The sun in the sails

This year was my tenth at the Borefts Beer Festival, held at the De Molen brewery in Bodegraven. The Festival itself was celebrating 20 years of De Molen, with a theme of "Back & Future". 23 guest breweries from Europe and the Americans joined the hosts for the party over two days in glorious sunshine. How much fun this festival is is heavily weather-dependent for me. 2024 was a good one. Let's have a beer.

Boerenerf, that most bespoke of the new-wave lambic producers, was where I started. I've never seen their beer outside of a festival so wasn't going to miss the opportunity. I started with an Amarone Lambiek, thinking there might be a bit of grape character to it. When it arrived hazy and orange I was immediately disappointed, but determined to make the best of it. And it starts out as a decent, if a little ordinary, lambic: lots of saltpetre spicing and the dry sourness of fresh leather. After a moment, however, the flavour unfolds further, gradually revealing a tannic red wine character, with mature damson and black cherry notes backed by a complementary oakiness. At 6.5% ABV it's a little stronger than I like for lambic, but they've used the extra gravity to great effect, driving the flavour complexity. We were off to a good start.

I came back to Boerenerf later, to try Mu'sik, again enticed by grapes, for a lambic made with real Muscat, plus cherries. This one is a downright unreasonable 7.7% ABV and a bright shade of purple in the glass. The cherry is somewhat absent from proceedings, but otherwise it's a beast of a thing, packed full of funk and spices. An unsubtle shower-gel fruitiness leads, backed by musky sandalwood and sparks of gunpowder. There's a particular sort of greasy smoke that comes from clerical-grade incense, and this reminded me of that. It manages to be both a classic fruit lambic and also something quite different to anything else I've tasted. Such experiments aren't always successful, but they've absolutely nailed it here.

Finally from Boerenerf comes Kweeper. This is properly outré, being a blend of lambic with quince wine. Now, I'm not a drinker of the wines of the quince, so I'm not sure what I was supposed to be getting from this. There was a certain kind of subtle pear fruitiness arriving late in the flavour, but before that it's pretty straight: dry and flinty but not especially sour, and with a medium level of mineral spice. I thought I was going to get a novelty beer and was a little disappointed by how tame it was. Still, it's another superb, well-made lambic. The blendery currently sources its base beer from five different established lambic breweries and it's very clear that it knows what to do with them. For the full Boerenerf story, I recommend this profile by Breandán Kearney, published earlier this year.

But it would not do to dwell too long at one bar. My only other Belgian beer came from Borefts regulars Alvinne: Cuvée Freddy Kriekepit. This is a version of their longstanding oud bruin, aged in a barrel that wasn't quite emptied of Schaarbeek cherries when the beer went in. The aroma is typical for a Flanders red ale, with an assertive vinegar tartness and soft ripe cherry. Though 8% ABV, it's rather thin and highly attenuated, thanks to Alvinne's hyperactive house culture. The flavour offers a fun milk chocolate start, followed quickly by fresh cherry flesh, leading to a punchy tartness. It's not easy drinking, and oud bruin is a particularly tricky beer style for me, but this is certainly an interesting take on it, the flavoursome cherries really helping to take the harder edges off its hot sourness.

Other than the host, two Dutch breweries were represented. Kees is another regular, and of course strong and dark was the way to go. We begin small, with Black Potion, a pastry stout created with Hungarian brewer Mad Scientist, and a trifling 14% ABV. Plums, apricots, vanilla and maple are all in the recipe, squashed together into an indistinct-tasting jammy mélange. Where there should be a smooth and warming chocolate base, there's quite a thin beer, dark brown rather than black, and tasting more of artificial chocolate flavouring than the real thing. There's loads of booze in with this, making it smell like a liqueur and taste quickly sickly. A dry burnt caramel effect is the only nod to balance. The whole thing is a bit of a mess, and not what strong and sweet stout ought to be. Kees normally does better.

Double Fudge is a Kees standalone beer, an eisbock presented at 20% ABV -- almost twice the strength of the Caramel Fudge Stout it's made from. They're not kidding about the fudge: the aroma is saturated in it, with sweet wafer biscuit tacked on. The flavour doesn't wander too far from that, with the dessertish wafer prominent, and then coffee more than chocolate as the other half. I really enjoyed the original Caramel Fudge but they seem to have distilled all the goodness out of it, instead of concentrating it. The result tastes a bit stale or sweaty; sweetness overdone past the point of tasting sweet, or any way pleasant. I think they should have left well enough alone with this one. I expected a novelty treat but got disturbing weirdness instead.

The other Nederlander was Ramses, playing to type for the Dutch with a CBD-infused IPA called Luiaard. It's 6% ABV and exudes west-coast vibes with its amber colouring and strongly resinous aroma, even if that aroma isn't entirely hop-derived. The flavour carries lots of the beautiful peppery effect I get from the better hemp beers, but doesn't do much else. There's no proper hop bitterness and only a mild malt warmth. I still really enjoyed it, however. This is a well-made novelty beer; simple, clean and accessible, with a subtle point of differentiation from the norm.

Where next? Over to Germany, perhaps. Fuerst Wiacek were representing the Fatherland, and had something uncharacteristically traditional looking: Berliner Landbier. It's basically a Helles, 5% ABV and a pale white-gold colour; perfectly clear too. This is luxuriously soft-textured and on the sweeter side of the Helles spectrum, tasting a little like marshmallows, with a minor buttery bum note. The noble hops represent as celery, which is about as mild as they get while remaining perceptible. I hadn't intended this as a mid-session palate-cleanser, but that's pretty much what I got. No harm.

Denmark is next, and Insight Cellars appeared to be the hype brewery of the weekend. I had never heard of them, but their twice-daily special releases created huge queues, none of which I joined. I just had a taster of Sunstead: Apricot 2023, which I'm reading now is a blend of one, two and three-year-old wild ales, aged in two types of wine barrel and then given a month on apricots. "Transporting you back to the high days of summer" says the brewery; nope, says I. It's very dry, and quite acrid, with an almost gastric sharpness. I couldn't taste much else, beyond a hard and difficult sourness. The fruit seems to have fermented away completely, leaving no sunny juicy sweetness. I would never have guessed the complicated production arrangements and, on taste alone, I didn't really get what it was supposed to be. I hope the punters who stood in line for it appreciated it more than I did.

Also representing the Danes was Fanø Bryghus, from whom I tried Gorm the Old, another pastry stout, 10.1% ABV and served nitrogenated. Very nitrogenated: it's a problem with these small festival glasses that anything running foamy gives you not much else. The presence of vanilla in the recipe is very obvious from the aroma, and the cocoa beans come through in the flavour as smooth and warming chocolate tones. There aren't any spices but I still found a lovely, Christmassy, cinnamon character in the flavour as well. Dispense issues aside, this is how to do pastry stout in a responsible way, resulting in a mellow gentle giant, that's not too hot, not too thick and not too sweet.

From Denmark it's over to Sweden, and a brewery I hadn't heard of before: Mariatorgets Mikrobryggeri of Stockholm. Alto Alegre is a complicated imperial stout, blended from barrel-aged and non-barrel-aged batches, with added coffee and bilberries, reaching 13% ABV. It's densely black with a dark tan head, and even smells dark, a sticky mix of molasses and espresso. The flavour has a little fruit, but nothing I would have identified as the European cousin of the blueberry. There's some dark chocolate too, but mostly it's about the coffee. This is no standard mug of joe, or even the espresso from the aroma, but a camped-up elaborate showpiece with a similar sweetness and spice to Turkish coffee. It's utterly sumptuous and impossible to take at anything but a leisurely pace.

And while Mariatorgets was a newcomer, the other Swedish brewery is a fixture. Närke hasn't missed a year yet. They brought back a few familiar beers, but also an intriguing pair of stouts with Irished-up labels. Dubh Linn was the lighter of them, designed for the session at 4.4% ABV. And it's pretty basic: thin and dry to the point of ashen, all about the charcoal roast and nothing much else. It's fizzy too, creating a similar impression to non-nitro bottled Guinness. I suppose this sort of thing is a novelty to some drinkers, and there was certainly nothing else like it at the festival, but once my curiosity was satisfied, it did little else for me.

Doubtless acting from a sense of regional fairness, there was also Corcaigh, allegedly an imperial stout, though at only 7.9% ABV. It poured headless, and still emphasised roast as somehow the defining characteristic of Irish stout. There's an added herbal complexity to the aroma, and even a little caramel. The flavour cuts the bells and whistles, leaving just blackened toast and a green-vegetable bitterness, again with no chocolate or coffee for light relief. The seriousness works rather better at this strength than in the lighter one. The extra body and alcoholic warmth give it a personality that I can get on with. It was still far from my favourite imperial stout at the festival, however.

There will be more imperial stouts in later posts, but this journey through the north European breweries finishes up in Estonia. There should have been two breweries from the nordic state but something unfortunate seemed to have befallen the kegs sent by Tuletorn, so we were denied their pumpkin smoothie sour and stroopwafel Scotch ale. That left Anderson's as the sole Estonian representative.

I picked Catch Up! Chili from them, a gose brewed with tomato, basil and Carolina Reaper peppers. It's clear and pale, and the modest 4.1% ABV leads to a very modest flavour. I didn't find any normal characteristics of gose, but did enjoy the savoury warmth added by the tomato. The macho chilli peppers should have given it a real kick but they appear to have been used very sparingly and the result is no stronger than a pinch of paprika, right at the end. It's fine to drink, and I should appreciate it on a sensible grown-up level, but I also really wanted that daftly strong chilli burn and was a bit disappointed not to get it. Since it's not proper gose, I don't really get who this is for.

I'll wrap it up there for today. Further exploration of the Borefts Atlas of Beer continues next.