Les bars et les boires

On my brief visit to Nancy last month there was a small amount of pubbing done when there was time. On night one, Reuben brought us to a fun little basement metal bar with the unlikely name of Brooklyn Boogie Café. As it happened there was a tap takeover in progress, by Beer Truck des Alpes, a self-styled mobile brewpub. I'm sure the local revenue inspector is delighted with the concept.

First out of the taken-over taps was Lac Forchu, described as a smoked ale and at a venue-appropriate 6.66% ABV. It's on the right of my poorly-lit picture and is a hazy pale yellow colour, which such things rarely are. A light peachy aroma suggests nothing more noteworthy than an average New England-style pale ale, but the flavour does introduce a pleasant and subtle smoky complexity to the fruit and vanilla. I was reminded a little of Schlenkerla's Helles. It's accessible, refreshing and not at all the ridiculous novelty it might easily have been.

On the left is Les Orgues de Valsenetre, named a after a rocky formation somewhere in the mountains south of Grenoble. It's a porter with chilli and is 5.6% ABV. The aroma is rich and roasty, savoury like Bovril and with a hint of spice to come. Like the previous beer, the base style is well represented in the flavour, loading in dark chocolate and high-end coffee, suggesting the use of my favourite celebrity malt, brown. Once again the novelty ingredient is an afterthought and doesn't disturb the overall decency of the offer. More of a chill kick would have suited me better but I can't argue with the excellent fundamentals here. Rock on, Beer Truck.

A later mini-pubcrawl brought us to an L-shaped corner café called Le Ch'timi. The place looks set-up primarily for terrace drinking but it was too damp for that. The beer of the month had been the flagship of local brewery La Délicatesse but had just run out. They replaced it with Succulente from the same operation, an ambrée of 5% ABV. And it's very typical of how the French do these, being rather plain and unexciting, though darker than most. The mouthfeel is light and lagery, unsupportive of any flavour complexity, just a tiny burst of strawberry and a hint of ginger biscuit before a quick finish. It's a small bit more interesting than a typical Irish red ale, but not much.

Across the table was Yankee Trouble, a white IPA from Lille's Brique House. These aren't normally my bag, but this is an excellent example, softly textured and showing a lovely mix of hops and herbs, grapefruit meeting coriander and without a trace of soapiness. I only had a sip but could tell this would be refreshing in quantity, if a little dangerous at 6.5% ABV.

Hinano is the national flagship beer of French Polynesia. Despite being a holiday lager it has been brewed in France for a while, but I still wasn't prepared to pass it by. It's fine. There's lots of very typical attributes of cheap commodity lager here: a plain dry foundation on which a minimal structure of flavour is built, mostly consisting of tangy and metallic hop extract. I'm sure the real thing tastes much better on a Pacific beach. On a dreary evening in eastern France it didn't serve any useful purpose, other than getting me a tick.

The other beer of this set was much better. Piggy is the area's success story, and their beer is even found here in Ireland from time to time. Reuben had their West Coast Scenario which mostly delivered what it promises: plenty of piney resin, an explosion of grapefruit spritz, and the bit that contemporary west coast revivals often omit, the crystal malt toffee. It's full and satisfying, tasting bigger and bolder than its 6% ABV.

On then to Café des Trolls, another place that was poky and crowded, with its outside area rained off for the evening. I had never heard of Brasserie Meteor, from Hochfelden, near Strasbourg, but apparently they're the big guys in this part of the world. A family-owned brewery, it claims to be France's oldest, since 1640, adopting its current name in 1925.

Meteor Pils looks like a classic, being a sunny limpid golden colour. The taste is on the bland side of clean, unfortunately, lacking the hop bite that pilsner needs to be proper, and not just a label on boring commodity lager. A wave of celery is all you get for hops, and here's that metal tang again, telling me of corners cut. Knowing now what the brewery is, it makes a lot more sense, but it confused me when I assumed it was a modern micro.

Not that they're not paying attention to today's beer trends. The tap beside the Pils had the cloudy Meteor IPA. It might look New-Englandy but to me it tastes more in the Belgian style, the apricot hop fruit complemented by a strong estery quality, with lychee and pear. It works rather well. If they dominate the taps locally, as breweries of this sort often do, it's good that they're putting out beers of interest like this.

The finisher here was the New England IPA from Brasserie La Fouillotte in Épinal. It's only 5% ABV and a little dry for the style but wearing some fun satsuma and jaffa peel zest up front. Unfortunately this is let down by a thin watery finish for which there's no excuse, even at the modest strength. It's passable, but completely forgettable too. Cascade, Simcoe, Mosaic and Citra are all allegedly in here. Just don't ask me where.

As with rats, you're never very far away from an AB InBev beer, and on a late-night visit to La Taverne des L'Irlandais (look, it was late and it hadn't quite closed yet) I got acquainted with Loburg. I believe this is made at the Leuven megabrewery, presumably only for France. I don't know what the French did to deserve it, but it's awful: absolutely packed with greasy, buttery diacetyl from aroma to finish. There's a brief respite of fizzy crispness in the foretaste but the rest is pure dreck.

Staying Belgian, there's a franchise Delirium Tremens bar in Nancy, which seems to attract the young crowd for its mix of loud music, TV sports and Belgian beer. There wasn't much of interest, but I've never had Delirium Red, the cherry beer, so gave that a go. I think it belongs more with the brewery's Floris range because it is powerfully sweet, saturated in cloying and sticky pink-tasting syrup, concentrated to tooth-jangling levels. My tolerance for such things is quite high, but even this tested my limits. It's very much not a beer for beer drinkers.

We've done breweries and we've done pubs, so I guess the beer festival is next.