Nancy brew mysteries

It had been almost eight years since I was last in France, and from a beer perspective, it was a very different France back in 2015. One of the things I learned when spending a few days there last month was that nearly two thirds of France's 2500 or so breweries are less than five years old. And, it goes without saying, the newcomers aren't throwing yet more blonde/brune/blanche into the market; they're following what's trendy on the international scene, even if very few of them make it to export.

On arrival in the eastern city of Nancy, it was straight off to La Fabrique des GrÔ, a microbrewery in the suburb of Maxéville. I don't know if they open to the public normally, but they were kind enough to host a get-together for the European Beer Consumers Union, assembling for its autumn meeting.

They've named their flagship lager directly after the location: La Bière Maxéville. It's a middle of the road 4.2% ABV, and I think is mostly clear, though it was hard to tell from the clouded plastic beaker in which it was served. It starts out as a good clean Germanic lager, with some nice celery and rocket hop notes. With a bit of warmth on it it becomes heavier, adding honey and uncooked sweetcorn to the picture, as well as a slick body. Still, it stays drinkable throughout, and I wouldn't be unhappy if my town's name were on something like this.

Level 2 for the beginner drinker is Niasse, a blonde ale brewed for summer. It's another pale and clear one, and while it's meant to be plain and chuggable actually shows a very decent hop complexity. A candied lemon sweetness invites us in, then a harder lime bitterness smacks us around. It's simple fun; a story as old as time. I didn't mind at all that I was drinking it on a dark damp evening in a chilly warehouse.

Things get a bit more special from here. The beer I actually started on was their IPA, Bitter Juice: chasing two trends at once, there. And yet it does what it says. The texture offers a smoothie smoothness in a typical New England way, while the flavour eschews fuzz and is bright and clean in a west coast way. They've added bergamot to give it an extra citrus element, though I got plenty of mouthwatering mandarin from the hops. The whole unfancy and unfussy package is delivered at a nicely poky 7.3% ABV, very nearly at double IPA level. They could have taken this one in all kinds of different directions but, this early in my evening, I really appreciated the balance.

A bottle of Landaise was passed around at one point. This is a pale ale with added Szechuan pepper. I'm used to these looking pale and innocent before they deliver a throat-scorching, sinus-clearing kick of spice. This isn't like that, having only a mildly spicy aroma and actually not a whole lot of flavour of any kind. The hopping in particular makes it undeserving of the pale ale designation and much more like a plain blonde ale. There is, however, just enough spice to be interesting. Maybe this suits the palate of others, but when I see chilli advertised, I expect to taste a goodly amount of it. Here there's only just enough of it to hold my interest.

Finally, Monsieur Le Patron was very keen to show off his boutique barrel-ageing programme, set up in one corner of the brewery. Its first fruit, not yet released to the public at that point, was Barikagrô Moscatel 01. This started life as a saison and was then given nine months of ageing in a Muscatel wine barrel. It's no dry or peppery saison, having absorbed a huge port or sherry flavour from the barrel, and more alcohol than its 8.7% ABV might suggest. The overall picture is of a well-integrated warming sipper; a softly-textured digestif. Breweries often take a couple of goes to get barrel-ageing dialled in. These guys seem to have hit the ground running. I wish them luck and hope to see more of the similar.

Maxéville is also home to a larger operation, called Hoppy Road. It's a good example of how the French microbrewery culture is as resolutely Francophone as everything else in the country, yet brewery and beer names are often inexplicably in English. Pick a lane, guys. Gathered around the malt stacks, we had a super-quick tasting of a portion of their sizeable beer range.

That began with a draught hazy pale, created for the local jazz festival and named NJP '73. As such they haven't put a whole lot of effort into designing it, aiming for sessionable gig drinking. What came out is a 5% ABV hazy pale ale, single-hopped with Ekuanot. I could have taken it for Mosaic: it has the savoury caraway and garlic that it shows when misbehaving. The soft texture helps with the drinkability, but otherwise it's unremarkable, which was very much the point.

Next out of the crate was Flamingo, an appropriately flamboyant name for a hibiscus and lime Berliner weisse. This is only 3.2% ABV and pink coloured. As one might expect, it has been kettle soured rather than mixed fermented, but its funky aroma adds an unexpected and most welcome complexity. That doesn't last, unfortunately, and when we get to the flavour we find it much more simplistic, with hibiscus's pink cherry taste most prominent, and a pinch of citrus sourness being the lime's contribution. This is simple and decent, offering something a bit fun at a very low strength. You could pint it, were it available on draught.

Moving up the scale, next it's a wheat ale of 5.6% ABV called Hopper. The best part of this is the label, reimagining Hopper's Nightowls as a Hoppy Road brewpub. There's a smidge of wheat softness about the texture, but mostly it's a dank and resinous hop walloper, indistinguishable from many other American pale ales. The lemon zest of the aroma softens it somewhat, but otherwise it's no more complex or interesting than the jazz ale. 

Soif!, clearly also meant as a thirst-quencher, is another pale ale, though at 5% ABV we're getting beyond the point of simple chuggability. Chinook and Mosaic are the hops this time, and again it's the savoury side which comes out, loading the palate with sweaty white onion and not a whole lot else. For me this doesn't meet its one-job remit: my thirst wasn't quenched and I was immediately looking for something else to take the taste away. Your sensitivity to armpit-mode Mosaic may vary.

Another wheat ale clocks in at 5.4% ABV and is called White Demon. I didn't get the full details but it was a complete disaster for me: heavily bitter, plasticky, and with a weird rancid grape overtone. I should add before moving on that all these recent beers were doubtless exactly what the brewery intended them to be, with not an off-flavour to be found. It's just that their on-flavours really didn't suit me.

It wasn't all bad, thankfully. The beer called 1984 is one they seem very proud of, and I can't think of any other examples: a saison based on acidulated malt. It's 6.5% ABV and hopped with Loral. Generously, as it turned out, delivering loads of floral and citric brightness. The body is light and clean, meaning the alcohol is dangerously well concealed. The icing on the cake, however, is a punchy lime-like sourness, presumably derived from the malt. Here's another beer that would have worked much better in a sunny beer garden than a rain-soaked industrial lock-up.

Before it was time to go they brought out the house imperial stout, Mazout. This exists as all kinds of variants, but I'm glad I got to taste the archetype. It's 12% ABV with a textbook warmth and softness. The flavour does nothing fancy with the basic components of the style, piling in bitter espresso and high-cocoa chocolate, before a long and almost spirit like warm finish. There are neither bells nor whistles on offer, but it's excellent without them. Only a bit of extra hopping would propel it to the next level for me, but I have little to complain about here.

I was impressed enough by what Hoppy Road were making to stage a raid on the brewery shop, and some time later, back at the hotel, I drank a nightcap of another Hoppy Road imperial stout, this one with coconut added. Coco en Stock is 12.2% ABV. The coconut is extremely pronounced here, adding almost a chemical solvent note. Any possible harshness is offset, however, by layer upon layer of smooth and creamy milk chocolate. And while that in turn runs the risk of making it cloying, the alcohol heat gives the palate a thorough scrub. It's big and it's busy, but it's also magnificently balanced, with none of the different elements pulling it too far in any direction. I'm reminded in particular of Lervig's Coconuts: it's possible the brewer may have had a glass or two of that before getting started.

Back at the shop, of course the double black IPA had been first into the basket. This is Beetle Juice, a very black number with a softly fruity aroma of peach and pineapple. That's done with Citra, Simcoe, Columbus and Amarillo, only the last of which I would consider any way fruit-providing. The bitterness from the others does show up in the flavour: acidic resins and a hard zesty citrus. As is appropriate for the style, there's a backing of dark roast behind it. Oddly, it finishes quickly with a light and fizzy body, which is not what I would expect for something at 8% ABV. Easy drinkability shouldn't be on the spec for double black IPA, making this one not a great example by my personal style guidelines. I liked what it does, but I think it should be doing it at a couple of percentage points less.

There was another of my favourite styles in Light My Sour, a sour IPA at 5.5%. They've absolutely nailed the good points of the style here, even if the ABV is a little on the high side. For refreshment is the name of the game, and a bit like the acidulated saison above, this uses a super-clean tartness to project a ray of unadulterated sunshine. It's not so sour as to be puckering, nor even zesty, showing instead a gentle spritz of ripe lemon and Tangfastics. The fizz is busy and the finish quick, but that's all part of the charm. The extra strength does provide a little more body than most of these, and I think that helps balance it more. It's not a massively complex beer, but it's also not meant to be. Very nicely done, overall.

I wasn't going to pass by a Baltic porter, even if the one on offer at Hoppy Road, Erebus, is a bit of a lightweight at only 6.2% ABV. There's a little too much foam on pouring, and some unexpected dregs at the bottom of the can make it more of a brown colour than black. The aroma is green and leafy, with a pinch of roast, making it seem more like a black IPA than Baltic porter, initially. That freshly green bitterness is there in the flavour too, starting slow but building in intensity towards the finish. Columbus is the culprit, we're told. The body is creamy and stout-like, making me wonder if it's really a lager at all. I'm also looking for the more herbal, liquorice-like bitterness which for me is the style's signature, but I'm not getting that either. It's enjoyable -- chewy and satisfying -- but while it does have the impactful bitterness of Baltic porter, it's the wrong sort, and no other part of it is to style. That's disappointing when it's what I was in the mood for.

Our third big stout, Speedol Star, is a mere 9.5% ABV and billed as a "coffee triple stout". What does that mean? Well, it smells like coffee, tastes like coffee and looks like coffee, so that's three. I'm being flippant, but it is all coffee right the way through. That doesn't leave much room for stout, and you get a rudimentary level of dark toast with some hazelnut or peanut sweetness. Like the black IPA it's simple, balanced, clean and straightforward: a real homebrewer's pitch at precision, but which lacks an individual character. I would like something more than the roast and oils of the coffee: the best of these add some berry or cherry complexity, and that would be most welcome here.

There was a selection of large format bottles in the brewery shop but my groaning bagstrap made it clear I could only take one. That was Balinbarbi, a beer fermented on a French word I didn't know: marcs. I looked it up and out turned out the English translation is "marcs". Apparently it's the waste material left over when grapes are crushed and I'm glad I've never had need of a word for that. The heartbroken varieties here are Gamay and Pinot Noir.

It's 4.8% ABV and pours a pale shade of murky rosé. A head says hello and swiftly goodbye again. On the aroma there's a promising mix of serious vanilla-spice oak, but muted, and overlaid with a fruity summer cocktail buzz. The texture is thin and spritzy at first, though a gumminess follows, from which one can almost see the Brettanomyces strands. It's mostly fruit in the flavour, where it meets the sourness to create something sweet yet still crisp, clean and balanced. It bears a strong resemblance to a quality young framboise, but the ABV is very unBelgian, and that really thins it out. Very nice, but not brilliant by grape ale standards, if that helps you make up your own mind in the Hoppy Road brewery shop.

So that's the breweries. Next, we head for the pub.