The last hurrah

Last month saw the final Borefts Beer Festival at the De Molen brewery in Bodegraven. I first visited here in 2007 and attended the festival most years since 2011. The brewery was sold to Dutch brewing giant Swinkels in 2019, its founder Menno Olivier departed subsequently, and earlier this year, the owners decided the site needed more investment than they were willing to give it, and the brand isn't selling in the quantities they want it to, so this is the end of the line. It was a surprise that they held a final festival at all. Not that there was anything too maudlin about proceedings: it was the same raucous two-day party as always. Let's get stuck into the beer.

Looking for something exotic but not too strong as my opener, I picked one from new-to-me Estonian brewery Tuletorn. It's a tomato gose, called Tulitomat. It does look, quite simply, like tomato juice, and the effect was enhanced by the addition of chilli flakes and black pepper at serving. The spiced juice really dominates the picture, and the beer beneath, which is still just about detectable, may as well have been anything. It seemed to me like a very plain kettle sour, rather than anything more elaborate with coriander and salt, though I suppose the salt helped the tomato juice taste like tomato juice. Anyway, it's inoffensive and not terribly exciting beyond the basics of the spec. Including more spice in the beer itself might have helped it make more of an impact.

The same brewery also had a Triple Chocolate Stout on offer, coming out at 10.5% ABV and created in collaboration with a chocolatier. That meant I was surprised to find it isn't very chocolatey. I guess they're trying to be subtle about it, but there's no point in a hefty beer like this. It's dense and very black with a dark brown head, giving off a serious aroma of strong coffee. A surprise vegetal bitterness opens the flavour, which then turns sweeter, with notes of toffee, cherry and raisin, but no specific chocolate, that I could detect. It's fine, and probably more than passable in most circumstances. This is a festival where big dark beers are good and plentiful, however, and this one didn't quite meet the standard.

Lervig sent a few beers from its Rackhouse barrel-ageing project, as well as the manager of the project, Shane, whom some round here might remember as the head brewer at Rascals in the early years of the current brewery. Rackhouse Imperial Chocolate Porter was a very good example of the point I was making above. This is 12.3% ABV, and the chocolate leaps out in the aroma, right from the get-go. The flavour continues with a heady, bitter dark chocolate taste, set next to a burn of bourbon spirit. A fully complementary hint of cinnamon spice finishes it off. This is smooth and warming luxury, exactly what one would want it to be, with no off flavours, or hard edges or compromises. Beautiful.

The other one I tried, Rackhouse Peacock, had the slightly daft designation of "pastry Russian imperial stout". I got a strong blast of espresso from the aroma here, followed by flavours of predictable coffee, vanilla, and milk chocolate, with a surprise pink-marshmallow sweetness tacked on. It's nevertheless surprisingly tasty, and I think balance is the key: it doesn't go overboard with any of the flavours, doesn't turn saccharine or cloying, and nor is there too much heat from the 13.5% ABV. Weird but balanced is tricky to pull off, but this manages it with typically nordic efficiency and thoroughness.

The other Norwegian at the event was Nøgne Ø, a brewery that used to feature somewhat regularly on this blog, but not for many years now. I eschewed their stronger offerings and picked Fatøl at just 4.7% ABV. It purports to be a Vienna lager but is a bit too sweet for that, full of marmalade and orange jelly notes. There's a certain Kellerbier roughness but none of the biscuit I would expect a Vienna lager to show. The colour is slightly off too: hazy gold rather than a warm amber. It's certainly interesting, but I'm not sure I would class it as good. For one thing, as a self-styled draft beer, it's too sickly for anything bigger than sipping measures.

It's back to Estonia next, and festival regulars Pühaste. I just had one of theirs: Momentum: Cherry, a Baltic porter with cherries. They boosted the strength higher than usual for the style, to 12% ABV, and that means it loses the clean lager character of Baltic porter, even if it technically is one. It's more like an imperial stout, with lots of chocolate studded with dried cherry pieces. While not overly sweet, there's no real bitterness, just a wafer-biscuit dry side. Subtle notes of raisin and blueberry appeared towards the end as it warmed. It's good stuff, and one of those beers where its best to leave style strictures to one side when drinking it.

We finish the nordics with one beer each from two Swedish breweries. Närke is a Borefts fixture, and never missed a festival in the whole run, as far as I'm aware. There are usually only minor changes in its line-up, and the new one for me this year was Schwartzer Hahn, a dunkel lager. For 5.6% ABV, this was quite thin, though it looked well: a proper amber-brown. Its flavour is a simple amalgam of burnt caramel and liquorice, neither especially strong, resulting in an easy-going dark lager that's unfortunately a bit boring. It's something of a technical exercise, this one: well-made but unexciting.

Their fellow Swedes, Ten Hands, had a sour beer called Romulan Ale, brewed with blueberries, blackcurrants and raspberry, though not actually blue, more a cherry red colour. It's 8% ABV and the recipe includes vanilla, but it doesn't taste strong or especially sweet. There's a touch of Ribena in the foretaste, before it turns sharp and tangy. A little chocolate goes along with the acidity, helping balance the beer and ensure it stays drinkable. Doubtless this is intended as a somewhat silly novelty beer, but it's very nicely done, all the same.

Pinta from Poland is next, and two quite contrasting beers. After Hours: Tropical looks like a fairly basic fruited sour ale, using pineapple, mango and passionfruit in the recipe. It has hidden depths, however. Like the beer above, it's properly tart, with a flinty mineral aroma and a puckering sour foretaste. A light layer of juicy tropical fruit has been placed over this, with the pineapple being the most discernible element. A wisp of capgun smoke spice finishes it off. It's a marvellously mouth-watering experience, and was much more enjoyable than I expected.

As well as two sour beers, Pinta brought two imperial stouts. I tried Nobility, an 11% ABV example, with added hazelnut and cocoa nibs, aged in a bourbon barrel. For all that, it's not a very remarkable beer. The coffee-liqueur aroma is very typical, and the flavour doesn't venture too far from this, with no identifiable contribution from either added ingredient, nor even the whisky barrels. It's quite hot and harsh, lacking the mellow smoothness I would have liked to find. Perhaps barrel-aged imperial stout isn't really Pinta's forté. As with Tuletorn's effort above, there's a standard at Borefts which this beer didn't meet.

Finally for today, Alvinne, another Borefts regular. I've not been much of an admirer of this brewery's work over the years, finding their wild-fermented beers in particular to be unpleasantly harsh and vinegary. So I skipped those and went with an imperial stout and a quadrupel instead.

The stout is on the left: Heatwave, a collaboration with La Pirata and fellow-Belgians Circus. It's one of those classy and classic imperial stouts, all about the fundamentals and completely free of gimmicks. So there's a smooth and slick texture, exuding comforting boozy warmth. The flavour is centred on chocolate, with additional notes of coffee and raisins. I'm sure the reasonably modest ABV of 10.5% helps with its all-important balance. It's not the sort of thing I associate with Alvinne, and if it marks a new direction for the brewery then I approve.

The quadrupel is a rare example of one brewery celebrating another's birthday. Brouwerij Kees is ten years old, and Alvinne brewed A Kees of Figs & Raisins to mark the occasion, and to remind people how Kees is pronounced. This has been aged in a white port barrel and is 14.5% ABV. Dark brown with a fine beige froth, the wine influence is very strong in its aroma. Not so much in the flavour, where a hint of booze-soaked cherries in the finish is presumably where it comes in. Before that, it's all delicious chocolate cake, though oddly lacking in typically Belgian fruity esters. No matter; this is another superb beer, luxurious and indulgent. I'm not sure I would recognise it as a quadrupel, but I've had too many sub-standard ones to care. This is how to do it.

That's enough for today. Tomorrow, we'll check what the English-speaking nations brought to the festival.