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.