Seems familiar

From Riga, I flew to the Netherlands, for just a brief stopover on the way home. Utrecht was chosen solely because it's so convenient to Schiphol. And it has several favourite pubs to return to.

Top of the list is DeRat, of course, which was having a quiet mid-week afternoon. Nothing on tap took my fancy so I choose Espiga Berliner Weisse from the canned specials. Although they've added peach, it's a proper mixed-fermentation version. I think that's helping double down on the fruit side, as there's lots of jammy ripe peach coming in after an initial sharpness. The long tail is a broad summery floral effect, all jasmine and elderflower perfume. There's a lot packed in for only 3.5% ABV, though it's tart enough to work as a refresher too.

The stout beside it is an unlikely collaboration between the brewery with the colourful cans and sugarful stouts, Kees, and the austere and dignified farm brewery De Dochter van de Korenaar. It's called Orange Trempée and is 7.9% ABV. The sticky fingerprints of Kees are all over it, beginning with the intense hot fudge of the aroma. The flavour is more like chocolate-coated wafer biscuits, with only a light touch on the orange. It's barely two-dimensional, and I feel that something of this strength ought to be more characterful. While it smells like indulgent fun, it's let down by a much plainer taste.

Not far away is Café Belgie, which is a generally-reliable supplier of interesting beers. I found a double black IPA called Dåble Dæte, brewed by Poesiat & Kater as a collaboration with Mikkeller. It's another strong but light-bodied beer, at 7.5% ABV. The bitterness has been dialled up, with lime and grapefruit in the ascendant, but with a little dark chocolate and espresso trailing in the background. I will grant that this is sufficiently IPA-like to pull off the conceit, but I would still like some of the gentler fruit and dark grain that the best black ones show.

I'll cover more of my new bar finds in the next post, but one place new to me, right in the town centre, was Taphuys. I will admit I didn't know the format when I went in: it's one of those self-service bars, with 148 different beers on tap. You're issued with a card at the door, which you top up with credit to spend at the taps. I've known these to come and go quite quickly wherever they appear, unsurprisingly because it's a terrible system, and particularly unsuited to high-foaming low-countries beer. I put a minimal amount on my card and ran it down with:

Moretti Sale di Mare, for one. I had seen this on restaurant menus but this was the first it was actually available. Several years ago I enjoyed a different salted Italian lager from Heineken: Messina Cristalli Di Sale. I was hoping they'd brought a bit of that to the Moretti brand. Sadly, they haven't. This is very dull fare, with an aroma and flavour of dry grain and little else. Salty zing is entirely absent. There's not even a decent malt body, although it's 5.5% ABV. At least I didn't have much of it.

The more generous pour on the right is Dark Sky Porter from Edinburgh's Bellfield brewery. There was a marked difference in the amount of flavour between the two beers, because this one goes in all kinds of wild directions, beginning on a strangely sour and vinous aroma, and then weird herbal resins in the flavour, making it taste like Fernet Stock or Jägermeister. I got some dusty stale chocolate in the finish, and more of that vinegary twang I got from the aroma. I have no idea if this is supposed to taste like it does, or if it's what happens when you unsuccessfully try to manage 148 beer taps. Either way, I didn't like it.

This wasn't going well. I had enough for a dribble of something else before leaving hurredly, and I thought Uiltje would be a safe bet, with their BeBop A ReBop rhubarb sour ale. The sweet strawberry aroma made me wary, but it ending up tasting much cleaner than expected, although not very sour, and not of rhubarb. It's more like rhubarb-and-custard candy, predominantly sweet and vaguely fruity, in an artificial way. Even though it's only 3.4% ABV, there's a sticky sugar residue left behind on the palate. It's not great, but compared to the previous two it was excellent.

Oh, my card is empty. Would I like to top it up? No, that won't be necessary, thank you. Good day.

Beer of the Month at the gorgeous Café Olivier was Gladjanus, a 5.2% ABV white IPA from De Eeuwige Jeugd. A hazy pale yellow with a fine-bubbled head, it looks like an innocent witbier, and smells like one too: bright, fresh and lemony. The flavour is only marginally more intense than you would find from a wit, and I think that's the right way to go with this style. There's none of the overdone bitterness or soapy twang that can often be white IPA's undoing. Instead, there's lots of welcome sherbet zing. Not everyone would be happy with a white IPA that comes across more like a witbier, but I am.

Local brewer Oproer brews a Helles for the German restaurant on Utrecht's quays, Kartoffel. This looks the part when poured into an appropriate mug, but the flavour profile is way off for a Helles, it being dry and quite acrid. The noble hopping is beyond pilsner level and makes it taste of raw nettles. So it's a Dutch take on a Bavarian beer that misses the key smoothness and balance. It's nice that the restaurant has commissioned a local beer option, but Helles is a style often best left to the experts.

I'm sure I must have been in Florin in Utrecht before, but I have no record of it. Like The Fiddler in The Hague, this is a former member of the English Firkin pub chain, and still retains the (adapted) signage on the outside and a lot of the original '90s chain pub interior. Unlike The Fiddler, it doesn't still have a working brewery. There is a house beer, though, courtesy of another local brewer, vandeStreek.

Florin is a pale ale of just 4.5% ABV. It's a hazy orange colour and smells quite like a Belgian IPA, with sharp zest coming before a rounder sweetness. The flavour puts the sugar first, however: the classic travel-sweets sweet orange of Belgian IPA. That tails off quickly, leaving only bland barley sugar in the finish. It's inoffensive, unchallenging fare. Pretty much what you might expect under the name of a pub which probably stopped being interesting for beers two decades ago.

VandeStreek seems to have built up a mini empire in Utrecht. We'll find out more about that next.