You had to be there

When it was mentioned that 2025 was the fourth annual Mullingar Wild Beer Festival, I was taken aback. Can it really have been that long? (yes it can) This edition suffered a fit of last-minute hiccups when three of the six attending breweries pulled out on the day, citing various reasons. So we had to make do without The White Hag, Land & Labour and Ballykilcavan. Those guys can owe us.

Of those that did show, Third Barrel only brought one beer, which was extra-appreciated. It's called Princess Peach, and is an experiment in what happens when you match the sweet stonefruit effect that certain Brettanomyces strains bring to a beer, with actual peach purée. I didn't think it worked very well, but I'm told by Kev the brewer and owner that I'm wrong, which is fair enough. For me, the Brett got lost. The beer tasted very sweet, and very similar to what you might get if you simply added peach extract to a plain blonde ale. The wild side, the fact that it was also aged in a Chardonnay barrel, and the sizeable 7% ABV were all missing from the taste. It's juicy fun, but as a complex beer for insufferable chin-stroking connoisseurs (ie the whole point of this festival) it was lacking.

Everyone else's first beer was a new one from Wide Street: Cuvée Spontanée, so I had that next in case it ran out. The brewery says it's in a gueze style, though was pouring it on cask, a format generally reserved in Belgium for straight lambic only. That left it a little on the warm and flat side, which gueze shouldn't be, but it got the other basics correct. Brettanomyces is indicated in a lightly peachy aroma, while the flavour is decently sharp and tangy, with a kind of green-apple acidity to the sourness, enriched with an odd but not unwelcome smear of butteriness. It finishes cleanly, making for some very easy drinking. I assume this will be out in bottled form in due course, and it will be interesting to see how it develops with a bit of age. Some extra complexity would be good, though it's hard to fault it as it was served on the day.

Finally, there was Otterbank, a Donegal brewery which no longer has any distribution in Dublin. By way of apology, the management sent me away with a selection of bottles, so I got to try a few of the offerings in both draught and small-pack formats.

The first of these was Messers, an ale brewed with heritage barley and oats, fermented with locally harvested wild yeast for three years in an ex-Chardonnay barrel. I'm guessing the aim is to create something historical-ish, though without reference to any established style of beer. It pours a honey colour -- much paler than in my terrible photograph --  and has a very oaky aroma, with sparks of mineral spices. Perhaps in keeping with its pre-modern sensibilities, it's quite flat, with only a very faint sparkle. The white wine is to the fore in the flavour, with elements of gooseberry and lychee, plus a heaping helping of vanilla and an odd seam of coconut. The sourness is quite assertive, so it's not one for beginners, but there's a balance, too: a sweet side from its fruity characteristics and the significant gravity (finishing at 6.6% ABV) which helps it stay drinkable. It probably resembles straight lambic more than anything else, and as such is highly enjoyable.

Next is Matriarch, which is described as "our most complex release to date", being a Flanders red ale, given five years of ageing in Armagnac barrels, finishing at a formidable 9.9% ABV. That strength is immediately apparent from the first sip. It's heavy with caramel malt and lots of fortified wine: port or dark sherry, though the aroma is distinctly all brandy. There's a very clubby mix of flavours, incorporating cigar smoke, oak and old leather, making it very much a beer to sip. Surprisingly, it's not hot, however. Neither is it especially sour: you can just about tell that there's a Flanders red at the base, but not one of the more extreme ones. Think Rodenbach Classic. Come to think of it, this is a better hacked-about Flanders red than most of the ones Rodenbach has come out with. What the wild side does especially well is give it a clean finish, much like the previous beers, not letting the weighty richness become a burden on the palate. This is an all-round classy affair, and another example of getting full value out of a very complicated production process.

Not at the festival, but I had a bottle later, was Welcome To Muff, billed as a session IPA and 3.5% ABV. There has to be a twist, and it's that it's a raw ale, brewed without boiling. That technique tends to be used for beers without hops, because you won't get the proper bittering effect without a boil. However, this adds Galaxy dry. I had no idea what to expect from it. In the glass it's a dusty-looking amber colour and quite hazy. The aroma is fresh and zesty, with the orange-shred marmalade character I very much associate with Galaxy. The body is light and the carbonation soft, which puts us in English cask bitter territory. I assumed there would be some pinch of wildness in its make up, but no: other than the accent on the hops, it's quite neutral. I see this working well by the pint, as a high-quality, unfussy, drinking beer. I would never have guessed the ABV is as low as it is: it gets away with it the same way the English brewers do, with a beautifully subtle complexity. If this was an experiment, it paid off handsomely. The 33cl serving size is the only cause for complaint I have.

Back to Mullingar, then, and as always there were a handful of kegs from breweries abroad.

Echoes of Summer by Little Earth Project was left over from last year's gig. It's a mixed fermentation beer of 5.3% ABV with a mixture of summer fruit in it. The pour was headless and the beer dark brown, with an aroma of spices and dark fruit, a little like HP Sauce. The flavour is quite sharp, and there was a certain staleness going on which made me think that the inter-festival maturation hasn't done it any good. On the plus side, there's an enjoyable richness to the taste, bringing red grape, raisin and fig. I wonder if it had more zing originally, because that's what's missing from the picture.

Cyclic is a specialist wild beer brewer in Catalonia, and they sent a grape ale called Skin Contact. This deeply purple 6.9%-er started life as a saison before the grape skin was added. The result isn't sour, but has a strong Bretty funk, of the farmyards and horseblankets variety. The grape must have gone in in bulk because there's a lusciously dense, weighty, fruit side. I got quite kriek-like vibes, with the grapes adding a cherry jam sweetness, contrasting with the more serious drier funk. It works incredibly well, and sits nicely in between the flavour profiles of wild beer and natural wine. Fascinating, but delicious too.

From the same part of the world comes La Salvatge, and they had another peach beer, called La Viu-Viu. This is a blend of two spontaneously-fermented ales which was then aged in red wine barrels with the peaches. It's 6% ABV and a cloudy orange colour. There was something a bit off about the fruit in this, tasting too sweet and slightly rancid. There's a waxy, bitter quality to the base beer, which adds to the harshness. This is a challenging creature, and while I appreciated the depth and complexity, it's too much for me.

That leaves what I thought was going to be the star of the show: Boerenerf. I didn't recognise the beer on sale from this newcomer in Belgian lambic, badged here as Gueuze: Pineau des Charentes Barrels -- the brewery might have a different name for it. I didn't even know what Pineau des Charentes was, learning it's a fortified wine from western France. OK then. The beer is rather sweet for a proper geuze, and I guess it's the barrels which give it a tropical character, suggesting mango and passionfruit in an odd but not unpleasant way. Though sweet, it's not gloopy, and has a gorgeously crisp Champagne sparkle. The sourness is assertive without being aggressive, and when it warms there's a growing incense spice in the taste. As such, it performs as a lambic ought to, and confirms further my admiration for this new producer.

While it's a shame we didn't have three more breweries on the day, I fully used up my afternoon on the beers that were there. Thanks as always to the organisers and brewers.