Capital idea

A beautiful country with a thriving beer scene, Poland is one of my favourite places to go drinking. I was delighted when the European Beer Consumers Union, to which I am a delegate, chose Warsaw as the venue for its regular autumn meeting this year. I had never been to the capital city and here was an opportunity to get that ticked off. On the downside, I didn't get to see much of it, for reasons I'll get into, but it's high on my list for a return visit and some proper exploration.

PINTA, the giant of Polish craft brewing, has a couple of pubs in the city, and we started in one of them. Unsurprisingly, it's in that global-Brooklyn style, all bare brick and tacos. My opener was one from local client brewer Magic Road, called Only Dry Stout. It's a sessionable 4.5% ABV and nicely roasty to begin, but this builds as it goes to become ash-dry with a kind of instant-coffee staleness added in. Its problems are compounded by a mis-step on the sweet side, which is somewhat harshly saccharine. Taking a broader view, it's not a bad beer, and I'm being overly-critical because it's a style I'm very familiar with, and know what I like. They've made (or commissioned) an OK stout but I think it's over-engineered and trying to do too much. That's craft beer for you, I guess.

I noticed approvingly that Poland still has the slightly daft, playful notions of the early craft era. There is still, for example, plenty of pumpkin beers this time of year. Dyniamit! is PINTA's: 6% ABV and the appropriate shade of pumpkin-skin amber. It's light-bodied and has a fully appropriate brown-sugar centre. But the cloves. It is absolutely saturated in clove, to the point of tasting medicinal. That hits hard right at the front of the flavour and builds to create the anesthetising sensation of rubbing raw cloves on one's gums. There's no point even asking if there's any real pumpkin in here: there could be scorpion peppers and coconut essence, and you still wouldn't taste anything past the clove. It's... Christmassy, and quite silly, but I still enjoyed it, even if nobody else in the room did.

For the next round, Reuben and I went all-traditional. For me, Forever Young, a grodziski. I tend to associate this light and smoky type of wheat beer with summer drinking, but I don't think that's the reason I didn't enjoy this one much. For one thing, it's weak and watery, which is maybe forgivable at only 2.6% ABV, but plenty of other examples do it better. And for another, any smoky subtleties are drowned out by an inappropriately loud blast of hops. I don't know which varieties were used, but definitely something in the Sabro or Sorachi Ace school. Normally that's not a problem either, but the beer doesn't have the density to carry off strong hopping and ends up tasting plasticky as a result. I got more used to it towards the end, though any enjoyment was as a hop-forward table beer rather than the grodziskie I wanted.

It seems you're allowed take liberties with grodziskie in Poland; I suspect less so with the other national style: Baltic porter. Reuben's Porter Bay has only been around since last year but feels like something of a flagship. The flavour profile is absolutely classic, a tightly-woven tapestry of cocoa, cola spices and herbal liqueur bitterness on a clean lager base. This is still a sipper, and you can tell it's all of 9% ABV, but nothing about it is sticky or sickly or any of the other traps that strong dark beers can fall into. This is one for drinkers who demand complexity from their beers but have no truck with any of the mad-ingredient shortcuts that breweries (including PINTA, in fairness) indulge in.

Mid-October put us on the cusp of pumpkin beer season and Oktoberfest season, and there was still a festbier from PINTA pouring, called Prost! It was my last beer of the night and I don't have a whole lot to say about it. It is to-style, being a weighty golden lager of 5.8% ABV. There's little to no hop character and a grainy, white-bread base. Extra malt and possibly some quirk of fermentation has given it a kind of marzipan enrichment which didn't quite sit well with me, and that's as complex as this one got. It tastes like it was designed and brewed without enthusiasm, to fill a seasonal niche on the pub blackboard.

The following morning, the first day's meeting convened at Browar Warszawski. This is a large brewpub-restaurant in what I'm guessing was once the cellar vaults of an old brick building but is now in a lower courtyard of a modern office and entertainment complex. Heineken Poland has its offices above, though I don't believe it has any business connection to the brewery. Presumably the execs or their minions drink here, however.

The main bar had tap badges in place for about 20 different beers, and there are fermenters enough in the onsite brewery to support production of them all simultaneously, but only a handful were available on the day. As is my wont, I started on the Pils. It is a very pale example, looking watery, with a medium level of haze. That's presumably the reason for the soft texture and resulting lack of crispness, so it's very much on the kellerbier end of the Mittleuropa lager spectrum, rather than pils-proper. Where it excels is the hopping: snappily fresh noble varieties with a restrained bitterness make it more of a celery and lettuce job than spinach and cabbage. Despite this, the finish is long so you have plenty of time to enjoy it. Had I spent longer here I could very much see myself drinking more of it, and as such it's bang on the money for a brewpub house lager. It might not get people in the door, but it's quite likely to keep them there.

Marcowe is Polish for Märzen, and Warszawski's is another murky one, though amber this time. It's strong at 5.7% ABV, and very sweet with it, becoming difficult to drink after the first few sips. The sheer chewiness of it could be considered a plus point, for those who like their lagers big, but it didn't suit me. There's also a dried fruit complexity, all sweet sultana and citrus peel, giving it a certain fruitcake character. This is unrefined and wholesome material, but too sticky and too much work to drink for my taste.

On a quick tour through the brewing side, we got a taste from the tank of one beer which wasn't on the bar but frankly should have been. Chiemny Lager is a dark lager which they describe as closest to Munich dunkel in style but I found it more Czech in character. Although it has the dark brown colour of either, it's only 4.5% ABV. The aroma is espresso and molasses and, despite the heapings of coffee flavour, isn't particularly bitter, but has a porter-like richness and smoothness instead. I'm sure the natural carbonation had plenty to do with how good it tasted, and it's a shame that the brewery kegs rather than tanks its beers, even though production and serving happen on opposite sides of the same wall.

The final beer here was Pszeniczne: don't ask me to pronounce it, but I do know it's Polish for "wheat". You see it on menus a lot. This one is presented as a weissbier and is on the murkier bright-orange side of that scale, with any Bavarian-style credentials ruined by its lack of a proper head. It's also only 4.5% ABV, which is weak for weiss, and there's not much banana character, which suited me fine. Instead, peach and lychee notes come through: a fruitiness which isn't to style but is lots of refreshing fun. Like the lager I started on, this is an accessible easy-drinker; unfussy but with plenty of interest. Good weissbier is rare; good brewpub weissbier is exceptionally rare; and I think that by tweaking the format sufficiently, Browar Warszawski has created one that's much more enjoyable than most.

The second day's meeting was in the back room of a bar called The Taps. The taps at The Taps were pouring fifteen beers, of which I had time to try two. Zierna Obiecana's Faza is a milkshake IPA -- not a style I choose with any regularity, but once in a while is OK. This 6.5%-er turned out to be a particularly good one. I'm not at all sure if they put any lactose in it, and that may be why. It's hazy but clean with it, lacking both heat and dessertish viscosity. Instead it's all juicy and tropical, and I picked out pineapple and passionfruit as hop effects before discovering that the recipe includes pineapple and pear. There's real coconut too, and this comes across subtly yet definite. I enjoyed its cleansing sparkle, as much for the pleasant surprise as the sensation itself. If we're now in a world where milkshake IPA is largely gloop-free, I may need to reconsider my stance on it.

I hadn't noticed that my second one, Černý Kalcifer by Křikloun was an import, but later discovered it to be Czech. The brewery doesn't have much to say about it, other than it's a dark ale of 5.2% ABV (12°) and uses six different malts. Turns out I don't have much to say about it either. It goes big on the roast, with a serious porter-like dryness being dominant. Sweeter dark malt effects don't really feature much, and there's an almost spicy herbal bitter side to add some complexity. Mostly it's full and filling, and I guess is designed for session drinking in winter. It's no kind of improvement on good Czech dark lager, though. Perhaps the brewery only made it this way as a novelty.

Across from where we stayed was a theme pub called The British Bulldog. One glance told me it wasn't the sort of place that would be worth going to. A second glance, however, on day two, revealed a sign on the exterior for "Tyskie z Tanka". Tyskie is the local flagship of Asahi, who also make Pilsner Urquell and promote it heavily in tank form. This was the exact same system of horizontal copper tanks, and even though the beer had been tapped a week and a day previous, it was still pretty good, if lacking in the complexity of Urquell.

Always on the lookout for a tick, I noticed the bar was also selling Książęce IPA, also by Tyskie -- I'm actually not sure that the Bulldog had any British beer at all. It was obvious that this came from a brewery more used to lager, from the clear golden colour to the precisely clean flavour. It's not lacking in hop character, though it's sweet and perfumey, with a zesty citric aspect that doesn't exactly spark with freshness, but isn't unpleasant either. There's an old-fashioned and resinous character to this which means it's unlikely to be mistaken for the work of a young and thrusting microbrewery, but it works, and doesn't taste like corners have been cut.

That's all the pub action you're getting. As it happened, the Warsaw Beer Festival was taking place, down at the Legia Warsaw football stadium, and most of my drinking time was spent there. I'll tell you about it next.

Styling it out

It would not do to be still drinking Oktoberfest lager in November, so I'm getting this one under the wire before the clocks change. Third Barrel Fest Bier was co-created with TwoSides, presumably mainly for the Oktoberfest celebrations at the TwoSides pub, Brickyard. But they've canned it too, saving me a trip to Dundrum. On the label we get AI's smudgey rendition of an old-timey Oktoberfest. I detect a certain old-timeyness about the beer too, which is amber coloured and a little hazy. That slight darkness translates to a fabulously rich malt flavour. Pale versions of this style, including the Munich classics, can be a bit syrupy, but while this one is a proper 5.5% ABV and sweeter than a standard Helles, it's done in a wholesome brown-bread way, making it extremely satisfying to drink. I see wheat on the ingredients, and breaking whatever daft German rule forbids that could have been the killer move. The noble hops have been laid on generously too, balancing all that bread with clean green salad leaves. I horsed through my 440ml in jig time. Maybe I should have gone to Brickyard for a Maß after all.

The brewery is playing fast and loose with the style category on its next one too. Harmonics is a double IPA, one of the unadvertised hazy ones, but only 7.5% ABV. Still, it looks well, being pale orange and with a properly thick and lasting head. The aroma offers a blast of the west coast, giving orange peel and grapefruit flesh, though with a spice from the yeast residue that's almost Belgian. It also lacks the fluff of New England-style. Presumably a function of the strength, it's quite light, built around citrus and fizz. There's a thin seam of vanilla, but that's as New England as it gets. The central flavour is all hop: the spice-forward grapefruit and pepper, telling us that whatever varieties they've used, they're fresh and added in quantity. Some lighter pineapple and peach arrives in the finish. The double designation doesn't really stack up here. It's a fairly easy drinker, avoiding any extremes of bitterness or heat, and anyone looking for serious punch will be disappointed. But as an IPA of whichever sub-style, it's top notch. Everyone should have a local brewery that turns out beer like this on the regular.

Quality work here from Third Barrel. The beers are very different from each other, but they've been designed and brewed to be exceptionally tasty in their own ways. Can't argue with that.

Cease pumping

My coverage of this year's JD Wetherspoon autumn beer festival is a two-parter, beginning with Monday's post. Today's concerns the event's second week.

At Keavan's Port, that began with the JW Lees offering, Born To Brew, a 4% ABV brown bitter. I wasn't expecting much, but what a stunner. There's not a trace of twigginess here, the lightly roasted malt notes serving only to dry the beer out and enhance its exceptional drinkability. Tannins are involved in that too, giving echoes of a nice strong mug of black tea. Sitting on top are freshly zesty hop flavours, thanks to classic American varieties Cascade and Centennial. It's beyond tea-with-a-slice-of-lemon and into flavoured ice tea or lemon sherbet. Above all, this is a spectacularly refreshing thirst-quencher, though there's sufficient complexity to hold your attention, too. English bitter at its best.

Young Henry's of New South Wales brewed a version of its Newtowner Pale Ale at Elgoods, with the ABV reduced to 3.5% from the original's 4.8. It poured rather lifelessly from the tap in The Silver Penny, which is a shame because the antipodean hops have given it a classic Aussie flavour profile, brimming with soft mandarin and fruit chews, balanced with a harder edge of lime peel and grapefruit zest. But none of it is as bright as it should be because the very faint sparkle isn't sufficient to propel the taste or aroma. Instead, after the initial citrus fun, it finishes watery. The low gravity also contributes to a harsh bitterness which needs a bigger malt base. All this beer did was make me want to try the proper version of it, before Elgoods started dicking around with the recipe. I bet it's lovely.

From Conwy, Chestnut Brown, a brown ale. The milk chocolate aroma tells us they're on the right lines. The flavour continues in that direction: all chocolate at first but with a growing background coffee roastiness that prevents it being sweet and gloopy. It was another fairly flat one, but that's less of an issue here because the malt dominance and smooth mouthfeel suit it well, aided by sufficient gravity to finish it at 4.8% ABV. This isn't an exciting or daring beer, although brown ales are rare enough that brewing one at all is perhaps a courageous decision. This is a nicely executed example, however, leaving little to be desired.

Next up is Purity, and my first beer from this Midlands outfit since it became part of the all-conquering Breal Group last year. It's a session IPA called Free Rein, 4.5% ABV, a slightly fuzzy golden, and hopped with Eureka, Mosaic and Simcoe. The Mosaic seems to be in charge as the primary flavour is its light melon and white plum notes. It's certainly easy-drinking and sessionable for sure, and -- hooray -- there's a fully hop-appropriate sparkle. But it's lacking in depth and, with cask ale, sessionability is never a justification for that. The malt base is barely present, while the initial hop buzz doesn't carry all the way through to the finish. It tails off in quite an unsatisfactory way. I couldn't tell if it actually has an aftertaste or if that's the residue from the Newtowner two beers ago. I get what they're trying to do here, and it is an accessible number, even if it tastes weaker than the ABV. But it needs a balancing poke of bitterness. Perhaps blending it with Newtowner would have given me the beer I wanted it to be.

With India, Australia and the USA, there was a bit of a faded-empire vibe from the international collaboration line-up (Wetherspoon: who knew?) but France also featured, and Britain didn't used to own most of that. The brewery is Nice's Blue Coast, and they sent Monsieur Paul Reilly to Bateman's to brew Blue Coast Ambrée, an amber ale of 4.8% ABV. It's on the dark end of amber, and maybe that's why the first flavour I noted was Ribena: a hedgerow berry tartness. Very dry and woody tannins follow soon after, while the initial fruit acidity turns sweeter and more jammy. I thought there would be more of dark malt's toffee and caramel but it's a very dry affair. I appreciated that it's different to the rest of the festival line-up, but that raw dryness made it a bit of an effort to drink.

At the same strength, two pumps over, Atlas: a blonde ale by Lancaster Brewery. Amarillo, Citra and Jester give this a resinous new-world aroma, though the flavour pulls things back to be altogether more English. There's a delicate peach and bubblegum fruitiness up front, turning more earthy and serious in the finish. It has a full and bouncy mouthfeel, so isn't one of those golden English ales trying to pass as lager. As it warmed, the bubblegum turned to fabric softener so I was glad there was only a half in front of me. It's a good example of its style, though, offering flavour complexity and a kick of bitterness, getting the balance exactly right. It's not one to sit over, however.

The next two I think were tapped the wrong way round: the amber one should be the amber ale and the pale one is, I'm guessing, Maxim Cashmere. I like a bit of Cashmere hop and thus was bursting with it, all rosewater perfume, pomegranate and peppercorns. It is not as other hops. The base beer is nicely full-bodied for only 4.3% ABV, helping carry the hop fun. This is fruity, flowery and spicy all at once, and highly enjoyable.

With its dramatic boys'-action-comic pumpclip, Evan Evans Storm Runner brought some drama to the bar counter. This is a 4.4% ABV amber ale, and quite a plain one: light to the point of watery and only vaguely fruity, with no more than hints of lemon zest and soft melon. It does have a tannic dryness, so is nicely thirst-quenching, but there's not much to hold one's attention while drinking it. The malt is inappropriately absent for the style.

My festival finisher was a pint of blonde ale by Orkney Brewery, called Wave Breaker. I think this is the right beer: it's certainly blonde. There's a light biscuit malt side, with a pleasant grain crunch, and then a sweet bubblegum or candy hop flavour. It all seems quite playful and innocent, except for a persistent pithy bitterness which at first I took for a leftover from the previous beer before realising, half way down my pint, that it's part of this one. It really adds an edge, and gives the beer some welcome bonus complexity and balance. It's still a blonde ale, but bolder and more distinctive than most. Like Lancaster Atlas above, it isn't chasing the lager profile and is very much its own charming thing.

I called a halt to proceedings there. Overall, not a bad showing, the curve having a handful each of beauts and clunkers, but lots of very decent drinking beers in between. And I appreciated only requiring the services of Keavan's Port and The Silver Penny to keep me occupied.

Next, the line-up for October to December's guest beers has been published, with more to explore in there.

Start the pumps

The latest twice-annual JD Wetherspoon Beer Festival ended just over a week ago. Performance always varies among the Dublin branches, and exactly which of the 30 festival beers are on in any pub at any given time is difficult to follow, despite the company having a well-designed system that should make this easy. But that's all part of the game. I will give both central Dublin branches credit for keeping the beers turning over sufficiently that I didn't have to look further afield.

Keavan's Port even put two beers on a day early. First out was Autumn Sun, brewed by Bateman's under the "Salem Brew Co." label they use for their more craft-style offerings. It's a thin border, however, because it tasted pretty traditional to me. That's not a criticism: Bateman's does traditional well, and the soft toast-and-marmalade flavour of this 3.9% ABV golden ale bears that out. It's all done with Centennial hops but there's no brash American bitterness, just tangy sherbet and satsuma, with a slightly earthy mineral edge which I associate most with classic English hops. For a single-hopped beer, there's plenty going on, and I suspect a good old house yeast might have something to do with that. Hooray for tradition.

The other early starter combined two of my least favourite things in beer: rum flavouring and Innis & Gunn. Committed but wary, I opted for a half of Innis & Gunn Spiced Rum Cask. This is 5.5% ABV and somewhat murky, with some sizeable yeasty bits bobbing around in it. The aroma is an innocent dry cereal effect, so nothing untoward there. That's the main part of the flavour too: malty, wheaty breakfast cereal; wholesome and doubtless a great source of fibre. I'm delighted to report it doesn't taste of rum, spiced or otherwise. I get milk chocolate, dried fruit, and a drier woody tang, which at least shows that some oak was involved. It's not brilliant, and I think it's too sweet for a full pint, but it might easily have been much worse. This is Innis & Gunn on its best behaviour.

The first of the international collaborations came at The Silver Penny, in the form of Effingut, a golden ale brewed at Hook Norton with the Indian brewery of the same name.  It has cardamom and coriander in it, because India, I guess. It is indeed golden, and pilsner pale with it. The coriander is sweetly present in the aroma, making it smell very like a witbier. It's not one, however, and the absence of a balancing citrus zest is felt in the flavour. Behind the herbs there isn't anything very much, just a basic 4.3% ABV blonde ale. If coriander's soapy quality is a problem for you, then definitely avoid this: I'm not sensitive to it but could still taste it coming through. This is a gimmick recipe which I suspect takes more of a cue from the British curry house than actual Indian brewing. It's different, but not especially good.

Beside it, OPA, or Otter Pale Ale, from Otter Brewery in Devon. It's quite an exotic hop mix, with Amarillo, Calypso, El Dorado and Summit, suggesting new-world fruity fun to come. The aroma has lots of orange candy but the flavour isn't as sweet as expected, with a pleasantly dry rasp at the centre. Around it, there's oaty cookies, tart jaffa segments and a pithy bitter finish. It's on the darker side of golden and I think the bit of dark malt they've used really helps balance the hops. It's also an absolute powerhouse at 4.5% ABV. I don't know how flagshippy this is, but it's an excellent recipe for one: highly accessible while also boldly flavoured and properly interesting. St Austell's Tribute has a similar effect on me, and it's maybe not a coincidence that they're from the same corner of the planet.

I didn't know what to expect from Rudgate Grapefruit Paradisi. It's a 4.5% ABV golden ale but the brochure doesn't say if actual grapefruit is involved. I assume they do have actual grapefruits in Yorkshire by now. It smells hot and savoury, a unappetising mix of tagine and old sweat. The flavour is sharp and tangy at first, but then that saline and savoury factor kicks in, giving vibes of laundry detergent and stagnant bathwater. It's grapefruit-sharp, certainly, but it's not pleasant to drink. I don't know whose foetid idea of paradise this is.

The next one of the international collaborations to show up was AleSmith IPA, the California brewery bringing its act to Oakham, so I expected some solid hop action from this. It's the second-strongest on the list at 6% ABV and is a dark shade of golden. There's a lovely resinous aroma with some lighter floral highlights. The flavour sits somewhere in the middle: citric rather than piney, though on the extreme end, with lime and grapefruit. It could easily have turned out harsh but the strength helps balance it, making it delightfully punchy rather than difficult. This is definitely on a par with Oakham's well-known hop-forward ales and I hope they enjoyed having an excuse to boost the strength. I very much enjoyed drinking the result.

Hook Norton brought a mild to the party, called Pick Me Up. It's a mere 3.4% ABV but properly black and smells fabulously roasty, of dark toast and scorched caramel. There's not a whole lot else going on here, but I did like how full-bodied they've made it, given that extremely modest strength. There's not a hint of wateriness and no compromise on flavour. After a few minutes to warm, there's a layer of hedgerow fruit apparent, albeit subservient to the caramel, which gives it a certain amount of complexity. Overall, though, this is a dark beer designed for by-the-pint session drinking, a remit it fulfils beautifully.

Nethergate's Harvest Stout had been on early at Keavan's Port and was horrifically bleachy and phenolic there. I had wondered if the batch was spoiled, and luckily its reappearance at The Silver Penny the next day gave me a chance to check. I still can't say whether it had been a bad cask or poor line cleaning, but the proper beer does not taste off. The problem was so severe, however, because the beer itself doesn't taste of anything much. The aroma is its best feature, with dark chocolate and a little floral lavender. It's thin, even for only 4% ABV, and the flavour is dry and grainy: the dark scrapings of overdone wholemeal toast. It's not bad, especially after it's allowed warm up, but next to the mild it seemed a little dull.

Salopian is always a welcome brewery to find on the taps, and their festival offering was a bitter called As One Door Closes. It's a zesty one, with an aroma of real lemon turning sweeter, to lemon drops and cold medicine on tasting. It's heavier and sweeter than I would have thought for 4.2% ABV, and less complex for a beer made with Simcoe, Citra and Idaho 7. Still, simple and all as it may be, it's beautifully clean and very refreshing. My half pint was gone in short order, and likewise my thirst.

For more considered sipping next, I picked Root and Branch, a black IPA from Oakham. This one is 5% ABV, and Simcoe and Citra feature again, alongside Mystic and Earnest. It's properly black and smells tarry and bitter. A lack of bright hop topnotes means it tastes largely like a stout, with more of that burnt tar bitterness and lots of dark grain roast. The texture is thick and chewy, coating the palate and leaving a piney resin residue behind. It's a good beer, and I like the uncompromising heft of it. But black IPAs are best when they have more of the bright and zesty new-world hops, and Oakham haven't gone that way here. This is for those who prize bitterness above all in their black IPAs.

That brings us to about the halfway mark of my foray into the festival. Part two follows next.

Buddy up

Collaborating with other breweries is like so 2015. Wicklow Wolf has recruited partners from alternative industries for two recent additions to their Crossbreeds series.

For the first, Born to B Wild, it's not too much of a jump to collaborate with Crosby Hops. When breweries do this, I can't help wondering if highlighting the hop merchant means they get the relevant proprietary ingredient at a discount. It's Amarillo® CGX® (yes, two ®s there) in this Extra Pale Ale, along with Elani™, and open-source Centennial. True to the style, it's the bright pale gold of a light pilsner and almost perfectly clear, not looking like the full 5% ABV. The head retention is excellent, adding to the attractive visuals. Its aroma is fresh and zesty with lots of the American citrus character which pale ales had long before the corporations claimed ownership of the hop varieties. From the first mouthful it becomes apparent how deceptive the appearance is. While it looks light and fizzy, the carbonation is low and the malt base big and chewy; almost syrupy. It's not syrupy, though, it's just a nicely rounded pale ale which happens not to look like one.

They haven't really gone to town with the hop flavour. I mean, there's plenty of it there, but it's basic, in a perfectly pleasant way. The same zesty bitterness sits up front and it becomes pithier and more intense later on. The malt reasserts itself after a moment, so the fade-out effect is of lemon candy or cordial. For all that it's in a new beer style with whizz-bang lawyered-up hop stuff, this seemed to me like a simple and classical sort of American pale ale, of the kind Wicklow Wolf set out to bring to the Irish market back in 2014. That's not a criticism, only a suggestion that you adjust your expectations accordingly on approach to this very tasty beer.

Collaborations with cheesemakers are rare, at least on the beer production side. For Mór Bier, Wicklow Wolf has enlisted the Gubbeen people to help. Traditional bock is the description, and from the 6% ABV and red-amber colour, I reckoned I knew what this one would be. The aroma is a little sweeter than expected but has beautiful caramelised autumnal notes to match the appearance. There's only the faintest trace of hop greenness.

The first thing that's apparent from the flavour is that it's a lager. While there is a significant caramel presence in the flavour, it's not set on a base of heavy residual sugar but is lager-clean and even a little crisp. The burnt sugar flashes in the foretaste but fades promptly, while the middle displays the herbal noble hops. Unusually for me, I would have liked more of this; a bigger bitterness which I think the beer could have carried without being thrown off balance. Still, it's nicely done and is fully true to what amber bock ought to be, with none of the hop harshness I get from the paler ones, and fun hints at the dense dark pleasures of doppelbock. Most of all, it is a perfect beer for the drawing-in evenings we're heading for. I don't know that it's especially well-suited to cheese, but there's no harm finding out.

A brewery was involved in the next Crossbreed: some outfit called Cloudwater in England, and it's a hazy IPA called As the Crow Flies. I deem it medium hazy, a translucent sunset yellow rather than full custard. There's a herbs and spices lacing on the fresh and fruity tropical hop aroma, done with a combination of Krush, Idaho 7 and Galaxy, with some significant amount of late additions, I'd say. My guess is that Krush is the star of the show, because the flavour centres on that lovely fruit punch effect I've come to associate with it. The sweet side is well balanced by a kick of limey citrus, while there are only faint contributions from the haze's grit and garlic. Though 6% ABV, a light body means it's quite drinkable in quantity, and the flavour isn't too intense to prevent that. Both breweries have substantial experience in the haze space, and their expertise is apparent here, particularly in the choice of hops.

Not that Wicklow Wolf needs collaborators to keep it on top of its game, but these three were particularly good releases. Maybe the other guys in the room had something to do with that.

Given lemons

These two arrived into my local supermarket at the same time recently, a little late for high summer but very welcome on a warm day in early September. Both are radlers, from two of Germany's big national brands.

I'll take them in ascending order of ABV, beginning with Bitburger Naturtrüb Radler, at 1.9%. It pours as one would expect for naturtrüb, looking like a pale cloudy lemonade, just short of ice and a tiny parasol. The aroma promises refreshment, with a hint of quenching lager crispness next to the very obvious lemon syrup. It has the stickiness of a fizzy soft drink, but at least it's not vapid and watery. The beer side is missing from the flavour, however, with the flavourings providing all the sweetness and bitterness that's perceptible, leaving no space for malt or hops. Given that Bitburger Pilsner isn't the most flavoursome lager in the first place, that probably shouldn't be surprising.

The ABV goes up to 2% for Warsteiner Natur Radler. This one is clearer: a see-through murky yellow, so I hoped it might have a bit of beer character. Not really, it turned out, and again I think that's at least in part down to the base beer's basic blandness. They did get the body right here, though: while it still tastes primarily like a soft drink, it's light and fizzy like a lager. The lemon element is restrained, tasting more like a classy bitter-lemon mixer than something aimed at children. For the use-case these beers were put to, this one performed better. I might even have considered a second, which is unusual for me and sugary drinks.

These were cheap, and fine to drink, but I still don't get the appeal.

Autumn at the Gate

Stuff your summertime hoppy pale ales. The Open Gate Brewery went full harvest mode as soon as the leaves began to turn brown. Here's what I found when visiting recently. 

New on tap in early September was Saison, seemingly quite a straight-up example: 6% ABV and hazy blonde. Like any sane person, I like these dry and this one isn't, particularly. It opens on an enjoyable spicy note, blending black and white pepper, but quickly adds fruit to the picture. Peach and apricot is the menu author's take on it and I don't disagree, but would add Golden Delicious apple and a more exotic lychee element. It doesn't turn sickly, the body is light for the strength, and there's an almost-dry grainy rasp in the finish, so I give this a pass. It's not top-notch saison but is still a welcome example of a style in short supply.

For Oktoberfest season, we got Oktoberfest Märzen, though not one which would pass muster in Munich. It's kind of a murky brown or dark amber colour, and with that there's a somewhat rustic brown-bread fuzz. That adds a sweetness which is pleasant, but not the same sort as you get in the genuine article. The slightly syrupy quality in the aroma and which emerges towards the end of the flavour is more accurate, but doesn't make it a better beer. The finish is what saves it, with the sticky malt clearing away quickly and a ray of positive hop bitterness offering a cheery valediction. Maybe a half pint wasn't the way to test out a beer style meant to be consumed by the litre, though I maintain this one would be hard work, and that's only partly because it's 5.6% ABV. The sweetness, of different sorts, is laid on too thickly.

Autumn means harvest, and Open Gate gave us Catherine's Harvest, a pale ale with blueberries. Catherine who, you ask? Is it the saint who owns the parish next to St James? We are not told. We do know that this is an experimental grain bill, using 30% raw barley. It's 4.5% ABV and a pale orange shade. There's a sweet-sour aroma which is presumably down to the berries but isn't attractive, adding an unwelcome note of vinegar. I also perceived a definite thinness to the body which I've decided to blame on the reduced malting, and the sharpness from the aroma reappears though is muted. The blueberry aspect unfolds from this, becoming jammy and tart. Without a big enough malt base, however, that slips over into being acrid and stomach-curdling. This experiment didn't work for me. Maybe beer recipes are more than 70% malt for a reason.

A Rauchbier follows, the beer style on which so many ambitious breweries founder. This one almost matches Schlenkerla's 5.6% ABV, at either 5.4% or 5.8%, depending which menu you believe, though not its colour, being another fuzzy ochre job. The aroma is promisingly subtle; just the sizzle of the bacon, not the whole rasher. Its flavour leads on caramel, but turns quickly to smoke. That's still fairly subtle compared to other examples, without a trace of acridity or unpleasant fishiness. It's the easy-going, crackling-adjacent flavour of bacon crisps rather than real meat. It works very well, maintaining drinkability while still having plenty of smoke character. Not as much as the wizards of Bamberg, of course, but this is a fun and interesting alternative approach. I could absolutely drink this one by the litre.

A bit of whimsy to finish: Open Gate's opening line-up in 2015 included an Imperial Dunkel Weisse, an experiment to see how Guinness yeast would work in a German-style wheat beer, of all things. Since then, science has told us that Guinness yeast basically is a phenol-positive German-style wheat beer yeast, and now I can't help wondering if the brewers already knew this. We've had a slight name change, to Imperial Dunkel Weizen, and a minor boost in ABV to 8.6%. It's an appropriate dark brown colour and smells warm and caramel-smooth, even when poured ice cold. The roast hits first in the flavour, intensely dry, like black toast. That's followed by softer banana, sweet marzipan and a hint of clove spice. I'm not usually a fan of dunkelweizen, but this melds the good sides of dark beer and wheat beer well, doubtless assisted by that luxurious ABV.

Well played Open Gate, and happy birthday. Since Guinness side-projects tend to have a very short life, it's nice to see this one still running, even after craft beer hit the skids as a mainstream offer. Keep 'er lit.