everything its own way. For all the perceptible complexity it's still nicely easy drinking, and doesn't quite taste the strength, though the mouthfeel is suitably full. Overall it's a tasty and unfussy sort of porter, with any gimmickry strictly confined to the production process. Perfect for when the potato crop fails. Again.

It's a bit out of character for Whiplash to brew something as prosaic as an extra special bitter but that's what Post No Bills is, a collaboration with American brewery Bonn Place. And I detect this is very much English beer seen through an American lens, it being all of 5.6% ABV, for one thing. There are some echoes of English brown bitter's black tea and caramel, and likewise the clear garnet colour, but it rapidly veers off into strong ale territory, including toffee, banana, ripe strawberry and squashy plum. While I enjoyed the near-barley-wine vibes, and the general depth of the flavour, its banana side is a bit too loud for comfort. More booze would help. It usually does.

The old palate needed a bit of a scrub after that and luckily there was a new west coast IPA on tap at the same time: Another Light. I knew I could trust Whiplash not to mess with the fundamentals here, and sure enough it arrived a clear pale copper shade, as nature intended. The two-strand aroma offers zippy zesty lemon and then a harder pine-sap resin. I got a bit of malt weight here too, turning it somewhat sweaty. Any related worries dissipated on tasting: it's magnificently clean and absolutely classic with the grapefruit and the pine. The body is strangely full and soft, which isn't a bad thing but means you don't get a sharp assertive bitterness on flavours which suggest it. It's only 6.3% ABV too, despite exuding double IPA characteristics. Regardless, it's delicious: a reminder of why American-style IPA came to such prominence in the beer world.

A last minute saison brings us out: The Climb is a collaboration with Mayo's Mescan, not an immediately obvious choice for Whiplash to work with but I will absolutely take it. It's a densely opaque yellow fellow, smelling saisonly of lavender and bergamot. It's big bodied, 7.1% ABV giving it a chewy fruit gum effect early doors, turning to white pepper and rye bread after. This is no classically dry saison and certainly isn't built for the session, but I liked having the proper saison character in a strong sippable job. Saison, but chewable, is a style I can get on board with.

I set out to write a short post about the welcome dearth of new Whiplash beers. I think both me and the brewery got a bit carried away.