Belfast bookends

Today's post is a short companion piece to Monday's run-through of the beers I drank at the Jubilate festival organised by Boundary Brewing last month.

Glider efficiency meant we were some minutes early for the gig, and fortunately the Boundary taproom across the yard from the venue was open and serving. It seemed appropriate to open my account for the day with the beer created to commemorate the event: Jubilate, brewed by Boundary in collaboration with nine festival participants from the island of Ireland. It's a pale ale of 4.5% ABV and hazy in the way that Boundary likes to make them; as do most of the other breweries involved, in fairness to them. Everyone must have brought a big sack of hops to the kettle because it is absolutely saturated in them, giving the beer a harsh and hot garlic character which I wasn't keen on. This clashes with another haze cliché: thick vanilla custard. There's a little orange juice lurking in the background, but I wouldn't classify the beer as juicy, the way the brewery does. It's bang on for the fashion, is absolutely the sort of thing that Boundary has a name for, and it will have fans for sure. For my part, I didn't think it was awful, but definitely isn't my kind of vibe. It's at least part of the reason that there weren't many IPAs in Monday's blog post: I reached my haze quota early.

We had a couple of hours between kicking out time after the early Saturday session and the train home from Belfast's shiny new Grand Central Station. It would have been rude not to drop in at The Crown while passing it, and we shared a snug with some Americans, upset that their stew arrived partially frozen. Pfft. Tourists. I had a pint of overly sweet English cask cider and an excellent one of Timothy Taylor Boltmaker, and on we went.

There was still time at the station. Time to exercise some morbid curiosity about the new BrewDog Belfast, situated on the mezzanine above the station concourse and about which I have yet to hear a good word said. It's a poky little space, all width and no depth (make your own BrewDog joke here) but it does serve White Hag's Little Fawn on draught, so can't be all bad.

Nothing so sensible for me, however. I spotted one potential tick among the BrewDog beers so opted for a pint of Wingman Tropical Storm. I quite liked the session IPA this is based on, and indeed found it to have a happy tropical flavour from the hops. Here, they've boosted the ABV to 7.2% and boosted the tropicals with mango and passionfruit extract. Or at least, they've tried to. The hop side gets utterly drowned out in a sticky confection of fake-tasting syrup. The sweetness is at that needle-bending end of the scale where it starts tasting hot and metallic. I will say the alcohol is well hidden, but it's hidden by something horrible. Still, I finished my pint and caught the train anyway. I doubt I'll be making BrewDog Belfast a regular stop on visits to the city, but I am glad that it's there and that it serves drinkable beer, something I'm increasingly glad of as the multinationals flex their muscles. Better this than somewhere pouring mass market rubbish.

The above is, of course, not representative of Belfast as a beer drinking city. (You can read some better recent experiences here, for example.) Boltmaker is already a magnificent beer, but it takes on an extra level of reverence in this sort of context.