Lager season

It's nice to see breweries and pubs making a bit of an effort around seasonality, and Oktoberfest time brought multiple opportunities around Dublin to drink appropriate lagers.

That said, I've had Sun Spots from Outer Place Brewing sitting in my fridge since the summer, which has been far too long. They describe this as a West Coast Pilsner, although there's a haze on it which calls to mind the other sort of IPA. I take it that the description is meant to imply hops, and it certainly has those, smelling like fruit candy and tasting extremely zesty with a sweet backing, like cloudy lemonade or lemon drizzle cake. That's down to the presence of Citra, Mosaic and Idaho 7. I know there aren't any real lines between hopped-up pils and cold-fermented pale ale, but for me this falls more into the latter. The fruit character doesn't leave room for pils crispness, and without that I don't think it can claim to be a pilsner. Regrdless, it's a lovely beer. 5.2% ABV is perhaps a little on the strong side for something so refreshing and thirst-quenching, but if that's what it took, that's what it took. Outer Place doesn't have a core range, that I know of. This beer is a better candidate for any hypothetical one than all of their haze.

It was nice to see The Porterhouse leaning into its new status as a contract brewer by flagging that their seasonal Festbier was brewed by WhiteField. It shouldn't be a mystery and WhiteField is a trusty brewer of traditional European beer styles. So, I would love to say that this is a good example but -- oof! -- the diacetyl. There are those who say it isn't necessarily a flaw. Pilsner Urquell has a substantial fanbase, after all. After the initial shock of big butterscotch, I did begin to adjust. It's a sweet lager, bringing hints of brown sugar and fruitcake. I guess, as a party beer, it's meant to taste bigger and bolder than the norm, but it needs hops to balance the all-in malt, as any Urquellite will tell you. It's also not especially strong at 5% ABV. I'm really not sure whether to flag this as flawed or simply not to my taste. Either way, I wasn't feeling the need for a full litre.

More autumn lager is a bonus. Nobody said they had to be precisely to style, however.

Something for everyone

DOT continues to barrel age things that most breweries don't, such as the "micro fruit sour" called Yeah Yeah. It's not all that micro, at 3.4% ABV, and is a translucent pale amber colour. Strawberry, raspberry and white grape are the fruits, and none of them are especially prominent or distinctive. The raspberry is uncharacteristically quiet, while the strawberry is perhaps most noticeable, as a sweet jam or compote effect. The barrel ageing, on the other hand, makes a major contribution, adding notes of shaved coconut and pure vanilla essence. It threatens to get a bit sticky and cloying, sharing a flavour profile with beers which are. The low strength saves it, however, ensuring it's crisp and fizzy. It's certainly unusual, but I deem it an experiment worth repeating. You get the happy elements of a summer fruit beer, but also plenty of serious barrel complexity to stroke your chin about. Yeah Yeah? Yeah.

My recent complaint that the Teeling Distillery giftshop was overcharging for the small cans of DOT collaboration beers at €5.50 has been heeded. The latest addition to the series was €6: For Wheats Sake! This is a 4.5% ABV wheat beer, aged in former white wine whiskey barrels. It's a slightly hazy golden colour with the fine-bubbled head of a quality pilsner. The aroma is strongly fruity, and I don't know how much of that is the wine barrel and how much the hops; grape meets lychee. The wheat performs well in the texture, giving it a lovely silky mouthfeel: refined and sophisticated. The fruit aroma concentrates further in the flavour, turning to perfume, sprayed on with abandon, giving generous amounts of rosewater and jasmine, plus cinnamon and nutmeg spicing and a more serious funky musk. That might be a bit overwhelming were it not, again, for the low strength allowing for a swift finish. It's another bit of sunny summer fun, and fully unique. However, the price tag is an extra bit of spice I could have done without.

By contrast, it was less than half the price for another 4.5%-er, this time in Aldi. Interstate was next in the regular Spin Off Series DOT does for the supermarket. You don't get any barrel-ageing for that, only a perfectly straight American-style pale ale. It's quite an old-school offering too: a deep ochre colour; a little hazy, but not in the New England way. The aroma has tangy citric hops, sure, but a considerable malt component as well, which has become rarer in pale ales these days. The overall effect is of an orange-flavoured cookie or cake. As expected, the flavour leads with the bitterness: sharp to an almost metallic degree. This is where I'd normally say it fades to let the softer fruit through, but it doesn't really. Orange is still the dominant feature, but in a pithy and peely way, infused with oily zest. It's not a million miles from your classic Sierra Nevada, though the lower ABV shows in a lesser intensity and a thinner body. Still, it gets the job done and is excellent value.

Oktoberfest season brought two more Spin Offs. Helles promises the fundamentals: "golden lager with a slightly sweet finish". Slightly is apposite. I like a cuddly, fluffy Helles but this one is more on the dry side, with a crisp mineral rasp, more like you'd expect from a pilsner. Still, 5% ABV gives it a decently dense body, making for properly süffig drinking. The thick and pillowy head of fine foam made me wish I'd poured it into a proper handled mug. Its hops emerge as it warms and are noble to the core, presenting damp grass and green weeds. A certain degree of ester fruit threatens in the background of the flavour but never quite makes it to the fore. It's a pretty decent take on the style, and I don't think Aldi sells Spaten any more, so is filling an important gap.

Alongside that came Bock. In Germany, on its own, that would have suggested a pale beer, but this is no Heller Bock, nor Dunkel Bock nor Doppel. Its dark honey colour conjured the Netherlands rather than Germany for me. That's superficial, however. Dutch bock goes all in for caramel, this is much cleaner, tasting hardly dark at all. It doesn't taste bock-like, really, missing the big syrupy malt and loud weedy hops. Instead it's quite clean and plain, crisp and lagerish even more so than the Helles, with only a smidge more sweetness, from soft-spoken strawberry and raspberry notes. While balanced and refined, it does run the risk of being a little boring. I could have handled a bit more vegetal sharpness or burnt malt tang, especially at the substantial 5.9% ABV. But hey, it's Oktoberfest, and easy-drinking fortified lagers are the whole thing. This may not look like one, but it is.

We finish on the Silk Road, originally a pale ale but subsequently aged in Chinese red wine barrels and with added lactose and sour cherry. It's 6.2% ABV and, obviously, pink. The aroma is sweet and a little jammy, that fruit making itself felt on several planes. And it's there in the flavour as well, though not so much as real fruit, more a candy analogue: bubblegum or sherbet. That's far from the whole picture, however. At the front it's a coconut tang, like in the beer we started on, which I'm guessing derives from oak vanillin, and then a gentle peach-skin bitterness and a light nutmeg spice. I noticed the can was a bit squishy on opening, and the lack of carbonation lets it down. I feel we would have got more value out of the complex production process if it were fizzier. It's good, though, but could be better.

There's some nice diversity on display here, and all at reasonable strengths, if only occasionally reasonable prices.

The usual valediction

On the way home from the Borefts Beer Festival in September I spent a night in Amsterdam, and the days either side of it going to mostly my usual haunts in the Dutch capital.

That started at Arendsnest where, with Oktoberfestfest season imminent, I picked a Märzen: Sancti Selectus, from the Egmond brewery. It's the requisite 5.6% ABV, amber coloured and slightly hazy. At the centre is lots of bready richness, decorated with a meadowy floral perfume. While full-flavoured, it's also incredibly easy drinking and deserves to be sold in much larger measures than the pub was offering.

From there across to its sister pub, Beer Temple. Hola Fantasma comes from the Long Live Beerworks in Rhode Island. It's a Berliner weisse of 6% ABV with added blood orange, pineapple, strawberry and blackberry, turning it a murky dark pink. All of the added fruit get a say in the flavour, though the orange speaks loudest, being both citricly bitter and juicily sweet, like real mandarin pieces. The various features hang together well, creating an invigorating but gentle sour beer, one with an upbeat summer quality.

I didn't want to miss the opportunity to try this year's anniversary beer from the MoreBeer pub chain: Big Fat 15, a triple IPA of 9.99% ABV, brewed by Poesiat & Kater. It arrived an innocent-looking clear yellow but showed its true colours early, with a heady aroma that's both brightly zesty and weightily dank. The texture is chewy, and you know you have a strong beer on your hands. Its flavour follows the aroma, bringing fresh lemon, a harder grapefruit bite and then an equal amount of resinous pine. For a deliberately extreme beer, it's very well balanced, bulked up with malt to counter the souped-up hopping without impeding it. It's a worthy celebration, then.

The dark beer next to it is Fourth Press, a blend of strong stouts and ales, produced by Private Press Brewing in California. There must have been some powerful beers in there, because the average of them has left this at 15.2% ABV. It's black and headless, with an aroma of date, raisins, coffee and non-specific brown booze. Taken together, there's a bit of chocolate liqueur about it, with some vinous dark fruit as well. It's not a beer to drink a lot of, but it's absolutely gorgeous, combining imperial stout's dark richness with barley wine's warming fruit. I didn't think it would work this well, but it has.

Next stop was In de Wildeman where I started on Jopen's Farmhouse Rock, a saison. It's a big one, at 7% ABV, made with buckwheat and grains of paradise. Still, it's completely clear and a very pale yellow. Unsurprisingly, it's very clean for the style, missing all of the rustic earthy fuzz they often have. That leaves space for all the estery fruitiness, here suggesting white grape and honeydew melon in particular. While very obviously a strong beer, it's refreshing too, and generally tasty and enjoyable.

For herself, Morning Joe, the one by Basqueland -- it's not the most original name for a coffee stout. It's a serious one: 6.2% ABV and heavily infused with real coffee, presenting dry dark roasted notes as well as greasy coffee oils. A slight herbal quality lifts the flavour out of the gloopy depths of the filter machine, but you really would want to like coffee to get anything out of this. As a stout-first sort of guy, it left me a little cold.

Passing by the pub later on the way somewhere else, I swung in to try an interesting-looking barrel-aged beer they had on: Kees's Barrel Project IPA. This is a medium-strength IPA given a quick sojourn of ten days in a bourbon barrel. The result is 6.5% ABV and looks hazy yellow, like a witbier. Generally, I'm sceptical about the benefits of ageing hop-fronted beers like this, but the way they've done it here worked spectacularly well. All the hop fun is still there, the flavour teeming with fresh grapefruit. And then the bourbon adds a fully complementary lime sourness, making the whole into a kind of American whisky-based summer cocktail -- maybe an Old Fashioned? It tastes much lighter than the ABV suggests and is tremendous fun to drink. This is the second year of the project and more would be very worthwhile, I'd say.

We strayed a little off our usual route when I decided we should call in on De Prael on Monday afternoon. I haven't been to this pleasant little brewery taproom in several years, although that's largely because I don't really like their beers. But it's important to check in now and again with breweries you don't like, just in case they've become superb. So here we are.

They like to stick to their core range, and the only thing that was new to me even after a prolonged absence was bottled De Prael RIS, the imperial stout. After the weekend I'd had, impressing me with an imperial stout was a tall order, and at only 8.7% ABV it didn't start well. It's extremely fizzy, a common De Prael issue, and took forever to get poured into a glass. Along with the high carbonation comes a thinness, which I thought excessive even at the compromised ABV. At the centre of the flavour is a big, unsubtle, liquorice bitterness, segueing into a kaleidoscope of hop flavours, like one might find in a black IPA. The finish is dry, burnt and astringent. While I do detect the slightly amateurish character that De Prael beers can have, it does hit the style points of serious, old-fashioned, imperial stout quite well. For that I give it a pass.

Dining got me my final two ticks. The restaurant A. van Wees was a worthwhile discovery, for the good food and extensive genever menu. There is a good beer offering too, and I went for Strip, a witbier from Oedipus. It's a decent example of the style, and heavier on the floral side than most, doused in lavender and violet from the outset of the flavour. It finishes quite quickly and quite dry, and there's a nicely soft body, making the whole thing very thirst-quenching, like iced tea on a hot day. I'm guessing this is part of the regular line-up though I hadn't seen it before. For something produced by a Heineken subsidiary, it's very good.

And the last meal before Schiphol came with Hertog Jan Bockbier, it having been the season for the Dutch amber lager, and all the big breweries were heavily promoting their annual release. I hadn't tried the one from the good Duke before, and found it... decent. Not terribly different to the ones from Grolsch and Amstel, which probably shouldn't be surprising. It is particularly dark, however; almost black. There's an amount of complexity that's very unusual for an AB InBev beer, starting with a bite of crisp burnt caramel, and then showing liquorice bitterness and tangy autumn fruit: plum and damson. It shouldn't have taken so long for me to give this a go, but I commend it. I wish we had a seasonal style that forced all the boring breweries to make good beer once a year...

And on such musings I take my leave of the Netherlands once more. And this time I won't be a back for, oh, a couple of weeks. Can't wait.

White bread and herrings

On 3rd October 1574, during the Eighty Years War, the Spanish who besieged the city of Leiden were routed by a band of Dutch rebels. Supplies of herring and white bread were brought to the starving populace, who made it an occasion of annual celebration in the city. Extra stops were pulled out to mark the 450th anniversary this year, including a grand communal meal on the eve of the big day. I arrived a couple of weeks prior, as registration opened for locals who wished to participate. By the looks of queue that snaked along the canal, past where I sat outside the Stadsbrowhuis, that was everyone.

No traditional Dutch food for me, though, just beer. Jopen's 6.5% ABV black IPA, Black Hop Sun, was on the menu. This has a strange but not unpleasant sweet and herbal aroma, of basil and incense. The flavour, too, is sweet to begin, starting on uncharacteristic candy and vanilla. That quickly butts up against a hard bitterness which is part green and metallic hops and part astringently dry roast. It's not very well integrated, and while it does have the boldness of good black IPA, it's rather severe and difficult drinking. 

That's the tall glass. The squat taster beside it is Piece of Cake: Apple Pie Crumble, by Frontaal. This one is 10% ABV. The name indicates what it's supposed to taste like, but it doesn't. It's very sticky, and the aroma goes large on brittle toffee. In the flavour that translates to burnt caramel, coming after a warm and cake-like sweet flavour. There's perhaps a little apple -- stewed, not crisp -- but none of the buttery biscuit side that is the whole point of crumble. I liked it, as a walloping big dessert stout, but it doesn't quite deliver on its promise.

I thought it only polite to order something from the in-house brewery next, and that was Blekkie Blekkie in Je Bekkie ("Pale Pale in Your Mouth", cryptically), a stout. It's unusual to see a session strength stout from a Dutch microbrewery, and this one is only 4.9% ABV. Chocolate, coffee and vanilla have all been added to it, and they're very obvious, leaving little room for any stout character. A sort of vanilla-laced cookie aroma starts us off, and then the flavour loads in the dense filter coffee, according it only a sprinkling of powdered chocolate. It's all a bit basic and home-brewish, an effect accentuated by the shortlived head. It's a valiant effort, but not a great beer, all told.

And while we're on bizarre names, the barley wine beside it is called A Walking Study in Demonology, and comes from the Low Key Barrel Project in Kent, collaborating with the candymen of Vault City in Edinburgh. There's blood orange, maple syrup, tonka beans and brown sugar all wrapped up in this 12.4% ABV package. It's a dark brown colour and has an aroma that's simultaneously sweet and sour. There's a very boozy heat, and while it's sweet, it's not heavy. I couldn't help thinking a beer like this should be heavy, to give it a comforting warmth. This doesn't have that but it does have tonka's inescapable cinnamon flavour, and a squeeze of orange zest. There's not much of note beyond that. For all its convolutions, this is another quite lacklustre strong beer. Refer to Monday's post for examples of how to do these things properly.

I paid a dinner visit to Leiden's other brewpub, Freddy's: the one housed on the ground floor of Heineken Netherlands's headquarters. I had a few of their beers on my last visit and wasn't terribly impressed. The menu seems to have shrunk in the two years since, and the only thing of interest on it was Freddy's Tripel. It's a dark one -- amber or garnet -- and it doesn't taste like a tripel either. There's a lager cleanness, making it seem more like an autumnal Dutch bock, but it's also very hot, the booze drowning out any subtleties which might have been present. Cereal or porridge are all I got from it, really, and maybe a tiny hint of liquorice. It fulfils the role of being a basic strong beer, but I don't think that's what anyone wants from tripel. Where are the spices?

Leiden has much better beer available than this lot. Some poor choices were made. It's just as well there was a festival of great stuff going on nearby. And when that was over, we went to Amsterdam.

Our host's cellar

As always, the largest selection of beers at the Borefts Beer Festival comes from the host, De Molen. At the main event inside the brewery's warehouse space, they reserve a long bar to themselves, serving a couple dozen of their own: regulars, specials and a few created specifically for the festival. "Back & Future" was the 2024 theme, marking 20 years since De Molen started up in the nearby windmill, and though I didn't try the beer they called Back & Future, they extended the theme to a wider set of 1980s references.

Knight & Rider, was one. Geekily amusing because they're closely related words in Dutch. This medieval callback yields a medieval beer style: hoppenbier. A few Dutch breweries make these, most notably Jopen, and they're intended to recreate the earliest hopped beers there were. This one was 7.5% ABV and a slightly hazy pale orange colour. A waxy aroma leads to a thick cordial texture and a heavy malt sweetness, which builds to the point of becoming excessive, a bit like super-strength tramp lager. German hop Spalter Select was used, but not to any great effect. There are some light peach and apricot notes at first, but it becomes cloying orange cordial by the end. It's not offensively bad, but not especially enjoyable either. I often get that from beers brewed for the history rather than the taste.

Things go pretty dark from here on in. Next it's Back & Black, a 14.5% ABV imperial stout. The brewery isn't reluctant to age its beers in barrels, but for some reason this one gets merely the oak chip treatment. They've also added fruit puree and red berries, and that's the undoing of it. Instead of a warm, thick and bitter imperial stout, it's a mess of jammy sweetness: sickly, and unacceptably thin. It tastes more like a strawberry wine than a beer, and I couldn't help feeling sad for what was doubtless an excellent base beer to begin with.

As part of the 20th anniversary celebrations, De Molen released a series of beers, of which we tried two from the bar. Proost & Toost is an 11.4% ABV barley wine. Rioja and Heaven Hill bourbon barrels have been used for the ageing, and it's the proper dark garnet of a big barley wine. The Spanish wine has a big influence on the taste, with lots of grape-skin tannin and a fruitier side, suggesting raspberry and strawberry, but in a wine way, not the real thing. The less attractive element is a loud and raw oak effect, and I'm blaming the Americans for that. I liked it, but couldn't help thinking the barrel element was a bit overpowering. Let the beer speak, I say.

Herself chose a porter, the 10.7% ABV Kop & Schotel ("Cup & Saucer"). This is another of the recent celebration beers, barrel-aged and espresso-laced. For all that it's new, it had a bit of a nasty autolytic edge in the aroma: too much soy sauce for a coffee porter. It's sparkly and very dry, the coffee taking a moment to emerge, and not very prominent when it does. An unspecified whiskey barrel was also involved but may as well not have been. While it's warm and heavy, as it should be, it's also a bit severe. I would have liked a mellower vibe from something with these specs.

Eisbock is not something I get to drink very often, and De Molen had a pleasing selection of them on tap, though mostly available in strict rotation. Dark & Side was one, 15% ABV and blended from imperial stouts though they don't give any further details. However they made it, it had some surprises in store, beginning on a spicy roasted flavour, with peppercorns and clove. There's lots of smoke as well, making it a bit acrid. One might expect something thick and hot, and this is neither, which unfortunately boosts the acridity. My notes give it a rating of "fine", however. It doesn't offering anything you won't get from a standard high-strength imperial stout, and certainly nothing crazy. Maybe that's good, but it's not what I want from a freeze-distilled megastout.

I mentioned that the brewery started out in the windmill, and indeed the entire festival was held there before the brewery moved down the street. They've always maintained it as a satellite to the main event, for the shop, but also in recent years as an additional showcase for De Molen beers. "Saved specials and collabs from past year(s)" said the festival booklet. In practical terms, the spacious yard offered welcome calm respite from the busy churn down at the brewery. So what's on tap?

Sança & Marc is an another eisbock, from 2018. It is/was 18% ABV and derived, again, from an imperial stout. It's certainly black, and has a very strong coffee flavour, concentrated and boozed up, to create a Tia Maria effect. There's a harder burnt breadcrust quality, where I guess dark roasted grain has been intensified by the distilling process, plus aniseed bitterness where hops used to be, balanced by a degree of treacle sweetness. There's a lot going on here, and it's all very loud. This was my finisher on day one of the festival, and it's ideal for that. I can't imagine what could possibly follow such a divine palate-clogger.

As day two drew to a close, for us at least, we were back up for a comfy seat and to explore the offer here further. Variations on the now-classic imperial stout Hel & Verdoemenis were plentiful here, and I picked the Cognac barrel, released in 2015, if my research is correct. It's 12% ABV and quite sour, which I guess is a function of its age. There's a red wine quality to that, like high-end Italian vinegar. It has a spirit warmth, though I don't think I would associate it with cognac specifically. You still get lots of dark chocolate and a generous scoop of coffee roast. More fruit from the brandy would have been nice, but I enjoyed how smooth and mature it all was, once I got used to the tangy vinegar.

Across the table was the first Bommen & Granaten of the event: Port barrel aged, from 2020. It smelled hot and sticky, like boiled sweets that are still being boiled. The flavour is much more delicate, introducing the port as a gently sweet raisin note, mixed with a light oak spicing. Again, this shows how it has matured over time, drying out what was probably overly sweet when fresh, and generally calming and mellowing beautifully.

Another Hel & Verdoemenis followed in the next round, this time Bowmore. Somebody at De Molen loves putting the beer in Islay casks, although this one low-balls the peat, making it taste like a more general sort of smoked beer, with a savoury, smoked sausage effect, not swabs of TCP, as sometimes happens. There's a fun edge of caramelisation to give it a balancing sweetness, and of course all the warmth and maturity you would expect for a stout that's been sitting around for nine years now. It's a wonder it hadn't turned to vinegar or soy sauce, but 10.5% ABV of sheer heft has preserved it well.

The companion barley wine on the left is one called Zecker & Vast and it's 13.9% ABV, aged in Breckenridge bourbon barrels and aged since 2020. The standard amber colour, it may be a beer but it smells of wine and spirits, with elements of hot grappa and fruity vermouth. There's a bit of coconut which I sometimes taste in bourbon-barrel things and may be vanillin related; there's the sweet tang of botrytised dessert wine, and more prosaically, some marmalade and orange jelly. That sounds busy as hell but it's all marvellously integrated into a single delicious picture. It goes without saying it's not something to drink lots of, but a sipping glassful in the evening sunshine was perfect.

The next one was a relative lightweight at a mere 9.8% ABV, called Verdeel & Heers, and is an imperial stout with Brettanomyces. It may as well not be, however, because the Brett has met its match with the smoke. They've aged it in a variety of peated whisky barrels, meaning roast and turf smoke are far and away the dominant characteristics. There's a Laphroig-like phenolic kick in the foretaste, and then a sort of putty or clay savouriness behind. A little phosphorescent cola spicing seasons it nicely. Despite the lack of alcohol, it provided a happy and comforting belly warmth. Though seven years old, it's still spreading good vibes, even if it's not what I thought I was going to get when I ordered it.

Time for yet another Hel & Verdoemenis variant: Hazelnoot. I was sceptical, but it works well. There's no changing the fundamental bitterness of this beer, and here it made me think of high-end liquorice, the sort supplied in ornate faux-Victorian tins. A oily sweet syrup runs through this, giving it a lighter peanut-butter counter-flavour. I don't know that it's an actual improvement on straight H&D, but it was a worthwhile experiment back in 2017.

I don't think we kept deliberately ordering rounds of imperial stout and barley wine, but this was indeed another one, and the other beer is Fast & Furious Gin Barrel Aged. I haven't tasted the normal version of this, assuming there is one, but I think I picked up the gin effects in a big way: almonds and berries in the aroma aren't impossible for a barley wine, but the intensity here suggests gin was involved. And then a slick marzipan base is spiced up with black peppercorns and citrus peel. For 11.2% ABV it's immensely clean and has a lightness of touch which genuinely reminded me of a gin and tonic. It's quite a feat of conjuring by the brewer.

Hemel & Aarde is an imperial stout brewed with your actual peated malt, and the final round brought us the Bourbon version. It still smells like TCP but tastes gentler, of sweet red wine in particular. Oddly, it's not very bourbon-like, but maybe that got buried under the smoke. Anyway, it's very decent, and that's despite having a full 11 years of storage under its boozy belt.

Bommen & Granaten: Rioja takes us out. This wine is a lot more domineering than the port above, smelling of red liquorice and tasting of, well, oaky red wine, funnily enough. I'm guessing it's the nine years of ageing that have added a certain redcurrant sharpness to the otherwise smooth and sumptuous flavour profile. I'm actually amazed how none of these really showed any negative effects from their extended cellaring. Here, the sticky warmth of fresh, plain B&G was still very apparent, given only a subtle and positive tweak by the wine cask. Textbook stuff, and a perfect reminder of just why I keep coming back to De Molen and their fabulous festival.

50-odd beers in and we're done with Borefts. There have been years, most of them recent, when I've left thinking I'll give the event a miss next time round. This wasn't one of those. Maybe it was the fine weather but I could have done another two days easily. However, there were also pubs to go to in nearby Leiden. That follows next.

Over here

The 2024 Borefts beer festival line-up included a couple of breweries each from the US and Brazil. Let's start with the Americans.

Lost Abbey was a blast from the past. Time was, this was a veritable whale generator, turning out highly ornate barrel-aged limited editions of the sort anyone with a mashtun and an old bourbon cask can do these days. They paid tribute to the Low Countries by bringing a Flanders red to Bodegraven, called Red Poppy. This is 6.5% ABV and a deep, dark red-brown, the colour of dried blood. It has the requisite cherry character in the aroma but it's a little sticky and overdone, suggesting jam rather than fruit. I see that they've used actual cherries, which is cheating a bit. And yet the flavour doesn't bring that through in any form, unfortunately, instead prioritising the oak: stale and rather oxidised tasting. It does have the spritzy fizz which is part of the spec, but there should be a spritzy sour-fruit flavour to alongside it, and that's missing. Whatever foeder or barrel process they've used, I think they've overdone it.

Much later, I picked up their Serpent's Stout, an 11% ABV imperial job and one of their regular seasonals. For all that, I found it quite rough and raw. It is extremely bitter, packed with high-cocoa dark chocolate, concentrated espresso roast and a strange herbal quality, suggesting oregano to me. I usually have a lot of time for the bitterer sort of imperial stout, but this went too far for my liking. The festival was full of smooth and mellow imperial stouts, and this was a jarring outlier among them. Barrel-aged versions exist, and I'm guessing they're more what I would like. This tasted not-quite-finished.

The other Americans were The Bruery. I associate them with big, barrel-aged dark beers but was intrigued to see they had brought something at just 3.5% ABV: the table beer called Petite Provision. I didn't really need a palate-cleanser when I drank it, 90 minutes after the festival opened, but I was happy to try it regardless. Both the flavour and aroma are a bright and clean melon and pear effect, with a slightly stricter mineral bitterness near the finish, a squeeze of lemon and just enough of an earthy saison note to make it true to style. There's a lot going on, but none of it lingers and the aftertaste is minimal. The rougher and grittier sorts of table beer aren't for me; this one is pure refinement, making the most of what table beer can be.

Also on their page of the menu was a brown ale called Enthaiced. This could have done with some hyphens: En-Thai-ced; Thai and enticed. That's a reference to the recipe including chai tea, dulce de leche and vanilla. As a brown ale fan, I'm not keen on it being used as a base for silliness, and also think that 13.9% ABV puts it well out of the scope for proper brown ale. It smells sweetly herbal, like red vermouth, and despite the strength is quite light and very fizzy. That doesn't hide the alcohol, and it tastes as hot as might be expected given the strength. In there with the booze is a coconut cake flavour, and the gentle spicing of a mince pie. It's an odd combination and I didn't really care for it. Like Lost Abbey's stout, it would benefit from some maturation and mellowing out.

I don't get to drink much Brazilian beer so put an effort in to make use of what was available this weekend. That began with Crisp, a pilsner from Croma of São Paulo. This slightly hazy affair is indeed very very crisp: dry and brittle, like a water biscuit. It's hazy too, and has a light lemony flavour, as you might find in a kellerbier. This lasts long into the finish, buoyed up on a full 5% ABV. It's a great example of whatever sub-style you want to stick on a hazy pils: extremely refreshing, effortlessly drinkable, and yet with bags of interesting character, should you wish to sip it instead.

Before long I returned to the Croma stand to try their New Zealand hopped IPA, NZ Power!. The name, and punctuation, is a warning that it's 7% ABV and not to be taken lightly. I wasn't impressed by the plasticky aroma; the sort of thing I get from Germanic hops in very traditional styles; usually pale bocks. This isn't that, though. The flavour is massively fruity, exuding a gorgeous mix of grapefruit and lemon: the pith, the peel and the flesh. This is seasoned with thyme and oregano notes, marking it as distinct from the more usual American-style hop bomb. Despite the distance travelled it tasted beautifully fresh and offered an invigorating wake-up call to a palate that was beginning to feel the strain at this stage. But onwards!

Spartacus, from Juiz de Fora in the great state of Minas Gerais, is our second Brazilian brewery, and we stick with IPA for one called Hit the Silk. I don't know why. This is 9% ABV and very hazy, yellow to the point of almost looking green and with far too much foam on top. It has a soft texture and surprisingly little heat given the prodigious strength. The aroma is alluringly peppery and there's a big hit of grapefruit in the foretaste: a west-coast sensibility which I wasn't expecting. There's not much else, however, only a hint of grit in the finish. While it does have the usual drawbacks of strong hazy IPA it can't muster enough character of its own to be more than broadly decent. 

Each year the festival has a theme and attending breweries are encouraged to brew a beer to match it. I remember when this used to be about ingredients and processes but now it seems to be just a name. Spartacus had four versions of a 15% ABV barrel-aged imperial stout, all given the festival theme name of Back & Future. I tried two. Back & Future 1 has coffee and our old friend dulce de leche. The result is a gorgeous traybake of a beer, giving me chocolate, biscuit crumbs, caramel, honeycomb, brown sugar and sweet coffee on a smooth and sumptuous base. Amazingly, it's not especially boozy, and worryingly easy to drink. This is exactly the sort of thing I come to the Borefts festival for.

Back & Future 2 uses strawberry, coconut and marshmallow. This one is very thick, sticking to the side of the glass when swirled. There's a warm chocolate aroma and a flavour like Raspberry Ruffle bars: that mix of highly volatile berry essence and bitter dark chocolate. All three add-ons are separately tasteable and obvious, but also well integrated into the whole piece. Nothing feels tacked on or gimmicky. It may not have the beatings of the previous beer, but it's still a better sequel than its near namesake.

There's just one more brewery to cover, the obvious one, before we finish up at Borefts for another year. That's coming next.

Up comers

Today's post is mostly about beers from southern Europe which featured at this year's Borefts Beer Festival, but I neglected to mention Poland in my northern round-up on Monday. So we'll start there.

I was a little surprised to find Pinta at the festival. They make good beer, but seem a bit mainstream for Borefts. I picked the weirdest thing they had: After Hours, described simply as a "wild ale". This is the Citrus version, brewed with lime and two kinds of orange. It's a pale hazy yellow and 6% ABV. Though very light bodied, it seems to have been given a thorough dose of Brettanomyces, bringing a degree of blue cheese funk, but also a gooey pineapple and peach flavour, which makes the beer seem richer and fuller than maybe it is. The zesty citrus remains intact, and there's the perfect level of palate-cleansing sourness. I wanted weird, and I got it in the best possible way. This one is endlessly entertaining, with something new in every mouthful. Several other versions exist and I would love to catch up with them.

Wrocław's Stu Mostów was also on hand. Cherry Me is an imperial stout with cherries. This is something an Irish brewery tried recently with disappointing results. Stu Mostów got it just right, however. The secret is to start with a really good stout; here that's 11.2% ABV and already a dessert in its own right, with heaps of chocolate cake laced with thick sweet coffee. The cherry merely tops this off, adding a fruit complexity that is obvious and real-tasting, but doesn't interfere with the fundamentals. The beer is lightly textured without being at all thin, and balanced in such a way as to be dangerously easy to drink. This was one of many beers I could have spent a lot more time with.

My last one from them, and indeed of the whole festival was one described as a "Philly Crumble Gose" and I have no idea what that means. The beer is called Peach on the Beach and is 6% ABV, an opaque soupy yellow colour and thick like a smoothie. I don't know how much further you can get from the proper spec of gose, but we're definitely not in Leipzig with this one. The flavour is very dessertish, although without much fruit. Instead, vanilla and white chocolate are what it's about: intensely sweet and quite un-beery. I did quite enjoy the ice cream effect once I'd got used to it, but it's very much a beer to grind the gears of any traditionalist.

OK, to southern Europe then. One of the headline attractions was the appearance of Menno Olivier, the man who founded and shaped De Molen before selling it to an industrial brewing concern and emigrating to Catalonia to start over. Menno Olivier Brewing is the brewery name; I guess without a windmill this time he was short of inspiration. He had created a Back & Future beer in keeping with this year's festival theme: a mixed fermentation job, hazy orange and 6.5% ABV. It's one of those beers where Brettanomyces pulls its party trick of making the beer taste intensely of ripe tropical fruit, without any actual fruit having been near it. This is an almost sickly sweet mush of pineapple and coconut. That sits next to a contrasting sourness which helps balance it, a little. What's missing is the wild spicing. I had to check if it was barrel aged, and it is, but there's no oak character or other signs of maturity. It's fine, even interesting, but unexciting.

Some time later I tackled Dota, a barrel aged imperial stout, something much more in Menno's wheelhouse. The barrel is from Kilchoman, on Islay, and so there's lots of delicious smoke in this one. The peaty phenols mix with dark chocolate in a way that probably shouldn't work, but I know from experience with De Molen that it definitely does. It's as rich and warm as you would like an 11.3% ABV stout to be, but the smoke dries it out nicely, and the texture is surprisingly light and accessible. Overall, it's very well balanced for an extreme beer with crazy flavours. Top work, and very much the sort of thing that has sustained my interest in De Molen over the years.

The other Catalan brewery was Poch's, who have been to Borefts before. The most obvious redundancy in a beer name was their Tonka Attack: there's no such thing as subtle tonka bean. This is a 10.2% ABV imperial stout, and in fairness to the beans, the aroma is quite subdued, though its delicate cinnamon spicing leaves no doubt what's going on. The beer is thick and sumptuous, tasting first of hot chocolate, then a more herbal cola effect, and then a massive hit of tonka cinnamon flavour. It may be an attack, but it's not one-dimensional, tasting balanced, well-rounded and refined. There are lots of tonka-infused imperial stouts like it, but that's no criticism. I can see why people enjoy what it brings.

Over to Italy next, beginning with Ca' Del Brado. This is one of my all-time favourite breweries and, looking back, I think I made a mistake by not drinking more of their beer while it was there. The one I had was called Zena, described as a wild gose. Yet more playing fast and loose with that word? This one is at least pale yellow and clear, although quite strong at 6.4% ABV. There's maybe a faint trace of gose saltiness in the flavour, but I doubt I would have been able to identify it unprompted. Instead, it's a classic CDB barrel job: opening on a clean and sparkly Prosecco-like grape effect and following it with some mildly funky wild fermentation notes. It's zesty, sunny, upbeat and delicious; complex yet quaffable. I really should have gone back for more of the similar.

But the siren song of unfamiliar Italian breweries proved impossible to resist. One was the oddly-named Granda brewery, from Piedmont. They had a black IPA. Hurrah! Regeneration is a big one at 7% ABV, and delivers all the fundamentals of coffee roast meeting spiced red cabbage with a liquorice bitterness behind, all set on a smooth body. While flavourful, it's also subtle and balanced, finishing cleanly and tasting lighter than its strength. I don't mind when these lean into the bitterness a bit more, but I also appreciated how finely honed this one was.

Tell me more, Granda! They also brought a smoked lager, called simply Rauch, making it very clear what sort of smoked lager it's meant to be. These, I would say, are quite tricky to get right. Too much smoke and they end up tasting like kippers. Here they've been careful to keep the smoke low, and indeed we don't get close to kippers, but neither does it have the lovely savoury meat effect that the best examples do. When making a lager clean, it's important not to make it boring, and they've narrowly avoided that error with this. It has quick-fire sparks of burnt crispy bits to hold the drinker's attention, and it's just enough to make the beer worthwhile. Maybe I needed a larger measure to get a better handle on this. It is only 5.2% ABV and handling a pint would present little difficulty.

Brasseria Della Fonte was another returning brewery, and from them I had Good Morning Madamoiselle, a coffee maple stout at 8.4% ABV. I got a lot of head from the pour of this, and a huge amount of the maple syrup, making it taste quite smoky, and not in a good way. The coffee side is less obvious, showing only as a smear of oily roasted beans. While it's heavy and unsubtle, the flavours disappear surprisingly quickly, suggesting to me that the base beer isn't up to scratch. This is all gimmick, trying to cram the eye-catching added ingredients into a stout that can't really handle them. The result tastes quite amateurish. Plenty of other breweries at the festival were doing this kind of thing much better, and almost all of them were making their stouts stronger, which I'm sure helps.

A hop over the Adriatic brings us to Croatia, and the ubiquitous Zagreb brewery The Garden. Honestly, I wasn't inspired by anything they were pouring, so just to get them a mention I tried the Florida Weisse Watermelon, suspecting that I can probably buy it in Dublin. With the watermelon they've added lime and mint, and the aroma is particularly minty, with a pleasing mineral sourness alongside. It's light bodied despite a substantial 6.2% ABV, and the flavour is extremely minty, with any watermelon, lime, or indeed sourness, just about clinging on to make themselves felt in the background. "One-dimensional" pretty much covers it, but if you like mint in your beer, The Garden has the perfect Florida weisse for you. Enjoy.

Finally, from green flavour to actual fully-green beer. This is Little Green Man, by Pulfer, also from Zagreb. "Heavily fruited sour" is all the description says. Poured from the can, it looks like vegetable soup or a healthy smoothie: a dull, opaque green, all thick and gloopy. The fruit bill consists of passionfruit, mango, papaya and coconut, and while I couldn't pick those out individually, it definitely tastes tropical. It's as thickly textured as it looks and has a fun fruit salad character at its centre, allied with a cheesecake creaminess. A slight citric bite on the end provides something resembling balance. But this beer isn't about balance, it's about being ridiculous for its own sake, and I rather enjoyed the clown act. It helped that I wasn't expected to drink the whole can. While only 5% ABV, this is one to take in small measures.

Next, we'll look at the beers which travelled furthest to get to Bodegraven.