What goes around comes around

In late 2012, about a month before the announcement that the brewery had been sold to Molson Coors, Franciscan Well released an extra stout aged in Jameson barrels. It was packaged in a one litre fliptop bottle, cost €12 and, according to my review, tasted great: lots of treacle, a solid dosing of hops, and a subtle hint of Irish whiskey. Time has not been kind to it, and the remaining bottle I opened recently had a definite air of faded grandeur about it.

Time hasn't been kind to Franciscan Well, either. Molson Coors, to the surprise of nobody in particular, tanked this fondly considered Cork brand, releasing a string of poor mass-market beers and a disastrous macro lager that was everywhere, doubtless at great expense, for a brief while, then seemingly retired to be replaced by stablemate Madrí. Then last year it looked like there was a bit of good news from the whole affair. The brewery at the Franciscan Well pub had stayed in the ownership of founder Shane Long, who together with former Franciscan Well brewer Páidí Scully, had embarked on a new independent brewing enterprise. Since, by Shane's count, Franciscan Well had been Ireland's 7th independent brewery when founded in 1998, the new operation is called Original 7. Until now, all the beers had been draught only and confined to Cork, so I had never tried any. And then, with bemusement, I was gifted their first bottled beer a couple of weeks ago, by their PR firm. It's an Extra Stout Aged in Jameson Casks in a one litre fliptop.

You can perhaps tell that it's their first bottled beer as it's not legally compliant, missing the ABV on the packaging. One press release told me it's 5.4% ABV, and another that its "close to 8% ABV". The Original 7 webshop has it at 9.3% ABV. It's probably one or other of those. Replete with a handsome cardboard tube, the RRP is €29. It's not 2012 any more.

Once poured, it gets full marks for the visuals. It's properly black and the head forms slowly and surely, resulting in a beige pillow of foam with an attractive dome transcending the glass rim. There's not much of an aroma, just like with the 2012 edition, but the flavour is beautiful. A subtle dark chocolate bitterness leads into a tangy herbal pinch of fresh hops. While that's going on, a sweet honeycomb element gradually unfolds on the palate as the whiskey arrives, all flavour but none of the heat. It's fantastically smooth, and very easy drinking for 5.4% / 8% / 9.3% ABV.

And maybe that's the downside. In this day and age, big stouts are really big. This does a great job of recreating the 2012 one, which was revolutionary for a country which didn't even have any double IPA yet. Since then, the nordics in particular have shown us worlds of strong stout flavour, and eye-watering prices, with which this doesn't compare favourably. I'm not a fan of Jameson whiskey, but a bottle of it for around the same price is still a better value proposition.

I can't argue with the liquid, however. It's undeniably a very good stout. And now I can safely add the proviso that if you have a bottle, drink it fresh. It won't improve over the next eleven years. None of us will.

Leaps and boundaries

As chairman of Beoir, I get first call on where the AGM should be. This year, the place that had been niggling my need-to-visit sense, was Belfast. It has developed its brewery-based beer scene quite significantly in recent years, and I wanted a look at that.

The day began at the Boundary Taproom on the Newtownards Road. It's a taproom very much in the taproom style: a cleared-out industrial space, minimally decorated and furnished with folding tables and benches. Boundary is noteworthy for the sheer number of different beers it produces, and there were about twenty on the draught menu, with a couple of guests.

I picked the table beer to start, Love Is Here. I haven't had one like this in quite a while: pale and opaque with an almost powdery savoury dryness, very like the classic "London murky" of the last decade. There's a strongly sweet vanilla element too, perhaps showing the influence of the New England IPA era, and a little candied lemon for balance. On the plus side it's only 2.6% ABV yet has a nicely full and satisfying texture. The down side, for me anyway, was the taste: at once both harshly dreggy and overly sweet. I shouldn't even be considering whether a beer of this sort is cloying, but there I was. Is this sort of thing even fashionable any more? I hope not.

I could have moved on to a variety of hoppy delights but chose a saison as my second and final here. No One Knows is 5.7% ABV and doesn't look significantly different to the previous one: yellow and murky again. I like my saisons crisp and peppery; this one is loaded with banana esters, making it rather sickly, like a lacklustre weissbier. There's a tiny hint of pale toast in the finish, but it's not properly dry and not at all what I'm after in saison.

Maybe I chose unwisely, but I hoped for better from both of these. It may be that the brewery needs to put more effort into honing styles that aren't IPA.

Not far down the street is the bar of Bullhouse brewery, called Bullhouse East. The compact one-room affair was already buzzing by the time we arrived after 2pm.

Of course I should have been focusing on the brewery's own wares, but I couldn't pass up a beer I have been unsuccessfully hunting for several months: Football Special by Trouble Brewing. I know a bit of the background to this one. Football Special is the name of a soft drink, produced for generations now, by McDaid's in Co. Donegal: a sort of Irish Irn Bru. In the late '00s, McDaid's had planned to expand into brewing, and they attended a course in England, alongside the brewers who went on to found Trouble. Perhaps the connection dates back to then.

Anyway, the beer is described simply as "sour" and is 4% ABV. I guess the clean base is the reason it really does taste a lot like Football Special: an amalgam of assorted fruit flavours, thrown together into a brown cocktail which doesn't taste like any of its ingredients came from plants. A strong caramel sweetness dominates, and then the fruit candy joins it, before an abrupt finish. I would say you need to have been raised on Football Special to enjoy this. I was, and I still found it a bit cloying. Still, it delivers accurately on the promise of the novelty and I can't say I wasn't warned.

I definitely needed a Bullhouse beer next, and also needed a stout, so satisfied both requirements with the export stout El Capitan. 7.5% ABV is an orthodox strength for one of these, and the mouthfeel is spot-on too: all the creamy richness you could ask for. The flavour is chocolate forward, but doesn't skimp on the roast, building both sides into caramel and tar, respectively, with a hint of vegetal hop. Yum. A warm and smooth finish takes us out. This shows the same effortless expert quality as O'Hara's Leann Folláin but with some extra punch. I approve.

We had an appointment next at Out of Office. This is a fun little set-up: on the ground floor is the Ulster Sports Club, a very retro 1970s bar, all wood-panels and green leather. There's no longer a pall of cigarette smoke and the rattle of the racing papers, but there may as well be. Two floors up there's the compact Out of Office brewery and an adjacent mini taproom, decked out clinically in white tiling as a marked contrast to downstairs. Brewer Katie introduced us to the set-up, which was followed by tasters at the bar.

First out there was a sour beer with cherry and rose petal called Kelly From Marketing. It's quite a simple one of these: 4% ABV and with the emphasis on the tartness, rather than the fruit or flower. If anything, I got a hint of raspberry in the finish, but otherwise it's clean and fizzy with plenty of tang, and I have no problem with that.

A hazy IPA followed, called NSFW. This one meets the basic requirements but I wasn't really a fan. There's loads of vanilla and only a hint of lemon curd to represent the hops at all. I liked the soft and pillowy effervescence, but it's just too sweet to be good. A slight plastic tang on the finish confirmed my low opinion. This style was designed to show off hop freshness, and that was thoroughly concealed in this example.

It's a very dark brown ale to finish: the stout-like Indie Füdge. That's not a heavy metal umlaut; this was created in collaboration with the posh east-Ulster grocery chain Indie Füde. It's as dense as it looks, and heavy on the caramel, with a lacing of espresso and a touch of roast. There's a claim it's in the American style, which would suggest a stronger hop character than it has, but it's not lacking complexity and does a good job of being a hefty brown ale of 6% ABV.

A palate cleanser was called for after that, and I went for the house lager Lesser Spotted. There's a certain gimmick here in that it's served from the tank, but it's put to good use because this comes across as extremely Czech-style, softly textured with a candyfloss malt sweetness, although floral rather than grassy in the hop department, with violet and honeysuckle on offer. Its position at the top of the menu board suggests it's occupying that lager slot for unadventurous drinkers. They've never had it so good.

We just had time to hit one more brewery before home time, and that was at The Deer's Head, where Bell's Brewery's smart copper-clad kit sits behind glass, displaying it to a pub that's just as smart: traditional yet modern and tidy. How very Belfast.

Not knowing how many I'd be here for, I got the stout into me first. Black Bull looked like it didn't stray too far from the basics, being 4.8% ABV and the requisite shade of black. Happily, the brewery has eschewed flavour-killing nitrogen and carbonated it instead. There's only a token dry roasted element, and instead it goes for an almost sticky, treacle-like dark malt quality. Behind this is a medicine cabinet floral effect, all lavender and rosewater, like Granny's powder. The density and complexity put me in mind of some of The Kernel's best work in this genre, though they tend to do higher strength ones. For a house stout in a brewpub, this is stellar.

I needed to try more, and conscious of the clock, got two halves for the old chug-and-scribble. First, I couldn't resist the pumpkin beer, Plough. It seemed quite incongruous to find a novelty beer under such an elegant brand. It's 5.6% ABV, amber coloured and quite clear. There's a decent but unexciting red ale caramel and toffee first, and then a perfunctory spicing with cinnamon and/or nutmeg. It's fine, offering the accessible pumpkin spice thing without going overboard. I'm sure it got the crowds in during October.

Doubtless there's a fun story behind the name of Monkey Shaving the Goat, the session IPA, but you'll have to look it up yourself. All I can tell you is that it's 4.3% ABV, soft and light-bodied, with zesty lemon notes of sherbet and meringue pie filling, adding a crisp biscuit finish. It's clean, well-balanced and unchallenging, which I guess is the whole point of session IPA. I would have liked a little more hop punch, however.

Regardless, time was up and there was a train to catch. Once on board I opened a can gifted to me by Mr Thomas Carroll, who doesn't like Baltic porters. Weirdo. This is from Basqueland and is called The Adventures of Mr Malty. It's a proper 7.2% ABV but quite a sweet example of the style, with loads of fudge and an estery fruit finish. Herbal bitterness and lager cleanness, both of which I would deem necessary hallmarks of the style, do not feature. Ignore the Baltic side and you still have a fairly decent strong porter, however. And at that stage in proceedings I wasn't going to be fussy.

Belfast, then, exceeded my expectations. All four destinations are worth your while, though might be best spread over more than one afternoon. Our route of starting at the taprooms and moving to a more comfortable pub afterwards is very much advised, however.

Exit by the Abbey

Finishing up this week of posts from east Flanders with a bit of history. I, with my fellow Brussels Beer Challenge judges, found myself at Merksplas-Kolonie on a dreary Monday afternoon. Founded in the early 19th century, this was a sort-of workhouse, residential and employment facility for the destitute. Under Belgian law at this time, and indeed up until the early 1990s when the EU put a stop to it, it was possible for vagrants, the homeless, and anyone without a "proper" place in society to be committed to rural colonies like this and put to work. Following its decommissioning (although there is still a working detention facility on-site) this one has been turned into a visitors' centre, restaurant and event venue, with a hotel in development in the stables.

And of course there's a house beer brand: Vagebond. The core beer is a tripel called Vageblond but we didn't get to try the base one, starting instead on Vageblond Jenever, a version that's been aged in a barrel previously used for the local gin. Maybe it's for the best that we didn't taste the ordinary tripel, as it seems from this that it's very plain, lacking the spice and honey topnotes of good examples. With the barrel, however, you do get a solid dose of boozy herbs, though it's clean tasting as well, and not at all gimmicky.

A somewhat less ambitious twist comes with Vageblond Tripel Primeur. Like the original, this is 8% ABV, the alcohol unaffected by the addition of extra Target hops. I wouldn't have put that down as an especially fruity variety, but there's a huge amount of fruit on display here, all peaches and lychee, set on a smooth and creamy body. It's very dessertish -- perhaps a little too sweet to drink easily, but very pleasant to sip with cheese, I imagine.

And there's a quadrupel as well, the beast that is Vagebruin, at 10.5% ABV. It's a lovely mahogany colour, the flavour starting on a dry cereal grain with more than a hint of roast. I didn't get much by way of fruity Belgian esters, so no plum or raisin, only a mild dark-chocolate bitterness. Though the strength is very apparent from its density and a certain amount of boozy heat, the flavour otherwise doesn't show much complexity. Fine but plain is the verdict. One would expect more from a quadrupel.

Earlier that day, the lunchtime beer had been Affligem's Postel Dubbel. It's a very retro-looking label, but not one I recall seeing before. It's 7% ABV and here we have the features which were sorely missed in the quadrupel. There's chocolate and toasted grains as well, but also lots of delicious dark fruit: black cherry, prune and raisin, finishing on an exotic tang of tamarind. It's not wildly different from other Belgian breweries' quality dubbels, but does show that it's still possible to impress with one of these.

The other grand institution we visited was Corsendonk Abbey. Corsendonk is now a large hospitality company with several hotels in the area, including this one. Despite it also being a ubiquitous beer brand, there's no history of brewing on the site, and the beer all comes from faraway Wallonia.

Corsendonk Blond is a perfectly palatable Belgian blonde ale, almost as easy to drink as a lager, especially when cold on draught. But there's a lovely lacing of honey to add body and give the flavour at least some modicum of character. While far from exciting, it's clean and accessible, while also unmistakably Belgian.

The brewery had featured at the opening reception, where they were pouring another blonde ale, called Tempelier. At 7.5% ABV, it's stronger than most of these are, heading for the weight of a tripel. And you can really taste the difference here, with a heat you don't get from 6% ABV blondes, or even squeaky-clean Duvel. The flavour is largely bready -- wholesome, but a bit boring -- with some added sweet relish or marmalade shred. It's unexciting but perfectly acceptable for the specs.

There's also Corsendonk Blanche, their witbier. The trick with reviewing these is to find the point of difference with the style's archetypes, and then decide if they're an improvement or not. This is a definite not as the recipe's peculiarity appears to be ramping up the coriander to beyond acceptable levels. The result is intensely herbal, like a medicine cabinet, with a background soapy unpleasantness. It's the sort of thing one's palate probably gets used to when drinking more than a sample, but I didn't deem it worth the effort.

Back at Corsendonk Abbey, they were serving lunch. With that came a 75cl bottle of what appears to be a new limited series. Grand Hops: Mistral d'Alsace was the name, and presumably Mistral is the single hop. It's an IPA and is 6.9% ABV. For all that, it's light-bodied and a little unBelgian. The flavour is remarkably complex for a single-hopper, loading in summer flowers to begin, then a punchy lemon zest before finishing on raspberry and cherry. It's lots of fun and very interesting to explore. It's always good to see a venerable old brewery trying something like this, and even better when it results in something delicious.

Today's top Belgian travel tip is that if you have a few hours before you need to be at the airport, try Mechelen. It's a typically picturesque Flemish city and only a short hop to the airport by train. I had an hour spare which was just enough to get to the main square, drink a beer and come back for the train.

I drank it in a poky pub hard by the cathedral called De Floeren Aap: Deep Terra double IPA, a surprise appearance from New York's Drowned Lands brewery, in a venue with an otherwise unremarkable beer offer. It's completely opaque, 8.2% ABV, and has a pungent, bitter, garlic aroma. I expected savoury soup but it does an abrupt and welcome about-face on tasting, showing lots of smooth orange juice and a bite of peach skin. It's heavy, but still has plenty of sparkle, so while it feels as strong as it is, it remains drinkable, if a tiny bit hot.

Our quest ends here. A huge thanks to the Brussels Beer Challenge team for inviting me over and for the fascinating social programme. Let's do it again some time.

Play your cards right

With the judging done after day one of the 2023 Brussels Beer Challenge, a visit to a local brewery was scheduled. I've had a handful of beers from Turnhout's Het Nest in the past and, to be brutally honest (I know no other way), they haven't been great. But it's been a few years and since then they've upgraded in a big way. Like in Ireland, there's whisky money occasionally available to breweries in Belgium, and Het Nest has taken full advantage of that to develop its production facility.

The welcome beer was Troef!, a pilsner. I remarked on Monday that Palm's Estaminet isn't very typical of the recently-codified Belgian pils style. This one, at a similar ABV of 5.5%, most definitely is. It's very dry, with what I can only describe as a hard water bitterness, creating a tang that has nothing to do with hops or fermentation. There's a different sort of dryness from the malt -- a breadcrust flavour -- and a sort of vegetal sweetcorn-skin taste. Bleuch. Perhaps all the shiny new equipment hasn't lifted the Het Nest curse after all.

I'm not sure if the hosts meant to open the giftshop bar to freeloading judges, but that's what happened. It was like that when I found it. A bottle of Dead Man's Hand imperial stout was going round, whisky barrel-aged, presumably courtesy of the sister distillery. It has the strongly punchy hop bitterness that I always appreciate in these, and then an equally powerful raw spirit heat. That's pretty much it. Subtlety doesn't feature, and it's quite different from the smoothly integrated versions of these you get from the Dutch and nordic specialists. The texture is a plus point, it being creamy and soft, though that doesn't make it any easier to drink. I quite enjoyed its uncompromising roughness, but it's not for anyone used to the more accessible barrel-aged imperial stouts.

Next out of the fridge was SchuppenBoer Winter. This is their tripel given rum barrel-ageing. I've had the whisky one before, and wasn't impressed, and rum is consistently my least favourite barrel for ageing anything except rum. Here we go then. And it is beautiful. It's smooth and mature, showing its double-digit ABV, yet still very drinkable. There's no rum element, which is great, and instead there's a softly buttery white wine effect. Word among the highly-qualified freeloaders in the room was that this was Het Nest's best beer. It was certainly the one I enjoyed most. So far...

For some reason the brewery also makes a snakebite called Snake Bite, a bottle of which I purchased out of combined guilt and morbid curiosity. Back at my hotel room I found out what my €2 got me. It's 7.9% ABV, based on straight SchuppenBoer, watered down with cider. It's a calmy hazy orange colour, and smells of sweet pulpy apples. There's lots of tripel character in the foretaste: heavy honey and sugar, with a solid spicing. The apples are a seasoning on top of this, drying it out a little and adding a different sort of booze. At heart it's still a tripel: unbowed, unbroken. I'm not sure the cider adds anything positive. The sharpness is quite clashing and the whole thing a bit cloying. Keep your tripel and cider apart for best results. And maybe age at least one of them in a rum cask.

Despite the excellent hospitality, Het Nest remains some way down my list of favourite breweries.

From there, with barely time to take a breath, it was off to the Turnhoutse Bierfesten, a boutique little beer festival in a factory-turned-arts-centre, spread across multiple, quite crowded, rooms. Lambiek Fabriek was here, a brewery I have tried very hard to like but never really managed it, finding their beers rather rough and unfinished compared to their lambic-producing peers. Here was a chance to get even more familiar with what they do, and maybe change my mind.

Blue-Belle was where I started, a lambic which I took to be blueberry-infused, but is actually made with Muscat grapes. Whatever the fruit, there isn't much of it, nor anything else really. There's a basic sourness and a strange bready malt to begin, leading on to a middling tartness. Its most grievous sin is being 8% ABV and having so little to show for it. This doesn't have the depth to even be rough. And yet I persisted.

Next was Colon-Elle, aged in single malt barrels. It seems to have taken lambic centuries to make use of whisky barrels, and now suddenly there's loads of it. Like the bourbon one I drank back in September, this doesn't bring any whisky character into the picture. It does have its good points, however. There's a subtle, but definitely present, saltpetre spicing, and some unexpected berry notes -- raspberry and cherry -- despite it not being fruited. It's decent, but still not very exciting. I'm glad I was only sampling and not paying top dollar for a bottle.

The games continued with Caram-Elle, and the gimmick here is its use of dark malt. It's not actually very dark, its amber shade not out of the ordinary for this type of beer. The ABV has been ramped up to an excessive 9% for some reason. It's lightly smoky and there's a good spice, but it finishes very plainly after the initial promise. It's kind of a level-one of lambic complexity, and I would recommend it to beginners were it not for the antisocial strength.

One last roll of the dice before I go and annoy some other unfortunate brewer. Strawberry is as the name suggests, and bears it out with a massive sweet strawberry aroma. The flavour is heaping spoonfuls of jam on a simple sourness but with lots of Bretty funk, giving it a strange but not unpleasant blue cheese kick. Full marks for creativity here, and a beer that delivers what it says it will.

As with Het Nest, I didn't have my previous opinion of the brewery turned around by getting up close and personal with this one, though they seem like lovely chaps. I'll be back to check in again in due course. Now: what else is on offer around here?

Feeling the need for hops after all the lambic, my next was a triple IPA called Chapter 050, from Dutch brewery Folkingebrew. I liked how this one went about its business. While it's a full-whack 10% ABV, it's beautifully smooth; dense and obviously strong, but without being hot. That gentle touch is found in its New England flavour, vanilla up front, meeting succulent ripe peach. Maybe it's a failing for a tripel IPA to be easy drinking, but I'm in favour.

The next brewery is De Meester, who were pouring two imperial stouts. Master Coconut is, I guess, based on their Dark Master, its 12% ABV raised to 13%. You get what's promised: brimming with very real coconut aromas and flavours. The taste veers sweet, with drinking chocolate and Galaxy bars joining the flaked coconut in the taste. While this leaves almost no room for bitterness, the beer isn't unbalanced and its flavours are clean and very well integrated. I was interested to see what else they could do with this one.

That resulted in a glass of Mok Master #4, a cognac barrel-aged version. Here is the same smoothness and delicately balanced stout flavours: espresso and caramel wafer biscuits, for the most part. It's another highly enjoyable chocolate-velvet affair, but I would raise a slight objection that there was very little sign of the cognac. No heat is good, but there should at least some indicator of the spirit in the taste, otherwise what's the point?

An IPA wraps up the festival: Hoppergod, part of the Kempisch Vuur series from local brewery Pirlot. It's pale, quite clear, and 6% ABV. Lemon zest opens the flavour, softening quickly to become melon or cantaloupe, and adding a bite of Belgian-style yeast spicing. I don't know if they've deliberately tried to harness the Belgian IPA style, or if it just happened by default, but this is an excellent example of it.

Turnhout is a fun little beer festival, with plenty of interesting beers outside of the traditional Belgian genres. Perhaps not worth going out of your way for, but lovely to stumble into, and out of.

One more post before it's time to go home.

Reintroductions

In late October, on a cool and clear Saturday afternoon, I found myself in Brussels for the third time this year. Not that I'm complaining. When a man is tired of Brussels he is tired of beer. Or hasn't done his beer research properly. Lunch was in order, nothing fancy, and I picked Manhattn's, an American-style burger joint alongside the Bourse.

Most of the beer here is supplied by Palm, and I had never had their flagship lager, Estaminet. I don't know if the ill-advised craze for Belgian pils has passed now, but one might have thought this is an archetype for the style. I don't think it is, though. Crisp corn is a hallmark of the likes of Stella and Maes; this one is floral and perfumey, following on from a wholesome porridgey aroma. It's estery, not dry, and far more like a Belgian blonde ale than a pils. Broadly that's a good thing but it doesn't make this a good beer. Ticking a ubiquitous beer off the to-do list is about the only satisfaction I got from it.

From there, down the street to Moeder Lambic Fontainas, where I hadn't set foot in a while. The seating has been rearranged, the rear upper deck has been lowered to become a ground-level lounge, and there's a brewery, though I'm told it mostly only makes the house soft drinks.

An IPA to start me off: Modern Mosaic, by Italians Ritual Lab. It's pale and completely clear, and has the delicious cantaloupe aroma which is exactly what I want from something advertising Mosaic. At 6.5% ABV it's heavy and sweet, but juicy too, with bags of assorted tropical fruit. The finish is clean, leaving a residual peach nectar and no real bitterness. It might have benefited from some, but otherwise this is a very fine expression of what the Mosaic hop can do when it's on form.

I couldn't leave without giving the Catalonian grape ale a whirl: Barrica Merlot, from Ales Agullons. It's pink, which is to be expected but isn't always the case with these. The aroma gives us a pleasant mix of cherry and raspberry, in keeping with the wine it's emulating, and there's a lovely seasoning of old oak spices. It's a little sticky, which I didn't expect given that it's only 5.5% ABV. The first thing that arrived in the flavour was a hard wax bitterness, not dissimilar to what you might get from a straight geuze. The sweet and juicy red grape takes a moment to arrive, but when it does, it lingers long, making this a rewarding slow sipper at a very approachable strength. Soft vanilla oak takes us out. I loved how slowly the flavour unfolds, and this unhurried complexity puts it on a par, for me, with the really good grape ales I've tasted from Italy and Belgium.

Brussels was not the destination. I had been invited to be one of the 90-odd (some extremely odd) judges at the Brussels Beer Challenge commercial beer competition. Despite the name, it moves around Belgium from year to year, and this year was being hosted in the eastern city of Turnhout. The actual judging bit was spread out over the following three mornings, but around it was built a quite wonderful social programme. That began with the pre-contest reception in the Typistenzaal, a beautiful art deco event space which was formerly part of a vast printworks which once took up much of the town's footprint.

A group of local brewers had been invited in to offer their wares for sampling. A couple were entirely new to me, including Den Berg, who had an also entirely new Brut IPA. It's pretty much exactly what you would expect one of these to be, being a bright clear yellow and tasting mostly dry with a hint of peach. They tend to finish abruptly and sometimes have a tang of sweat or onions. This one doesn't, offering instead a long finish of white grape. I've no idea if they plan to put it into regular production, but I think they should.

Gallico was the other new one, a client brewer branded on a classical theme. It owns the Taxandria series of beers, named after the Romans' word for the area. Hoppy Hunter is a dry-hopped lager, one with a nice shot of dankness to begin, but then an unwelcome plastic twang from its Sabro hops. Unlike many hop-forward modern lagers, they've gone big on the bitterness, to the point where it has more in common with a north German pilsner than an American pale ale. There's still a little bit of stone fruit hanging around, though it doesn't dovetail well with the bittering, or the plastic. Bit of a curate's egg, this one.

Next in sequence should have been Taxandria Copper Ale but I didn't get round to trying it on the night. Luckily, the brewers were responsive to my cheeky request for a take-home bottle. It is indeed a copper colour, though "amber" is the more usual beer term for it. Lots of head forms on pouring, then settles back to a thin skim. The aroma is warm and fruity, in a very Belgian way, and making no secret of its 8% ABV. But while it's all apple and raisin on the nose, the flavour is drier, with breadcrust, rye crackers and marmalade shred. The heat is still there, and the body matches it, being rounded and full. It has a lot in common with the multitude of Belgian golden ales, though I miss their cleanness in this deliberately dirtied-up job. It's fine. Belgium has plenty more similar to it.

They were warning people to leave Peaty Barrel to the end. This is a 9% ABV stout, including actual bourbon whisky in the recipe and then aged in Islay barrels. As one might expect, that has left it extremely peaty: turf and iodine for days. The stout isn't lost, however, adding a soft fudge sweetness behind it all. The downside is that, for the strength and style, it's a bit thin, accentuating the severity and preventing it from being the smooth and warm sipper I wanted it to be.

From just north of Turnhout, where Belgium meets the Netherlands, then meets Belgium then meets the Netherlands again, is De Dochter van de Korenaar, a brewery which is no stranger to these pages but not as regular as it was a decade ago. I've tended to find their rustic farmhouse beers more interesting than good, but was impressed by the newer ones.

That started with Nouveau Riche, a wheat beer with rosemary. And boy is it rosemary: you can actually feel the oils on your tongue. The wheat beer base is there to give it texture, but contributes little to the flavour, which is all savoury roast-lamb goodness. I fully recognise that this isn't a beer for everyone, but it suited me.

The mad stuff begins with L'Ensemble di Montalcino, a barley wine of 13% ABV, aged in the titular Italian wine barrels. It's quite hot, but maybe that's to be expected. Sometimes the oak and age smooths such things out; not here. The flavour is dominated by chocolate -- very much the dark and classy continental variety, rather than a Dairy Milk. Added to that, but much subtler, is a mature red grape or old red wine characteristic. The palate needs a little time to adjust to the booze, and the reward is a very enjoyable late-evening sipping beer when it does.

That leaves Rien Ne Va Plus, one of the oddest beers I've ever encountered, at least as regards its production process. This one, too, begins as a straightforward strong barley wine, but it has had even-stronger grain alcohol added in, and is then left to age in barrels for six whole years. They've called it a "malt-port" and it's enough to give any Irish Revenue officer nightmares.

But by golly it's worth doing. The end result is 19% ABV and retails for about €17 the 500ml bottle. It's an almost perfect recreation of the flavours of actual port, all smooth and vinous, with a solid but not intrusive kick from the fortification. The brewer said it was an experiment and he had no idea how it would turn out. Six years is a long time to wait for that, but I bet he thinks it was worthwhile now. Magnificent stuff, and a recommendation for anyone who's into the dark, boozy, barrelled-up side of the trade.

There were two more breweries in the room, but I'll be drinking the wares of both in later posts this week. Next, we pay one of them a visit.

To travel in hope

Wrapping up this week's posts from eastern France, a few final odds, sods and waybeers.

Did you know that France's national brewing museum is at Saint Nicolas de Port, just outside Nancy? It's housed in two fabulously preserved buildings which were once the brewhouse and offices of Grands Brasseries de Saint Nicolas. Not much brewing happens here now, but there is still a beer bearing the Saint Nicolas name and possibly even based on an old recipe, that's sold in the museum. It's called Bière de Saint Nicolas, brewed by Les Brasseurs de Lorraine not far away.

No style is given but I guess it's an ambrée, being a clear copper colour with plenty of foam on top. There's a lot of ester in the flavour, giving it a strongly Belgian vibe. In contrast it has a very potent and unsubtle bitterness. So it's not bland, but I sense it's intended as an old-fashioned rough and ready paysans' drink, one that doesn't care about your refined city tastes. Not exciting, but not meant to be.

We left Nancy on a Sunday morning by train. I had stopped by Carrefour on the way, to pick up some shareable train beers. I didn't know that supermarket bière de garde even existed. The brewery, Castelain, almost doesn't seem to want to claim it, its label emphasising the brand Reflets de France Bière de Garde. Sadly I'll need to look further if I want quality bière de garde in the mass market. This turned out to be extremely bland, offering nothing you wouldn't get from a basic blonde ale. It's easy drinking for 6% ABV, but that's beside the point, even on a train.

Next was La Goudale IPA, from the generally-reliable producer of mass-market industrial farmhouse beer. I wasn't expecting much but got a fabulous bouquet of floral flavours mixed with aromatic oils, herbs and spices. It was so different and yet... familiar. A couple of mouthfuls in I realised that it tasted identical to the IPA under the Abbey de Vauclair label produced by La Goudale for Lidl. I liked that one, and was happy to see it again. It may not be for everyone but I really enjoyed the boldness of it.

The jumping-off point was Luxembourg, and our little band had a couple of hours to get a beer or two in at the Grand Duchy's finest hostelries. I had last been here in 2021, a highlight of which had been Craft Corner. I didn't know if it was still open so over the railway line we went to find out.

It's still open, and the blackboard beer menu is still hanging up by the door. But it has been wiped clean. Nothing else has changed, it's just no longer a speciality beer bar. The main draw is now the AB InBev macrolager, Diekirch. Three pints of Diekirch, then. It's not the worst of them, and even has a little hint of golden syrup Czech-style malt quality. But the off-flavours are there too -- a stale-hop mustiness and growing diacetyl notes as it warms. It's just about drinkable but another was unnecessary.

Crossing over to the old city, we found our way to The Tube, the sort-of English theme pub near the Ducal palace. It's owned by the Clausel brewery now, and features their beers heavily. I started on Clausel IPA. This is very much in the old school, beginning with a strong caramel sweetness in the foretaste. It's been a while, but I still knew to expect the sudden onslaught of pine and grapefruit, and it didn't disappoint. I'm sure I could tell this from Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in a side-by-side tasting, but it had a lot in common. And that's a good thing.

Round two brought three different bottled beers in TeKu glasses. Mine was the house beer, 5.2% ABV and starkly named The Tube. It's a hemp beer, from Clausel, of course, and is very nicely done. Hemp beers are all about the white pepper flavour and this has that. There's a slight funky fuzz, but it complements the herb well, and the whole is clean, drinkable yet very interesting.

On the left, Gezwickelten, Clausel's unfiltered lager. This is much less interesting, though broadly on style. It's quite plain and grainy for the most part, and where there's character it's an unwelcome fruity Belgian note. 5.2% ABV is high for what it is, and you don't get anything worthwhile for that. It's passable but the Germans do this kind of thing much better.

Most promising of the set is Black Munster, a 5.5% ABV dark ale. You get a good bit of flavour for that, with unctuous burnt treacle at the top. From here it becomes even bitterer while staying very clean and quite lagerish. At first I was thinking schwarzbier, but the taste builds in intensity so much that it's actually more like a Baltic porter, aniseed and all, by the end. It's beautiful either way.

To the airport, and Reuben was kind enough to buy me a Battin Fruitée at the airport's gate bar. I'm guessing this pink abomination is based on their lager. A wheat beer tends to give you a soft base over which to slather the fruit syrup; this, on the other hand, is janglingly sweet. Only a mild tannic dryness stops it from being downright oppressive. Cherry, blackberry and plum are depicted on the label but it tastes like nothing more complex than raspberry, and that in syrup form. Take it from a fan of sweet fruit beers that this one is best avoided.

Our final beer is actually one I drank on the way over. Simon x LuxAir Pils is all you need to know: the brewery, the airline it's made for, and the style. There's a series of these and this is the summer 2023 iteration. And it's far better than an aeroplane pils needs to be. It looks distressingly pale and Bud-like, and there's lots of fizz, but maybe that's just because of the low cabin pressure. But there's a decent malt weight and a wholesome seedcake flavour, plus a proper north German hop bite of spinach and green cabbage leaf. No notes. I hope the recipe is revived some future summer.

So ended the French excursion. I think there's some interesting stuff to be explored in eastern France via Luxembourg, and Metz in particular, where I had a quick train change. Banked for later.