Wild Westmeath

I wasn't counting heads, but the third iteration of the Mullingar Wild Beer Festival seemed a little more subdued, and I somehow doubt that the audience for wild fermented beers from Belgium, Britain and Ireland was being poached by Taylor Swift, who played Dublin the same evening. I don't know. I do hope that it was still worth the organiser's and brewers' time. It was certainly worth my time.

As always, the venue was down the back of Smiddy's Bar, where four Irish breweries had set up stalls, with a separate international selection of taps. I began with Brett & Forget, a Brettanomyces-fermented lager from Dublin's Third Barrel. The titular yeast, it turns out, is an unreliable carbonator, so this came out flat which, for a pale lager, is unfortunate. Still (ha!), there was a quite delicious flavour profile, accentuating the ripely tropical aspects of Brett: big on lychee and pear, with a dusting of coconut. It's hefty stuff, at 6% ABV, but very satisfying drinking. I will definitely be back to this once it's fizzed up, if given the chance.

Otterbank was launching a new core beer, a Bretted pale ale of 4.1% ABV called The Internationale. This is intended to be dry-hopped with rotating varieties, and the first is Kiwi hop Superdelic. It's a light touch on the hopping, and only a faint trace of lemon in the finish suggested it was there. The rest of the flavour is the other side of Brett; the musky, musty, foetid horse-blanket and mulch so familiar from Orval in particular. It's lightened by a sweet and heady floral perfume taste, all violet and honeysuckle. In short, it's far more complex than any core beer has a right to be. It may be low strength but I can't see it working as a session beer. It's one to take in slowly.

Last of the new Irish offerings was a sort-of grape ale from Land & Labour, though one with a near 50-50 ratio of wine and beer, which is unusual for all sorts of reasons. It's called Puro Salamino and the wine component was produced by the brewery from Lambrusco Salamino grapes. 8.5% ABV and dark maroon, it was being served on cask. I was quite taken aback by the flavour, a strongly savoury herbal character, tasting of oily rosemary in particular, though also dill and marjoram. A subtle lacing of cherry and raspberry were the only nods to north-Italian red wine that I found in it, and I can't say any of it tasted much like beer. While it's odd and unsettling, it's delicious too: the sort of thing I expect they served at the better kind of medieval banquet.

Land & Labour also had a canned imperial stout open for tasting. This was Torched, a 10% ABV job brewed by Catalan brewery Garage in collaboration with Land & Labour. It's intended to be a fully unadorned imperial stout, with no additives or ageing. And while I respect that, the result was rather harsh: very heavy, and with a concentrated roasted bitterness that came across ashen and acrid. Wax, tar and liquorice all feature in my notes, scribbling as I rushed to finish it off and find something lighter. Straight-up, old-school imperial stouts don't have to be outright evil. I'm a fan in general, but this one was too much.

Brussels microbrewery L'Ermitage had sent two beers along. I was dubious, and haven't really got along with this brewery's output, finding it on the rough and gritty side of IPA and saison. I hadn't had much of their beer in the wild and barrel-aged area, though, so was willing to extend them the benefit of the doubt.

First out was Cureghem Kriekland, and as the name implies, this is a cherry-flavoured beer. The recipe is quite straightforward: 75% young saison blended with 25% wild-fermented, packed with cherries and barrel aged. It's 6.5% ABV and deep purple in colour. I like the natural-tasting cherry notes but it's no candified fruit beer. There's a very serious earthy and funky side to it, with a slightly unpleasant plastic tang in the background. The fun and spritzy tartness of kriek lambic was never meant to be there, I'm sure, but I missed it all the same, as it has so many other features in common. This wasn't the beer to change my opinion of L'Ermitage.

And neither was their grape ale, Le Grand Œuvre. This is again a blend of straight and wild fermented beers, with the addition of Muscaris grapes before three months of barrel ageing. It's 7% ABV and a hazy gold colour, giving me an early warning sign with its vinegary aroma, sitting next to softer and sweeter honey. It's heavily sour on tasting: dry and astringent, with more of the artificial plastic twang I found in the other one. Some zesty lemon cleans things up in the finish, but overall it didn't really work for me, tasting too unsubtle and immature.

Some beer was left over from the 2023 event, so I got a belated chance to drink Little Earth Project's Echoes of Summer. This is a mixed fermentation red ale with redcurrants and four types of berry. A muddy brown colour in the glass, it has the red-wine-like aroma of Flanders red ale. Similarly, the taste has a cherry and strawberry base, plus some sweeter mellow raisin notes. While tart, it shows the maturity lacking in the L'Ermitage beers, though perhaps spending a year ageing in KeyKeg helped with that. There's lots of oak, but smooth and balanced. It may not be exactly a to-style Flanders red, but this has enough in common with the well-made ones to attract the same sort of appreciation from me.

My last new tick before I went off in search of a beer to relax over (Wide Street's Saison de Pyrénées) was Thank You For The Day, a barrel-aged saison dry-hopped with Saaz, from Scatterlings, a side project of the brewer from Two Flints brewery in Windsor. The result is beautiful, with a fresh and light white wine aroma followed by a flavour which mixes juicy white grape with a pinch of citrus zest, sprinkled with coarsely ground black pepper. There's a lot of beautifully balanced complexity here, especially given the ABV is only 5.6%: a reminder that beers of this nature don't have to be >7% ABV to be worthwhile. Thank You, Mr Scatterling.

I said the festival felt smaller, but now it's written down, that's actually a decent afternoon's drinking. None of it was meant for quaffing, and I'm glad I didn't need to rush any of them. I'll have the same again please.