The international scene

I mentioned earlier this week that beer in Norwich tends to be predominantly local, or at least British, which is fair enough: that's what I went there to explore. A few imports did happen my way, however.

One of them, admittedly, was muled over by the Swedish delegates and shared at a lunch. This is Wit Impériale by Smedsbo Slott, about whom I know nothing and have nothing to tell you. I really should have asked one of the Swedes. I don't normally approve of messing with the basics of witbier -- good rarely comes of it. I thought at first that this was another poorly devised act of "creativity", it being 13% ABV. "A blueish tone and a scent of mushrooms" goes the brewery's official description, unhelpfully. It's definitely amber, not blue, and I didn't get any mushroom. My first impression from the aroma was that it's a hot mess, densely packed with solvent notes, ready to burn any body part placed near it. When I braved a sip, however, I found it rather more enjoyable, giving a rather jolly flavour of stewed apple and a brush of caramelised sugar. It's a long way from witbier as it is commonly constructed, but it works as a shareable sipping beer, perhaps best suited to a Swedish winter.

Hitachino Nest beer seems to have vanished from Ireland again, which is a shame. I spotted one of the range I'd never had before in the pub fridge at The White Lion, where they keep a modest but well-chosen selection of foreign beers. This is Saison du Japon, ostensibly their take on Belgian saison but using malted sake rice. That sounds intriguing but it turned out rather plain: 5% ABV and with pleasant enough notes of baked pear, but not much else. Saison should have something more interesting going on, be it farmyard earthiness or exotic spicing. This does none of that, staying reticent and respectful, like a Japanese stereotype.

Finally, at Bier Draak, I spotted a bottle in the fridge which I have been meaning to get onto this blog since it became a cult beer a couple of years ago. I'm reasonably sure that a friend from Maine brought me some Allagash White a few years before this blog started, but I had no memory of how it tasted, nor any idea why it's suddenly so popular. Now I have one of the two answers. I mean, it's a good beer. What I liked most was the smoothness: it really slips back silkily in a way that encourages serial quaffing. There are no sharp edges; none of the spikes of coriander spice or citric zest that add character to its Belgian counterparts. There's a pleasant element of candied lemon in the flavour but I got little complexity beyond that. It's not a beer for complexity, though, being more about the feels than the taste. I understand the attraction of something which places few demands on your attention and offers no challenges to your palate. Creating that without turning out something bland is an impressive feat.

Three beers from three continents, but all derived from recipes that originated in Belgium. That little country still holds an important place in the world of contemporary beer.

Norfolk enchants

In my previous post, I went meandering around the city of Norwich drinking cask beer aplenty. There was more to my weekend in East Anglia than that, so here's more of what came my way beerwise on the trip.

Following a long day of hard strategising in an extremely Dad's Army village hall in Great Ryburgh, next to the vast Crisp Malt factory, we EBCU delegates were bussed deeper into the countryside, to the smartly-kept walled farmyard (very Pajottenland) which is home to the Barsham Brewery. What they make here is mostly quite traditional and English, with a couple of nods to more modern beer types. At the neat taproom, I began on cask.

Norfolk Topper is a pale bitter: your standard 3.8% ABV, and claiming citric qualities in its flavour. I didn't get much of that, finding it primarily dry, with a honeyed sweet side and a hint of beeswax bitterness. Still, it's far from bland, and all the flavours are bold, if not exactly brashly American. It still retains lots of traditional charm, and while it's not something I would go very far out of my way for, I understand the attraction of having it as a commonplace local beer and would love to be able to boast of such.

It all went a bit brown after that. Next out was Oaks, an everyday bitter at 3.6% ABV, and possibly due a reduction to 3.4% as that's where several established bitters have gone, to save on tax. Again I picked up a dryness, which appears to be the brewery's signature quality, and here it's quite bitter too, like a very strong mug of tea. There's a little toffee from the crystal malt and a mild green apple complexity. This beer isn't about complexity, however. It's a simple and unchallenging pinter. Even I felt a bit young to be drinking it.

For a bit of welly there's Bitter Old Bustard, abbreviated to "B.O.B." on the elaborate pumpclip. Arguably, this is just another brown bitter, but I was very impressed by the beautiful limpid garnet colouring. The heft goes all the way up to 4.3% ABV, and it feels far stronger, its density accentuated by a flavour of treacle and raspberry jam. Again the dryness and tannins feature, though they're not as pronounced as in the previous two. This is all about the malt, and showcases it beautifully. It's not a coincidence that Barsham is a regular patron of Crisp's manual floor-malted product line: Maris Otter the old way.

They also had a keg stout on the bar, and it would have been wrong to pass that up. Dark Hour is 4.6% ABV with a flavour loaded up with chocolate. Actually, more cocoa, of the drinking variety: I immediately thought of scarlet tubs of Cadbury's Bourneville. There's a slightly zinc-ish bitterness from some subtle hopping and a little burnt toast emerging as it warms. It's a very good effort, simply done, but with enough going on to be interesting. I like when a brewer doesn't simply try and ape a mainstream brand, but gives some thought as to what the style is good for.

There were a couple of Barsham beers at lunch earlier in the day, and my introduction was Stackyard Hazy Pale, a kegged pale ale trying to be as down with the kids as one can on a farm in the Norfolk countryside. It doesn't really work. It's not especially hazy, for one thing; it's only 4% ABV and is astringently bitter, with sharp lemon peel as the principal flavour. Apart from that, yeah: a bang-on juicebomb m8. As an English bitter, it does pass muster, and they shouldn't really be trying to present it as anything else.

Via a bag-in-a-box there was also Stout Robin. Looking back, it seems a little odd that they have separate stouts for cask and keg. This one, too, is 4.6% ABV, and I found it a lot roastier than the other one, giving the house dryness a strong showing. Coffee dominates over chocolate, and there's a slight oiliness to it. That contributes to a long finish, with all the main elements continuing to do their respective things on the palate for some time after swallowing. I couldn't say whether this was a better recipe than Dark Hour, or simply that stouts work better on cask (even in a bag) than nitrokegged. There's a wholesome warmth to this one that left me wanting more.

Lunch the next day, back in Norwich, came with a selection of local bottled ales. The catering didn't run to glassware and everything was consumed from paper cups, so excuse the lack of my usual poor-quality beer photography.

I mentioned Mr Winters as one of the most interesting breweries I encountered on the cask quest, and there were two more from them here. Curveball is a quite straightforward American-style pale ale, orange-amber coloured and hitting the proper style points of grapefruit and resin. A touch of papery oxidation lets it down, and I blame the bottle format for that.

We also had Vanilla Latte from the same brewery, a stout where the name says it all. The aroma is very milk chocolate indeed, and then it tastes mostly sweet, unsurprisingly, with just enough balancing roast to keep it on an even keel. It's difficult to wow me with a milk stout, and I wasn't wowed by this, but I fully respect it as a beer which delivers everything it promises to.

Another previous Norfolk highlight, Moon Gazer, also had a beer amongst this lot: a ruby ale named Nibbler. I found it hard to believe that this was only 4% ABV, so warming and wholesome it was. There's a satisfying pudding-like depth to it, with accompanying dark fruit and booze-soaked cake, plus a bonus tangy bitterness providing an unexpected high note. I would have liked to have tried this on cask, where I bet it's even rounder and more luscious.

But for every two good breweries you need a wonky one. Step forward Wagtail. I genuinely didn't know that their beers on the table were from the same producer, as the branding is quite different (inconsistent, one might less charitably say). Both are strong ales in the 6.6% ABV zone.

The Devils [sic] Door Bell had some promising notes of caramel and minerals, but an over-riding off flavour of marker-pen phenols. I'd broadly guess that it was fermented too warm rather than picking up any specific infection but, regardless, it wasn't any way pleasant to drink. Donkey Kisser was even worse: there was nothing promising here, just sharp vomit acidity in the foretaste and then dirty, murky funk in the finish. I have no idea what went wrong here, or even if it was what the brewer meant it to be, but either way, I found it utterly charmless. Maybe Wagtail does better beers, but whoever picked these two sub-homebrew disasters for our lunch dropped the ball badly.

Although cask and tradition dominate in Norwich, there are a couple of pockets of Craftonia, two of them under the same proprietor. The newest is a pub -- possibly a micropub -- called Bier Draak. Continental and continental-style beers are the mainstay, and I opened my account with Ampersand's Camphillsner pilsner, served from a Lukr side-pour tap, Czech style. It's a beautifully constructed example of a pilsner, giving me vibes of Keesmann Herren Pils, with its almost creamy texture and zippy fresh-cut grass meeting spicy rocket hop notes. Even with all that going on, it maintains a pristine cleanness, tasting authentically central-European without so much as a glance at western affectations like haze or ignoble hops. Very impressive stuff from a Norfolk brewery.

So I was pleased when cans of their their west coast IPA, Double Down, were passed around. At 6.4% ABV, this is a little on the light side, and the flavour is strangely sweet and caramelly. One could argue that the extensive use of caramel malts in early US IPAs of the modern era justify the description, but it's not really what counts as west-coast these days. It does have some resins in the flavour, but they're sweetly floral, not bitterly piney. I did like the peppery aroma, and it's not a bad beer per se. It's just not quite what it's meant to be, and not quite anything else either.

Bier Draak is an offshoot of a market stall in Norwich's markets, Sir Toby's. O to live in a country where such a thing can be licensed to serve beer, but here they have a small number of taps and a bench to perch on if you want to hang around. I found Abbeydale's Pilgrim on keg, a long way from its Sheffield home. This is a pumpkin-spiced ale which does about the bare minimum, delivering mild cinnamon and not much else on a broadly sweet base. Definitely one for the pumpkin beer haters to get their money's worth from. I was neither thrilled nor offended by it. A bit of seasonal novelty is no harm.

At Norwich station on the way out, Reuben picked up a can of Brewgooder's Fonio Session IPA. I hadn't heard anything from this charitable contract brewer in an age, and don't know if they're still hosted at BrewDog. Here they are using the latest, trendy, climate-disaster-resistant grain, and have named the beer after it. Fonio, in my limited experience, imparts a distinctive fruity flavour, but here it seems to have been buried under standard American grapefruit-exuding hops, and there's a little metallic aspirin too, an effect I tend to associate with alcohol-free pale ales. Overall it's quite a normal 4.3% ABV IPA: its unorthodox ingredient and the ethical stance of the producer don't change its characteristics in any significant way.

We'll leave the last word for today with the Emperor. Emperor's Brewery is based out of Leicestershire, though the internet tells me the beer I had was brewed in Sweden by Dugges. It's a straightforward 13.1% ABV peanut butter jelly imperial porter, called Kessel Run. I had it at the end of one night, seeking something I would still be able to taste. I could taste it all right. The jelly is unmistakably raspberry, mixed in stickily with a tonne of chocolate from the high-strength base beer. I couldn't taste any peanut through that, but it wasn't lacking in flavour. The intense sweetness was hyped up even further by an incredibly dense texture and lots of boozy heat. It's a beer to have one of, ever, but I can't complain too much as I knew what I was getting when I went in. Never tell me the odds.

That wasn't the only imported beer I had on my visit. I'll cover off the handful of others in my final post from Norwich.

Norwich by pub

It was CAMRA's turn to host the autumn meeting of the European Beer Consumers Union this year, and the powers that be in that august institution picked Norfolk as the destination. It's famous for its barley, you know. The county town of Norwich also has plenty of beery attractions, including lots of very pleasant pubs. Why, you'd nearly think you were up north.

Reuben and I didn't have to stray too far from our Premier Inn to find our first one: The Rumsey Wells, owned by the Adnams brewery. I'm a longtime fan, and this was my first time drinking on their home turf. On cask, unusually, was a Landbier that Adnams has brewed in collaboration with Londoners Five Points, called Distant Fields. It's copper coloured and has what is for me the signature Adnams taste: dry tannins with immense thirst-quenching power. There's a little noble-hop character alongside this; some dried grass and aromatic herbs, but it didn't do much else to convince me it's a German-style beer. The flavour, a full body, and low-level cask carbonation made seem far more like a high quality bitter to me. That's fine. It's what I'd want in an Adnams pub.

In the opposite direction from the hotel on Duke Street is The Golden Star, a charming little corner pub which I never would have guessed is part of the Greene King estate. Here I had a first encounter with the Moon Gazer brewery from rural Norfolk. On tap was Pintail, a 3.9% ABV pale ale with Pacific hops. It poured a perfectly clear gold and had a marvellously floral aroma, reminding me of summer gardens awash with lavender and honeysuckle. The texture is a little sticky and the flavour syrupy sweet, but not excessively so. The hops don't stand up too well to this, but provide satisfactory amounts of tropical fruit, coconut and a balancing rasp of leafy green veg. It all works very well together, in a classically English way: packed with complexity but in a very drinkable format.

Reuben opted for a house beer: Greene King's Watch Room. They call this a golden ale but it looked quite amber next to the Pintail. It's a plain affair, which I more or less expected from the brewery, not that I ever pre-judge. It's medium sweet, offering a quick shot of fruit candy before a rapid fade-out to nothingness. Inoffensive seems to have been the goal here, and it has achieved it.

With a note to look out for more Moon Gazers, along we went. Approaching the city centre from the north, one comes to St Andrew's Brewhouse. This looks like quite an upmarket pub and restaurant, of the sort that would fake having its own in-house brewery. It's legit, however, offering tours and open brewdays, as any good urban brewpub should.

They brew a porter named after part of the city: Tombland. Brewpub beers aren't always perfect in quality but this one very much was. The flavour is based around delicious milk chocolate with a lacing of delicious coffee roast. That's the fundamentals covered early on, and then there's a flourish in the finish of black cherry and plump raisin. I don't know if this is a permanent part of their line-up but it should be. 4.8% ABV puts it in the Goldilocks zone of having sufficient heft but also being moreish and sessionable. I would be in regularly for it if I lived locally.

Regardless, we moved on again after one pint, having been summoned by colleagues to The Murderers. It's a weird choice for a pub theme, with its portraits of Lizzie Borden and Burke & Hare. I hoped the beer would be more tasteful. They were pouring, perhaps appropriately, Darkness Falls, a "black beer" by Oakham. I wonder why they didn't give this a more normal style designation. Fear of mild, perhaps. Anyway, it's 5.2% ABV and roaring with tarry bitterness, overlaid with medicinal herbs and old-world spices, like a Fisherman's Friend lozenge. I got liquorice too, helped by it being sticky and black. It's not mild, then, but is gorgeous. Someone at the table called it a "session Baltic porter" and I pass that assessment along to you by way of recommendation.

On the Saturday, the local CAMRA branch offered us a tour of historic Norwich pubs (they're not allowed call them "crawls"), and that began with more porter, at The White Lion. I'm a sucker for cherry in these, and went straight for Mr Winters Cherry Porter, Mr Winters being a brewery on the northern edge of the city. This is 5.8% ABV and lays the sweetness on thick, with plenty of jam and sticky chocolate sauce. While it's not awful, you do need a high tolerance for sweet beers to appreciate it, and I fully respect any drinker who has no time at all for this sort of thing. I had no trouble getting through a pint, though wasn't rushing to repeat the feat.

Reuben went for something rather tamer: Three Acres's Ruby Porter: arguably a better crawl tour-starter at 4.2% ABV. Strangely, this poured completely black, so not ruby in the least. A highly roasted aroma goes with that, and there's a similar sort of herbal effect as we found earlier in the Oakham beer: aniseed and freshly cooked spinach, though not at the same intensity. Two kinds of bitterness make it very grown-up tasting, but all the better for that.

The second pub was The King's Head. We had actually ducked in here slightly earlier and grabbed a swift pint of Shortts 2 Tone mild in the sparsely decorated front public bar. This put in a pretty good performance, being 3.8% ABV and another chocolate-centred beer with a more serious herbal hop complexity. There's was a very slightly earthy, funky quality to it, and also some lighter nutmeg spicing. I found lots to explore, and the finish lasts impressively long for such a low-strength beer. It could be accused of being too complex for a proper mild, but certainly not by me.

A little while later we were back with the crawlers tour group, in the slightly more plush back room. I picked a stout from the well-chosen cask line-up this time: Dark Horse, from Elmtree Beers. I was very impressed by how creamy they've managed to make this, giving anything nitrokegged and/or lactose infused a run for its money. It's 5% ABV, and the flavour may not be very complex, but that's not an issue when it's as well integrated as this, with a subtle dark chocolate bitterness juxtaposed with high-end praline. Pure class in a glass.

Next to it is Old Brown Mouse, a bitter from Three Blind Mice brewery. Going from the name alone, I had taken this to be a brown ale, and it does meet quite a few of the specs there, being brown for one thing, and caramel-tasting for another. There is a proper English hop bitterness in the finish, however: tangy and mineral-tasting. I probably need more than a taster to assess it properly but it seemed pretty good to me, whatever the style.

Stop three was The Ribs of Beef, a rambling, multifloor establishment with a riverfront terrace which was nice to look at but it was very much not the weather for sitting out. On the bar there was Nene Valley Brewery's Egyptian Cream stout. I had noticed this on keg back at The White Lion and was pleased to find a Real version of it here. The branding turned out to be more interesting than the beer, and it's quite a plain milk stout, managing a baseline level of chocolate flavour, rendered extra sweet by a kick of vanilla. I expect beers like this to put an emphasis somewhere, be it on the sweet candy or sharp roast, but this steers a boringly middle course. It's easy drinking but uninspiring.

That was quite a contrast to the beer two taps over: Encore by Lacons. This is one of those bitters which the brewery has daftly decided to call an "amber ale". It's a long way from caramel-centred American amber ale, however, being sunset gold in the glass and with a clean and spritzy lemon zest flavour. Light carbonation gives it a sherbet character, and there's just enough malt to balance the hops, while also giving them a base to work from. If there's an American style this should be compared to, it's the better sort of pale ale, and that's even allowing for it being only 3.8% ABV. Like Pintail, this was a very welcome sneaky hop bomb.

Our requisite wonky-walled tavern was the unspoilt Adam & Eve -- one of those that would fit the bill perfectly when a film production needs an archetypal traditional English country pub. I did go a bit modern with the beer, however: Mr Winters again, and a Mosaic and Citra pale ale called Twisted Ladder. Even though it was on cask, it has a bit more welly than is traditional, at 5% ABV, and that gives the zesty citric bitterness plenty of elbow room. Even at this late stage in the evening I was describing it as sessionable, enjoying the clean lemonade-like vibes it was giving me. New World hops don't always work well on cask, but however they've treated them here has resulted in something tasting genuinely American, but with cask smoothness thrown in too.

The pace quickened at this point, and it felt like we were only just in and out of the penultimate stop, The Wig & Pen. It's not a tied house, but they seem to keep Woodforde's ales in stock, primarily. I had their Trail Ale, an amber-coloured bitter of 4.3% ABV, created for a promotional event they run each autumn. This is primarily hop forward, though not punchy in the American way, but more sedate and English, with lemon and peach set on cool tannins, for a kind of iced tea effect: comforting and refreshing. Over 200 pubs take part in the Ale Trail event, and I reckon I could drink this in a fair few of them before getting bored. It did strike me as more of a summer beer, but I guess punters need less encouragement then to get out and drink.

We were back in the Wig & Pen the following afternoon for their Sunday lunch. The next Woodforde's beer to try was Bure Gold, another 4.3%-er, and looking quite similar to the previous one as well. But while that was dry, this is softer and fruitier, with lovely fresh notes of grape and gooseberry, suggesting New Zealand hops to me, though they're actually American. This is another beautifully constructed beer, drawing on modern and traditional elements in exactly the right proportions.

Reuben scored another Moon Gazer here: Hare Today. This is only 4% ABV but they've hopped it up much more assertively. I got a distinctive citric bite from the foretaste, and then oily hop resins in the finish. Given the low strength, it's very nicely rounded and satisfying to drink, even in small quantities. Those rabbits really know how to do hops.

But back to the previous evening, to finish our non-crawl at The Leopard, perhaps the most consciously-craft of these very cask-oriented pubs. It's still a proper cask pub, though, and I opted for Black Iris's Ngaru Nui, a full 6% ABV IPA with Nelson Sauvin hops. I thought I knew Nelson quite well, between its tropical moments and the times it tastes like the smell of a refuelling jet. This was different, with spices at the fore: herbal rocket, leading into full-on black pepper. It's odd, but very tasty, and I would like to come back to this at some point when, well, the things outlined above hadn't just happened beforehand. Suffice it to say for now, it's well worth seeking out, especially for the Nelson aficianadoes.

The weekend wasn't all cask, though. In the next post we'll be seeing several of the same breweries again, through alternative dispense methods. Don't tell CAMRA.

Black & danker

Kinnegar has added a black lager to its core range. The man in the shop told me this is replacing Yannaroddy coconut porter and, although there was nothing wrong with that beer, I'm delighted with the switch, having whined extensively about the dearth of regular-production black lagers in this country. Black Rabbit is presumably an allusion to Black Sabbath -- one of the band-member bunnies on the label is eyeing up a bat on stage. It's an approachable 4.5% ABV and more of a cola brown than properly black.

The aroma is nicely assertive, offering concentrated aniseed and freshly-laid tar. It turns sweeter on tasting, meaning the appropriate lager crispness is somewhat missing. Instead you get caramel and dark chocolate up front, with dry burnt toast arriving at the end for a clean finish. It's scattered liberally with the grass and herb effect of German hops, which helps a lot with its lagerishness. Yes, this will absolutely do. It may not be quite as dry as I would have liked but it has plenty of character while still being as easy drinking as any session-strength lager. I hope it sells well and sticks around.

On a more ephemeral note, Kinnegar's Brewers At Play series enters its fifth decade with some hop experimentation. Krush (formerly HBC 586) has been used in the next two in the sequence. Brewers At Play 40 is a west coast IPA at 6% ABV. It's quite pale in the glass: a matte yellow shade with a dusting of haze. The head is loose and fades quickly, and the carbonation is accordingly low.

I don't know if the brewery got the hops for free in exchange for putting the supplier on the label, but they've certainly used a lot of them. The aroma is startlingly punchy, pushing out a dense fug of spiky citrus and tropical notes. Its flavour isn't quite so intense, and I blame the lacklustre condition for that. The hop is aptly named, though, producing Lilt-like mango, pineapple and lime, for something that does have a soft fizzy drink vibe. Only the very grown-up resinous dank underlines that it's most definitely a beer. I deem this a successful experiment with the hop, and they've very wisely dialled back the malt part of the flavour. Its flatness is the only niggle I have.

Given the intense tropicality, I thought that Krush would do well in a hop-forward sour beer. So it's just as well that that's exactly what Brewers At Play 41 is: a sour IPA of 5.5% ABV. There's no qualms about carbonation here, it showing a generous head and plenty of sparkle. Otherwise, it looks broadly similar, being pale and slightly hazy.

Oddly, there's less of Krush's tropical side on display here, only a broad lemonade sweetness, contrasting with the base beer's significant tartness. Instead, it's the dank that dominates: foetid fruit funk and acidic pine resin. It finishes cleanly and does a great job as a zesty, sunny, thirst-quencher. Despite having a lone hop in common, and other similar specs, these two are quite different products. Single-hopped beers often lack complexity, but here Krush appears to be supplying enough for two. Mission accomplished, and I hope we'll be hearing a lot more from this new hop.

Dropping pilots

I paid a fleeting visit to Rascals HQ in October, something I really must make more of a habit of. They had two new beers from their pilot series.

#118 Scarlet's Ale is in everyone's favourite/least-favourite beer style, Irish red. She's a big girl for that, at 5.4% ABV. The brewery describes it as "simple", and I was expecting to disagree, and I do -- Rascals is not the sort of brewery that makes Smithwick's clones. The aroma is quite roasty, and there was something else going on, which I couldn't quite identify. Maybe it would become clearer in the flavour. That did all the things typical of microbrewed red, with bright and meadowy floral notes from presumably English hops; a light caramel sweetness, turning chewier and more toffee-like on warming. The darker roast from the aroma returns in the finish, as does the other thing. It's phenols: subtle, but I think I have a strong sensitivity. I'm rarely able to tell whether it's from the glass, the lines or an infection in the beer itself, just it wasn't quite right. That's extremely unusual for Rascals. There is a very decent beer here, one than transcends boring old Irish red and heads towards Scotch ale territory. Those without the unfortunate predisposition to picking up bleach notes will find much to enjoy.

Next in the sequence was something much more orthodox and without any unpleasant surprises: Pilot #119 Weisse was, I guess, created as part of their Oktoberfest line-up. I know this is merely cosmetic, but the lack of a proper weissbier glass let it down a bit -- I wasn't immediately in weissbier mode when it arrived at the table. Beyond this, it was a straight up example. 5.2% ABV gives it the right amount of heft, and there's a satisfying density with a pillowy softness. The colour is on the darker, more wholesome, side: orange rather than yellow, and completely hazy, although Rascals rarely shies away from that. A huge waft of clove opens the flavour, followed by sweet brown banana and a layer of smooth, gooey caramel. This isn't one of your crisp and summery weizens, being much more involved and sippable. It's well made, though, and I wouldn't be able to distinguish it from a genuine Bavarian example.

This arbitrarily chosen pair go to show that, even at Rascals, small-batch experimental beer isn't all candied silliness and high ABV lunacy. They're quite capable of keeping to established parameters, though taking them in interesting directions.

Pull the other one

The JD Wetherspoon Autumn Beer Festival arrived in mid-October. I managed to spend some time at it, both in the central Dublin pubs, and abroad. Here's what I found, beginning at The Silver Penny on Dublin's Abbey Street.

Adnams brewed a version of Central City's Red Racer Session IPA for the event, identical in strength to the Canadian original, and a charming clear copper colour. It's thin and unfortunately rather soapy. There's a bright fruity flavour that's a little like candy but a lot like a bath cosmetics shop. That makes it a trickier to drink than I'm sure was intended. It's not fully offensive, but whatever the Adnams process has done to the Mosaic hops didn't suit me.

Siren was a surprise to see in the line-up. I didn't think JD Wetherspoon was their bag. Anyway, they'd sent Mesmerist, looking every bit like a New England IPA -- pale and cloudy -- but only 3.4% ABV. The aroma is lightly lemony, and although it's light-bodied, it's not unpleasantly watery. In the flavour there's the rather aggressive bite of low-ABV heavily-hopped beer: a herbal, mineral bitterness with a solid dose of dank resins, despite it not feeling at all oily. Malt isn't much of a feature, but there's a dry crisp base behind the Citra, Eclipse and Mosaic hops. I rather enjoyed it. While it's a bit of a one-dimensional hop explosion, it remains drinkable and fun.

I was wondering why the name of the Hogs Back beer, Notorious PIG, was familiar, and it's because Bullhouse used it for a porter back in 2017. This is a bitter, broadly, though badged as east coast IPA: 3.8% ABV and a crystal-clear medium gold in the glass. The flavour doesn't give up much, but what's there is good: tropical mango and lychee. In keeping with the advertised style, bitterness is not really a feature, although it cheats slightly by having a super-quick finish where it's not really given a chance. The wateriness grates a bit after a while, so this may be a bit too dull to have a session on, but a half was rewarding.

"Brewed at Banks's" was never an especially encouraging thing to see on a collaboration pumpclip but it took on an extra poignancy with the announcement of the brewery's permanent closure. For their last bow, Orihime, with Japanese brewer and Wetherspoon festival veteran Toshi Ishii. It's a pale ale, 4.3% ABV, and while there are some pleasant and exotic fresh hop notes of soft peach and zingy lime, there's also plenty of distinctively English tannin and dried orange peel. There's also an unfortunate soapy bitterness which doesn't sit well with any national characteristics. In toto, it's assertive, punchy and distinctive, but not terribly enjoyable. Bye Banks's. I'm sorry we didn't part on a happier note.

I don't think I've seen Yorkshire brewer Rudgate at the festival before, and I definitely didn't think a fruit beer called Mango in the Night was their sort of thing. Here it was, though: a 4.5% ABV pale ale with mango. There's a very slight haze to the orange colour and a nonspecific funky ripe fruit aroma. The texture is thin and the condition lacking, for an overall watery mouthfeel. No mangoes explode on the palate, nor any of the promised Citra hops. Instead there's a vague candy fruit effect and what tastes to me like a rasp of papery oxidation. It would appear that yer da has attempted to do something cool so the young folk will be impressed, but has failed. Give him a pint of ruby mild and take him home.

St Austell is also being adventurous, with Fresh Pot. Disappointingly, the name references only coffee (1970s drug puns? Really?) It looks well: jet black with a proper stout head the colour of nicotine-stained teeth. No freshness manifests in the aroma but the flavour is beautifully caffeinated, tasting rich and oily, perhaps more akin to a luxurious coffee cream confectionery than the actual drink. While it's mostly sweet, there's a perfectly poised balancing roast and I genuinely can't tell whether that's the underlying stout or the coffee additive. Fine coffee complexities of cherry and raisin emerge as it warms. This is a marvel of the genre, bringing together all the great stuff about coffee and stout, and staying true to both.

Session 1 ended with Salem Session IPA from Batemans. This was the first not to feature Mosaic, but still goes all-American with Cascade, Amarillo and El Dorado. It's clear and amber-coloured, 4.1% ABV and has a decently full body and proper bitterness. In fact, you wouldn't know American hops were involved at all. To me it tasted like a classic English bitter, leaning towards the brown side of the spectrum, with notes of tea, fruitcake and jaffa orange peel. The tannic bite is its signature feature and makes it well worth seeking out, especially if such things are not part of your normal drinking life. If Batemans wanted it to taste American they have failed abysmally, but it worked for me.

Over at Keavan's Port, it was apps not taps on day one: only Townshend Dinner Ale was listed online but more was pouring. Townshend, from New Zealand is not a brewery I know, and the beer was brewed at Hook Norton. Despite the historical style name it's a bitter: golden and 4.2% ABV. Presumably bored of kiwi hops, they've gone all English with Challenger, Northdown and Target. And yet there's quite a new-world vibe about it, with fresh and zesty lemon, building to a grapefruit bitterness with a little softer peach and melon for balance. While not a powerhouse of flavour by any means, it has the soft-spoken decency of good English bitter. I would expect as much from Hook Norton.

The big surprise for Wetherspoon-watchers this time around was Burning Sky's Aurora, a pale ale of 5.6% ABV. Straw-coloured, said the booklet but my pint was distinctly amber; rose gold at best. There was a certain saison-ish quality to it, which shouldn't really be surprising as it's what the brewery is known for. Pear, dried fruit mix and, oh yes, straw all feature in a dry flavour profile. The strength gives it a nicely long finish, still propelling the goods long after swallowing. And despite this, it's still an accessible cask ale, and probably perfectly sessionable. For €2.60 a pint, it did very nicely indeed.

Over in Norwich, about which much more very soon, The Glass House had a great selection of festival specials on, and I started with Conwy's Born To Be Mild, a dark mild, of course. It's not a brilliant one, even though it has lots of the flavour elements I look for: sweet plums and dry toast. The problem is that there's not enough of either of them. It's all a bit too, well, mild. There was plenty of room for putting more character into this 3.8% ABV ale, and that they haven't is an opportunity lost.

I picked up another of the international collaborations here: Who Dat?, a golden ale created by Urban South of New Orleans and brewed at the generally-reliable Bateman's. Something had gone badly wrong here, and I assumed it was at dispense: a massive bleachy phenol kick making me think of glass washing fluid. On bringing it back to the bar it was replaced without fuss, though the beer wasn't taken off. I've subsequently had reports from drinkers in other pubs that this is just how the beer was. That can't be right. Did nobody taste it before it left the brewery?

The substitute was Sapphire Spoon, brewed by Titanic to toast 45 years of Wetherspoon pubs. This was an amber-coloured bitter, and rather a plain one, with basic honey and biscuit notes, but no real hop character. At least it's not sticky or gloopy, finishing nice clean with an almost lager-level of crispness. It's all of 4.7% ABV, which means it could easily have been oversweet with crystal malt, but it isn't. I don't think I've had many of their bitters, but I thought Titanic generally made better beer than this.

There's a vast multi-floor Wetherspoon at Stansted Airport, whence I flew home. On the day, it was serving the final international collaboration: All Dog Alert, an oatmeal stout by Yazoo of Nashville, here brewed by Oakham. At 5.5% ABV it's at the upper end of the strength scale, but it uses it well. Thanks to a big body, aided by the oatmeal, this is a rich and satisfying pint, with chewy, glutinous cereal and a sizeable dollop of chocolate sauce, plus some bonus soft caramel or sticky toffee. For all that dessert busyness, it's quite accessible and easy drinking. Vey much accessible enough to warrant a second pint before departure. It took long enough to find it, but this was the beer of the festival for me.

Unsurprisingly, stout and porter were the standouts. The cask format shines brightest in the dark. Plodding through all the cheap, samey bitters to find them is worthwhile to find the good stuff.

Follow-ups

My September trip to the Netherlands yielded a handful of beers which I didn't get round to drinking while travelling and which therefore came home with me. Let's see what's in the suitcase.

Kees is a brewery I trust with dark beers, and I thought they would be fine on black IPA. This is Midnight Cascade, one I picked up in a supermarket in Leiden. It's definitely a little on the pale side, being brown, not black. The aroma is quite a muted mix of dark roast and flowery hops, neither especially pronounced. At 5.6% ABV there should be more going on, but the flavour continues in this very understated vein. What's there is good: it's not dull or characterless; there's an attractive Turkish delight bouquet of rosewater, lavender and peppercorns, accompanied by a light topping of milk chocolate. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem arises from an irritating lack of bitterness. Good black IPA would throw in a piquant bitterness, of fresh red or green cabbage, or even classic American pine. This has none of that, its lightly sweet complexity simply fading off the palate, leaving only watery fizz behind. I'm not averse to a floral-tasting porter, but this isn't even one of those, lacking any proper richness. There is an excellent flavour profile in the make-up of this beer, but it needs to be bigger, louder, and given a challenging bitterness to make it really shine. 

It was the beginning of Halloween season at multipurpose retail chain HEMA as I was leaving Amsterdam. Their range of Lowlander beers included Pumpkin Weizen, a bottle of which I picked up for funsies. Spiced orange, cinnamon, ginger and cardamom are all listed on the ingredients of this 5%-er, after the pumpkin, of course. It doesn't look much like a weissbier, lacking the head. It smells orangey but not spiced, with a citric hop element too, more akin to a pale ale. We're definitely in weissbier territory with the flavour, however: there's a smooth and slick banana quality to the foretaste which couldn't be anything else. But the other stuff? There's not so much of that. Two years ago I criticised a different HEMA-acquired beer from a different brewery for being far too spiced, to the detriment of everything else. This is disappointingly bland. I know that pumpkins add little to no actual taste by themselves, but the selection of add-ons should have been enough to give this some novelty value. I hunted around the flavour and found nothing but the fresh orange zest and the summer biergarten weissbier vibes. It's a perfectly enjoyable beer, but by reneging on the promise of silliness, it left me feeling tricked, not treated.

Finally, from the shelves of Bierkoning in Amsterdam I procured Stout of the Box, an imperial milk stout by Rauw Brouwers from north Amsterdam. I was expecting this to be sweet, what with it being 10.5% ABV and brewed with caramel as well as, presumably, lactose, but it's bitter. The predominant flavour is a herbal quality, all oregano and rosemary, plus some cola, tobacco, and a rub of sticky liquorice. It's a lot more complex than I was expecting it to be, and definitely not a one-dimensional booze-and-sugar bomb. There's actually something a little old fashioned about its tarry, vegetal quality, in a very enjoyable way. The aniseed lingers long on the palate, giving it an almost medicinal quality. It certainly made me feel better. I'll be looking out for more from Rauw next time I'm in the 'Dam.

I know this small set is in no way representative of Dutch brewing, but they do make interesting beer, even if it's not always brilliant.