Herd impunity

I'm long past due getting some more Western Herd beers on here. I happened across these two recently, though both have been around for a couple of years already.

Presumably aimed at the local crowd, County Clare pale ale was a long way from home when I picked it up in Mace on the South Circular Road. This is a pintable 4.2% ABV and attractively clear and golden, like pale ale used to be. The hops are Citra, Simcoe and Idaho 7 which had me expecting a west coast punch to the face, but the aroma is subtle and more tropical than citrus: a fruit salad, heavy on the pineapple and white grape. So goes the flavour too, the grape quality strong enough to make me wonder if some Hallertau Blanc sneaked into the kettle late on. Depth and complexity are not really features, however, and after the initial juicy pop it all fades away cleanly. There's a deft trick in the way it's refreshing and very easy drinking without being watery or plain. I got through my 440ml can quickly and was ready for another straight afterwards. The flavour profile, branding and general quality makes this a beer that every pub in the Banner should be clamouring to pour.

A poorly-rendered AI image of a circus strongman introduces An Beilgeach Láidir -- The Strong Belgian. This is Western Herd's take on Belgian dark ale, a powerhouse at 8.3% ABV. Though a dark red-brown in the glass, it's surprisingly clear, showing amber when held to the light. The alcohol is very apparent from the get-go, starting with its rum-and-raisin aroma. It doesn't taste Belgian to me. Though it is sweet and fruity, there's a cleanness at its centre, devoid of the estery characteristics of Belgian fermentation. I don't mind, and quite like it. I get a sense of English strong ale, or barley wine, from a continental European brewer which isn't copying the style in the hop-forward American way. Fruitcake and chocolate meet trifle and summer berries for a multidimensional dessert character, plus a little port or madeira oakiness. The carbonation is low, and while the body is suitably dense to accentuate the sweet side, it doesn't get cloying. Instead it has the easy going nature of a light Burgundy, or one of the paler kind of Italian red wines. While it works as a winter beer for sure, I could see it having a summer application also.

Two very different beers, here, but the quality is superb in both.

Mos’ Delft

Following on from Monday's post about New Year in The Hague, I also did a mini pubcrawl in Delft, the charming historic town at the city's edge. I've been here a couple of times before, but always seemed to miss its top-flight beer destinations. This time I was better prepared and ticked off a couple of new venues.

Delftse Brouwers plies its trade at Delfts Brouwhuis, with an extensive draught list of seemingly brewed-in-house beers. We started dark. For me, on the left, is Plagende Pestvogel (charming), the black IPA. It's properly black with a tan, stout-like head of fine bubbles. The aroma is a magnificent mix of rosewater and dark chocolate, just how I like 'em. 6.9% ABV gives it a heavy and smooth texture, another stout-like feature, but the flavour doesn't follow that. It's flowers and chocolate again, a little sweeter than the aroma suggested, so milk rather than dark. There's some candied red fruit too: strawberry and raspberry flavouring, finishing dry. More of a roast bite would have been nice, likewise a proper citrus bittering, but as a sweet example of the style, it does an excellent job. Any halfway decent black IPA will do, in this era of scarcity.

I was intrigued by an imperial porter called Tsarina Esra, remembering that De Molen made one such, way back in the day. Turns out its creator moved from there to here and brought the recipe with him. It's still 10.1% ABV. The aroma gives little away, just a hint of syrupy dark sugar. Syrupy goes the texture too, with a matching molasses and treacle flavour, laced with strong coffee and medicine-cabinet herbs. A bite of black liquorice finishes it off. For all its thickness and heft, there's not a whole lot going on in it. Herself noted that it's a good base for barrel ageing, but is rather plain in this unaugmented form.

Round two brought me Bubbelende Bonobo, described as a champagne tripel, which made it enough of a curiosity for me to order. It's pale gold and mostly clear, and strong for tripel at 11% ABV, presumably due to ravenous champagne yeast. The aroma is oddly sweet, with ripe banana, which I wasn't expecting. That stays in the flavour, though it's definitely dry, sort of like those desiccated banana crisps. Behind this lurks a spirit heat, burning a clean blue flame, and the finish is dry and cracker-crisp. It's an odd beast, missing the comforting soft warmth of tripel, and presenting sharper, more angular, fruit flavours instead. The crisp finish is another twist, and presumably is what the brewer set out to achieve. Full marks for creativity, then, but it's not great as a tripel. Clean around all the banana and you just make it more sickly and cloying. This is an interesting experiment, but not a successful one, in my opinion.

From the bottom end of the guest beer list comes Iced Coffee Connaisseur [sic], Moi? by Dutch Bargain, an 18% ABV icebock with cinnamon and pistachio. Fun fact: 25cl is the default measure; you need to specify (we didn't) if you want the saner 15cl pour. This is stout-black and smells like the inside of a Mon Cheri chocolate liqueur sweet: phwoar! The flavour continues fully in that line. Sweet and slightly salty milk chocolate, hot cherry liqueur, a bonus marzipan richness, and a dusting of drier cocoa powder. It's so rich and smooth I need to upgrade the analogy from supermarket Ferraro candy to high-end rum babas by the sort of Belgian chocolatier who operates from a shop with their name over the door. This is a magnificent confection and, while it's sticky and slow-drinking, there were no complaints about the measure received.

At Café de Wijnhaven I was caught off guard by 't Preuvenemint, number 6 in the Wijlre's Specials series from AB InBev's Brand brand. They've advertised it as a grape ale, so it was a surprise to get a big hit of rasher smoke from the first sip: the summer wildfires must be really affecting the crop here. The flavour is dominated by the harsh, kippery smoke of many a poorly-conceived rauchbier, and I found that difficult to get past. The texture is soft, and I detected a similarly-soft fruit character in the distant background, but I would be hard pressed to pin grape on that. This is not subtle, and was hard work to drink. The texture is horribly thin for 7% ABV, leaving a finish of fishy water that I doubt anyone enjoys. While a brave move for a multinational, it's not a good beer. Advertise the smoke up front, for one thing. I still would have ordered it and been disappointed, but it might have saved some civilians an unpleasant experience.

Back in The Hague, I also had a smattering of beers for hotel-room drinking: especially useful as the weather worsened ahead of the regional shutdown which extended our trip by one extra day and one extra country.

It's not often I find a new beer from Amsterdam's Moortgat-owned 't IJ, but here was IJndejaars, a 9% ABV winter ale they have apparently been making for years but which I'd never seen before. The visuals look a bit wet and weedy: a thin amber colour, topped  by a mere skim of shortlived bubbles. It looks cheap. There's a plums-and-raisin fruitcake aroma, while the flavour is dryer, adding breadcrust and black tea, for a kind of barmbrack effect. It's as light as tea, too, and I would never have guessed the strength: there's no chewiness to the malt nor warmth from all that alcohol. This is plain fare. I remember when clean beers were not 't IJ's forte. Since the takeover, they've added a lot of polish and poise to their recipes, but this one takes it a little too far. I could have done with some amateurish, home-brew-like fuzz in it: strong and dark beers don't need precision in the way lighter and paler ones do. This feels a little too corporate and processed, with a lack of warmth which is fatal to any purported winter beer.

A random supermarket pick got me Jopen's Triple to the Tropics, an IPA of 9.5% ABV, though an innocent hazy yellow colour. The promise of a "tropical fruitbomb" is fully delivered upon. The flavour here is a sugary mix of concentrated mango, passionfruit and pineapple, with the booze element strong enough that it could pass as a sticky Mediterranean liqueur. And that's it, really. No bitterness is mentioned, and none is delivered. Sweet fruity booze is your lot. On the one hand, I quite enjoyed the clean, one-dimensional, simplicity; but on the other I thought that if beer is going to go for the big numbers strengthwise, shouldn't there be a complexity of flavour which comes with that? It's quite an exotic delight that a triple IPA was being sold in a supermarket at all: that's a sign of a mature beer market. At the same time, this is supermarket-grade triple IPA: good, but basic, with no individual characteristics. If someone had thrown it in the shopping basket because it's the sort of thing I like, I wouldn't object, although it's not something I would have purposefully chosen for myself again. Good on Jopen for continuing to brew such adventurous crowd-pleasers, and selling them to the big retail multiples.

Via The Hague's specialist beer off licence FreeBeer, one from Espiga. Black Break is pitched as an Irish stout. For that, it's a broadly correct 4.5% ABV, but it's heavy for it, feeling properly creamy from the can. It's a bitter chap, combining an assertive dark roast -- ristretto coffee and high-cocoa chocolate -- with the green bitterness of boiled cabbage and spinach. There's no sweet side to balance that, and I don't think it's missed. This is Irish stout just the way I like it: austerely bitter with fully tasteable old-world hops; dry all the way through, with a spark of galvanised steel. Mwah! I don't think I've ever encountered this sort of profile at such a low strength; I didn't think it was possible, but I'm all in favour of more if it. Irish brewers have something to learn from what the Catalans have done here.

The Rott brewery of Rotterdam is so pleased with its name, it appends it to all of its beers. I only had the one: Rott.Eclipse, an imperial stout. Nothing fancy has gone into it or been done to it, and it's 10.2% ABV. The flavour centres on big chocolate, smooth and luxurious, and perfectly balanced between sweet and bitter. There's a little coffee and a hint of cherry fruit too, the extra complexities borne up on a heady cloud of alcohol vapours. That's really all I have to say about it. It's a classy number, and very typical of the kind of excellent imperial stouts that Dutch breweries produce. It's a beer to properly relax and unwind with.

Rotterdam was one of the cities we passed through while making our escape via Brussels. For train drinking, I brought Bird of Prey from Uiltje. This is another of their IPAs, 5.8% ABV, and constructed very much in the old-school American way. Which is to say, it's almost clear and smells of concentrated citrus: grapefruit and lime. The bitterness hits first in the flavour, a tongue-pinching pine resin. The pithy fruit gives it a zingy middle, fading gradually to reveal the malt base, leaving quite a retro caramel finish. The brewery makes no claims to west-coastism, and indeed the can copy mentions hazy and tropical. It is sweeter than a full-on west coast IPA but I think the flavour profile is closer to that than New England. That's a good thing, and it's an enjoyable beer. Not one to be overlooked just because it's ubiquitous and produced by a big brewing conglomerate.

That was it for this trip. I recommend The Hague and Delft as beer destinations, though I'm now more wary than I was about going there in the depths of winter. Being snowed in, even for a day, isn't as much fun as it might sound.

Make your own excitement

The Hague gets a bit of a bad rap among the cities of the Netherlands. The administrative capital has neither its own university nor the hoards of tourists which spice up life in the likes of Amsterdam, Utrecht and Leiden. I quite like that about it. There's proper culture and history, good shopping and food and, most importantly, plenty of places worth drinking in. I spent a few days in town over New Year, with time to amble into several of its interesting beer venues.

Top of that list, for me, is Haagsche Broeder, which I first visited back in September and was keen to come back to. There were a few new ticks on the taps, beginning with coffee stout Inproc. This is 6.5% ABV, looking terribly continental in its stemmed glass with a thick café crème head. The aroma is sweet, coffee combining with milk chocolate and hazelnuts. The flavour balances that side with bitterer coffee roast, some dark toast from the roasted grains, and a hint of leafy green vegetable hops. I was braced for it being packed full of slick Belgian-style esters but they've kept it clean, finishing on a jolt of real espresso. I've got so used to coffee being used with vanilla and other sweeteners in pastry stouts, that finding a plainer, more straightforward, example was a welcome discovery.

Prior was the brewery's first beer, described as a double porter and 8.5% ABV. It's jet black and smells floral, giving me black IPA vibes. A surprising pink raspberry foretaste opens the flavour, followed in quick succession by a dry metallic bite, some dark chocolate bitterness and then roasted grain to finish. There's little sign of all the alcohol, so luckily the intense roast was there to stop me quaffing the whole thing quickly. That gave me time to discover an additional element to its taste: a hint of cinnamon and clove. Dark, spicy and bitter is an unusual combination but it's one which works extremely well. I suspect this is a well-honed and fine-tuned recipe, and that has paid off.

Somebody here likes strong and dark, because they have an even bigger porter in regular production: Zebedeus, at 10% ABV. There's no mistaking the strength here, with its very boozy fortified-wine aroma. Add some chocolate cake and marzipan to that, for a promise of luxurious intensity. While it's appropriately smooth and warming, there's a dry and savoury character to the taste, with an off-style saline note. I looked hard for the chocolate promised in the aroma but its not really a feature. Instead it's sharp and quite rough; tangy, and a little too bitter for comfortable drinking. There's a barrel-aged version which I didn't try, but I think the base beer is an excellent candidate for that. I trust that some time in oak gives it a mellowness which is otherwise sorely lacking.

I finished with a glass of Noordeinde, described as a golden ale, but looking decidedly amber to me. There's elderflower in this, and it's extremely obvious from the aroma. It turned out to be surprisingly light and clean beyond that -- almost lager-like, despite 6.5% ABV. The elder adds a summery, white-grape, flavour which combines with light, iced-tea tannins to make something simple, elegant and extremely refreshing. It's not what I was expecting but I thoroughly enjoyed it regardless.

Haagsche Broeder's taproom remains a top pick for the town's drinking establishments.

The other place where you can drink beer at source is The Fiddler, a barely-changed relic of the 1990s Firkin pub chain, where the original brewkit is still in situ and in use. It makes beers under the Animal Army brand, sold on cask and keg, and exclusive to the pub, as far as I'm aware. I arrived in on the evening of New Year's Eve, finding it one of the few venues open for normal business.

The range doesn't change much, and I've had most of them over the years, but Maximilian was new to me, described as the summer ale. It's 4.6% ABV, and after being pumped through a sparkler, settled to a clear golden colour. I don't know what, if any, established beer style the brewer was aiming for, but it smelled most like a Belgian blonde ale to me, a sticky mix of tinned fruit and honey. The flavour confirms its sweetness, adding a strong floral, perfume-like effect and some bubblegum. That almost hides the weissbier-like banana and strong burst of diacetyl butterscotch, both of which took me a while to spot, despite being at an intensity which would stand out a mile in most beers. It just about still works by the pint, a dry grain-husk base going some way to balance it and improve the drinkability. I still wouldn't see myself caning pints of it in hot weather, however. One pint was plenty.

For that increasingly dated-looking noughties craft beer bar vibe, local brewery Kompaan's city taproom has you covered. 20-odd taps and no guest beers means you need to be OK with Kompaan's general offer.

I opened my tab with Levensgenieter, the New England-style IPA. It's a little on the dark side: rusty orange, and fully hazed. It's tropical out the wazoo, smelling powerfully of mango and passionfruit, and delivering a similar mix in its multicoloured foretaste. It turns a little gritty and savoury after the initial juice rush, with a rub of garlic and pine resin. The finish is strangely abrupt and a little watery. So, while this starts well, impressive for the first sip, it loses its way soon after. I thought I was about to experience haze perfection but, like so many other examples, this one couldn't stick the landing. Only at the end did I spot it's a mere 4.5% ABV, which goes some way to explaining things.

5% ABV isn't considered strong by Kompaan, as that's the strength of the lager they've called Daytime Drinking. Those of us who have chosen to drink it find ourselves unwitting guinea pigs for Yakima Chief hops, currently trying out HBC 1134 on the market. It's pitched as a hop for modern American-style lager. I don't get any sense of its old-world roots however. It is, at least, present in spades in this beer. Its pithy, zesty, floral character fills the aroma and the flavour, starting as musky perfume and finishing on lime and grapefruit peel. It has been added in such quantity that I swear the oils are contributing to the body. This is no easy-drinker, despite the name: the body is chewy and the hopping intense, requiring some slow sipping. It's good, though. I don't know that HBC 1134 is especially suited to lager, but it has a very interesting profile, particularly in how it combines rose petal perfume with citrus zest. That would work just as well in a pale ale. Keep an eye out for this one.

As a kind of palate cleanser,  I went with the tripel next. Maverick Monk is 8.4% ABV, and I guess it looks the part, being hazy and orange-yellow, though not quite right for the style in a straight-sided glass. There's a lot of banana ester in the aroma, and the flavour does its best to temper that with citrus, but it's still largely a banana show, plus a growing toffee character as it warms. There's a little Germanic hopping -- celery and grass -- but not enough to call it balance. This is a sweet, candified example of the style, with a raw and uncouth boozy heat. I have nothing against a consciously craft brewery taking on a classic style like tripel, but I don't think Kompaan has made an especially good go of it here. "Maverick" doesn’t necessarily mean "good".

Smoked weizenbock isn't something one sees often. I think the one Jopen made a few years back is my only other encounter with one. Well, here was another: Smoked Wheat Everyday. Another 8.4% ABV meant I dropped down to 20cl measures at this point. It's a mahogany colour and fully fleshed out for the strength, almost syrupy but with lots of fizz. The smoke side is not a major part of the flavour. There's a kind of maple bacon savoury sweetness, dovetailing with the caramelised aspect of the malt. For the most part, however, it's a bock. Caramel malt flavours meet honey and cereal, spiced up with noble hops, bringing a red cabbage and asparagus bitterness. It's less of a gimmick than I thought it would be, and I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. 20cl was just the right measure; more would be a chore. I like the heft, and its balance of intense sweetness and bitterness. It's a fun experiment, but perhaps I can see why smoked weizenbock isn't brewed more regularly.

I finished on The Anchorman. This imperial stout takes its name from Het Anker brewery in Mechelen, famous for Gouden Carolus beer, but also does a line in whisky, barrels from which were used to age this. Though 11% ABV, it's very light of body, doubtless helped by the cold serving temperature. I get Rioja and dark sherry from the unmistakably fortified, oaked-up aroma and foretaste, but not whisky, necessarily. There's a lot of grape, then rich and smooth cocoa, and a mild dry roasted kick on the finish. At every sip -- and it's a sipper -- the taste circles back to strong dark wine, and the drinking experience matches that more than it offers beer. This is a classy number, showing a maturity in advance of both the brewery and distillery's youthful ages. The basics of stout are reduced to a mild oily coffee note and a hint of chocolate syrup, but having these as support players to the fun and fruity barrel is a fully valid approach. It's not subtle but it's bang on. As we mourn the loss of De Molen, it's good to find someone still doing their kind of sumptuous schtick.

To complete the Kompaans, I had their West Coast Best Coast IPA at Hoender & Hop, a smartly modern bar and restaurant in the centre of town. Despite the provocative name, it arrived rather murky, and a dull ochre shade. A heavy and sweet marmalade aroma leads to a dense and chewy texture, even bigger than its 7% ABV implies. I guess that's a valid take on west-coast IPA, but I had been hoping for cleaner and crisper. The foretaste is plenty bitter, though in a gooey and resinous way, rather than spritzy zing. The citrus oil and flesh effect is much more orange than grapefruit. The way this turns sharp and pithy on the end is the beer's saving grace. There are some pleasantly subtle garden herb notes as well. It took me a while to warm to this, but I eventually did. While it's an unarguably off-kilter example, there's just enough good west-coast character to make it enjoyable for anyone but the most extreme sort of IPA purist.

It's been a few years since I visited the Peaky Blinders theme pub, The Sixpence, but it's still on the go and, with its Swinkels tie, does a good range of Uiltje beers these days. I had Juicy Lucy, a most unoriginally-named hazy IPA. They're not joking about the juice, though. It smells of sweet orange cordial, ramping that up in the flavour to passionfruit and pineapple. The blurb makes no mention of actual fruit being added, so it's very impressive that it's seemingly all done with hops. A spark of dank resin reminds me at the end that it's an IPA, not a tropical soft drink, though its light body and supreme drinkability makes that an easy mistake. It's pretty good stuff: accessible, flavoursome and fun. Flagship haze done expertly.

Finally for today, an unfussy but very decent dinner at chain restaurant Loetje provided an opportunity to try Jutters Bock, from Texels. Funny, I thought that Dutch bock was a fairly strictly autumn seasonal thing but there was still plenty of it in evidence in January, including this one from Heineken's coastal microbrewery. On draught it's a chestnut brown colour with a thin but persistent head. There's a rich and dubbel-like aroma, centred on banana and bourbon biscuits, with a sharper herbal complexity, which is all very inviting. Bitterness leads in the flavour, and bock's German lager roots are on show: noble hop characteristics like fresh green cabbage and celery. The sweet side of the equation grows gradually, adding banana bread and chocolate cookies, ramping up towards glace cherry and Parma Violet candy. All of this snaps off abruptly and cleanly in the finish. A bit more warmth would have been appreciated, though that's not really part of the bock spec. And while I'm no expert, I thought this was a very good example, with more complexity than I remember finding in the classic bocks from Amstel and Grolsch.

And before I finish up, Loetje also has a house beer, Loetje's Blond, which I'm guessing is a rebadge of whatever 6.5% ABV blonde ale Heineken NL makes. This is clear gold and has a mild peach and pineapple aroma. While the flavour is syrup-sweet, the body is lager-light, and an uneasy harmony ensues. As a take on low-countries blonde ale, this is definitely a blander sort, but maybe that's an improvement, avoiding excessive cloy but also the drabness one often gets from rebadged pilsners and pale ales. Generic house beers seem much less generic when they're this kind of strength.

Thus concludes our wander around central Den Haag. I could equally have taken you to Hoppzak and/or Rootz to pick through the interesting stuff on their respective beer menus, but time did not permit. I did make a side trip to the nearby town of Delft, and what I found there follows next.

Flaming good

There was a mixed box of Burning Sky beers under the Christmas tree, from an extremely kind UK-based family member. I've had some superb beers from this Sussex brewery, though they're normally only to be encountered out and about on my travels. It was nice to bring some home for a change.

We begin with Embrace, a pale yellow table beer of 3.2% ABV. They've used an unfamiliar hop for this: Eggers Special, from New Zealand. It's unmistakably Kiwi, but doesn't taste especially different from the other herbal, German-derived varieties. There's the grassy bitterness, a peppery rocket spice, and even some of the mineral diesel I associate with Nelson Sauvin. No tropicals, but there's plenty of citrus: a sharp jolt of lemon juice and a twist of lime peel. By some alchemy, light doesn't mean thin, and there's enough body to carry the hop flavour fully, without it turning harsh. There's not much going on besides the hop, but what's there is plenty. I tend to expect table beers to have some kind of farmy, saisonish quality, and this doesn't. It could pass happily as a micro IPA. I'm not sure if the straw and pepper of a saison would have added much here, however, so I don't miss it. This is a beautifully done, full-flavoured, session hop-bomb. No further notes.

Luppoleto is Burning Sky's take on the achingly hip style of Italian pilsner. It's a light one at 4.6% ABV and pale with it, though hazed up to show its craft credentials. That's topped with a properly Teutonic pillow of fine white froth. The aroma is softly fruity, giving tinned peach and lychee. That's not very Germanic, though the hops are authentic Perle, Spalter and Saphir. There's none of Burning Sky's signature wild fermentation happening here either, so the flavour is properly crisp and very clean. The stonefruit sweetness hits first, but dries out quickly, leaving a spark of flint, a pinch of damp-grass bitterness and a nibble of citrus pith. It's one of those beers where I had to tap out my notes quickly, before I found my glass emptied: light without being thin; accessible yet far from boring. On a cold winter's day it was finished in minutes, I wouldn't have fancied its chances in summer warmth. One could argue that the style should have a modicum more hop impact than this shows but I reckon they've hit the balance between refreshing and flavourful just right, resulting in something which is every bit as classy yet interesting as their artwork.

Next, Le Cœur Damson is billed simply as a "farmhouse beer". On the back of the can we're told it's mixed fermentation and foudre-aged, which sounds altogether more enticing. The damsons it was aged on have turned it a pinkish orange colour, and there's distinct hedgerow fruit note in the aroma, backed by a wilder sharpness. It's predominantly sour to taste, but doesn't go overboard with that. We're not quite at lambic levels of complexity, but this is very much in that zone. A tingly mineral tartness is the centrepiece, set on a soft cereal base. The damsons arrive later in the flavour and help offset the sourness with fresh and fleshy fruit. Those three elements are very well integrated together, giving us a beer that tastes smooth and mature, even as it prods the salivary glands and squeaks the teeth. I would never have guessed it's all of 5.2% ABV as it feels much lighter, almost verging on watery but with just enough body to avoid it. This is exactly the sort of quality offering that I go to Burning Sky for.

The other "farmhouse beer", Waiting Game, is a collaboration with their fellow English wild beer enthusiasts, Balance. It's a collaboration on a microbiological level, with both breweries' house cultures being used for fermentation. A powerful jet of sulphur aroma greeted me on pulling the tab. The beer is an ordinary hazy pale orange colour, the head full and fluffy at first, then fading away to a mere foam comb-over in short order. A proper sniff revealed the sulphur gone, and instead it smells sweet and orangey, like jelly or squash, with a little farmy funk in the background. There's quite a tang in the foretaste. It's not vinegar-sour, but is still puckeringly tart, mixing the wild yeast bite with plenty of citrus-zest bitterness, thanks to the hopping. Saphir is the only variety mentioned, though the punch here tastes very American to me. Unusually for this kind of beer, the wild complexity is in second place, though it does emerge when the hop-n-sour combination fades after a few seconds. What arrives is a colourful spread of tastes. I got coconut, white wine, tinned lychee, damp logs and pink peppercorns. Although it's only 5% ABV, there's plenty here to keep any drinker occupied for an enjoyably long time. Trust Burning Sky and Balance to take a reasonably familiar format and do something amazing with it.

I don't think I've had a dark Burning Sky beer before so was excited to try their porter, called Robust Porter. "Spicy Sussex grown Target hops" are the selling point here, though I didn't find any in the aroma. Instead, there's mocha aplenty, and a sweetly floral note, more rosewater than spices. It's a very dark brown colour, the tobacco-stain head collapsing quickly to a shallow skim of froth. I grumbled recently about historically-influenced porters at 6.5%+ ABV being too heavy for their historical purpose. This one is 5.8% ABV and, while there's a bit of sugary heft, is still light enough to quench an actual thirst. Lovely. The flavour is a sampler of proper porter characteristics: dark chocolate and espresso, the roasted bitterness intense enough to hint at hot bitumen yet never turning harsh. The floral side doesn't materialise in the flavour and instead the hops are green and leafy, with mineral notes of zinc and flint. Maybe some would class that as "spicy", but not me. It is delicious, though. I had been slightly concerned that the brewery might have farmhoused this up a little with some funky yeast, but instead, like the pilsner, it's clean and classical. I guess that existing in the same market as the likes of The Kernel means you have to get this kind of thing exactly right, and they have. Magnificent work.

I loved these, and while I was reasonably sure I would, I'm quite surprised to discover I didn't care for Burning Sky's wares the first few times I tried them. Regardless, any hype about the brewery these days is fully justified, I reckon.

Of orient are

Beers from Japanese brewery Coedo showed up at Christmas in England, courtesy of my sister. I'd never heard of it, even though there's an address of a Dublin-based importer on the label.

The first I opened is in the rarely-seen style of imperial sweet potato amber, and I had no idea what that was likely to mean. Beniaka is 7% ABV and a cola brown colour in the glass. Although fizzy, it's plenty thick and feels luxuriously "imperial". Can't say I tasted much potato, but there's a pleasant woody spice: nutmeg, sassafras and liquorice. It's fairly sweet with it, showing a little Scotch-ale-style toffee, with the herbs helping balance it. This is interesting, with lots happening, but it's not a daft novelty, and makes for a very civilised digestif.

There's also a black lager, called Shikkoku. While it does have a proper lager cleanness, and is straightforwardly drinkable at 5% ABV, there's a dark-malt stickiness to it. A burnt treacle roast sits at the centre, providing a sweet aspect which means it's no simple German-style Schwarzbier, which is what I was expecting, and leans a little more towards Czech tmavý. A mild herbal bitterness is a nod to Germany, and keeps the sweet side under control. The label promises smoke in the aroma, but I didn't get that, and didn't really miss it either: I'm not sure it would add anything positive. I liked this. It's nothing fancy, and I doubt it warranted being shipped from the other side of the world, but I'll never turn my nose up at a well made dark lager. That's just how I am.

This was a welcome bit of surprise exploration. I'm now very interested in the rest of the range, and where I might get hold of some locally.

On the Marches

A family Christmas in Shropshire afforded the opportunity for a little bit of pub-going in the area. That began in Shrewsbury, at The Coach & Horses, recently re-opened and given a thumbs up by local pub maven Laura. Shortly after opening on the day before Christmas Eve, I thought I would have had it to myself, but it was bustling -- all drinking and dining tables occupied. I was lucky to find a draughty spot to sit by the door. 

Local brewery Noble had a couple of beers on, and I picked Jester, described as an amber ale, so a bitter with notions, then. It is, in fairness, fairly amber coloured: a clear garnet shade. The aroma is predominantly dark fruits, suggesting plums and black cherries, with a hint of Christmas cake spice. Tannin features heavily in the flavour. It is achingly dry, to the point of acridity, and I wasn't a fan of that. The nutmeg and pepper spice helps ease the severity a little but there's none of the fruit, and no malt sweetness from the caramelised one which provides its colour. The end result is certainly bold and flavourful, and brimming with old fashioned beery tradition of a distinctly English sort. I found it a little too rough and unbalanced to be properly enjoyable, unfortunately.

Noble showed up again at The Red Lion in Longden Common, in the form of Scruffy Jon. They've badged this simply as a dark ale, though it has a lot in common with stout, I thought, starting with the pure black colour. Dryness -- perhaps a house trait -- features also, but there's more besides. I don't get to drink a lot of English old ales, beyond good old Old Peculier, but this had a bit of that character: a mature, vinous quality with woody cork notes. We're back to stout again when the roasty finish kicks in. Like the Jester before it, it's a little severe and very grown-up -- don't expect any chocolate or vanilla softness here. I liked it, however: serious black beer is more my thing than serious amber.

Christmas day at The White Horse in Pulverbatch involved a long wait for a pint of Monty's MPA, the Welsh brewery's session IPA. The freshly-tapped cask had to be run through the lines, and was foaming furiously when eventually poured, even with the sparkler twisted off. I don't know that it was entirely worth the wait, but it's a decent beer. Pale gold, it has a punchy lemon bitterness, building gradually to a more intense wax bite. Seasonal factors meant it was served keg-cold, but I think that suited it, upping the refreshment factor, something aided by its 4% ABV. It's unfussy, quality stuff, one of those cask ales that manages to deliver big flavours in a modestly sized package.

Nipping in to The Mytton Arms for a swift one on Stephen's's Day yielded a pint of Dorothy Goodbody's Christmas Cracker. This is another one of those English Christmas ales which aren't especially different to the year-round output. Wye Valley is generally a good brewery so I trust them with this. Take a best bitter at 4.7% ABV and make it a little darker than the norm, plum coloured though not plum flavoured. It is unsurprisingly malt forward, though dry with that: something like the toasted crust of a fruitcake, seasoned by earthy English hops, and with a strong mug of black tea on the side. It's filling, and even a little warming. There's nothing fancy going on, and certainly no seasonal spice silliness, but it's solid.

That's the pubs covered, but my sister had some bottled beers laid in too. Here are my picks from the cellar selection.

I'm reasonably sure the beer buyer included Tower Brewery's Ale to the King as a wind-up. It's a strong ale of 5.6% ABV and a beautiful clear mahogany colour. The aroma is unsurprisingly malt-forward, all toffee and nougat. That's a big part of the flavour, the toffee in particular, while the hops manifest as stickily bitter liquorice, completing the Victorian sweetshop effect. As such, it's not an easy drinker. There's a bit of a sweaty note, a hit of rubber and an earthiness from the all-English hops, all barely tolerable, though doubtless part of the design. Like the monarchy, this belongs to a different age and I'm not sure it should still be around today.

Wrexham Lager's first claim to fame is that it's Britain's oldest lager brewery. The second is that it was recently part-acquired by two Hollywood medium-to-big shots. There's a flagship lager, and then there's this: Wrexham Lager Export. Drinking it in Shropshire meant it hadn't been exported very far. It looks like... lager: pale gold, and perfectly clear. Claiming to be in the Dortmund style, the aroma is sweetly malt-driven and the texture has a bit of chew to it, more than might be expected at 5% ABV. When German lagers use hop extract I tend to get a tang of plastic, and this has that. There's a candyfloss sugary quality and a touch of popcorn, none of which says good lager. I liked the general beefiness of this, but it doesn’t get the finer details right. Maybe the new ownership can fix that.

Gluten free oatmeal stout? How does that work? The label on Monty's Dark Secret says the gluten has been removed ("and laboratory tested". Eh?) but wouldn't that also remove the point of having oatmeal there in the first place? Anyway. 5.5% ABV and full- on black. The aroma is a beautiful wintery mix of cocoa, rosemary and brown toast. I wind my critical neck in from the first sip, which is fully full, with all the beautiful round sumptuousness that we come to oatmeal stout for. The flavour uses that to deliver big coffee and chocolate, matched with herbal hops for a mildly tangy bitterness. It's superbly put together, the contrasting tastes complementing each other perfectly. I opened this with a big cynical head on me but came away utterly charmed. It's an extremely well-made stout, which I fear might put drinkers off by proclaiming its gluten-freeness. The dark secret is it's excellent anyway.

Monty's also has a barley wine, called Magnitude 8.0, named for its ABV. It's a pale one, showing a light ochre colour, one which clouds up when the significant quantity of dregs at the bottom of the bottle went in accidentally. Ahem. Turns out, the bottle is a full three years old, and I detected a definite maturity here: the roundness and warmth of a dark sherry. An aroma of stewed raisin starts us off, while the flavour puts them in a cake, with some bonus honey, a hint of seasonal cinnamon, and a less-cake-like leafy savoury bitterness. It's an unorthodox barley wine, lacking the toffee, roast and general darkness they often have. It works, though. I like a change, and pale, light-ish barley wine is a valid one.

Aldi UK has enlisted Hall & Woodhouse, the Badger people, to brew its Specially Selected Chocolate Stout. It's a sturdy fellow, at 5% ABV, pouring with a substantial head of rough, loose-bubbled foam. The chocolate appears to have been laid on very heavily, and it smells rather sickly, more of vanilla and butterscotch than chocolate. That's actually a little unpleasant. The flavour isn't quite so extreme, and there's a modicum of balancing roast before the chocolate kicks in. The texture is light too, so don't expect much by way of creaminess. The vanilla sweetness does build, however, and light body or no, it does leave one with a fully candy-coated palate, which is even less pleasant than it sounds. I get what they were trying to do with this, and it is unmistakably A Chocolate Stout. They have significantly over-chocolated it, however, and I recommend it only to those with a taste for sweet beer which is even more pronounced than mine.

A palate-cleanser was needed after that, for which we turned to Aldi's arch-rival. This is one of those stubby-bottled French lagers, not normally spotted in the wild at this time of year. Saint-Bertin, named for the patron saint of beers you buy for guests but have no intention of drinking yourself, is 2.6% ABV and by golly is it watery. The aroma is slightly sugary, but I don't think I can dignify it with the descriptor "malt". What flavour there is arrives late, and does actually manage to combine golden-syrup malt with a tang from hop extract. Nothing is anywhere near intense enough to be problematic, but it is extremely plain: the final exam for the beer reviewers' certificate. This is one for very hot days only, but even under those circumstances I think I'd prefer something which tasted of beer.

The stock of alcohol-free beer proved to be somewhat surplus to requirements, so, as a final gesture of goodwill, I drank one of them before leaving: Adnams Ghost Ship. This version of their flagship pale ale is 0.5% ABV and a clear rose-gold colour. There's not much head to speak of, though the aroma has a decent hop kick, a Lilt-like lemon, lime and pineapple. The body is decent at first, turning watery towards the finish. In the flavour, I was on alert for nasty cooked vegetables, metallic twangs, unfermented wort and similar bum notes of the genre, but there's none of that, just more of that tropical sweetness, finishing with a gentle poke of bittering. And yet it doesn't come across as a soft drink, but genuinely beery. The watery aspect is the only thing that would prevent me from substituting the real thing for it. As non-alcoholic beers go, though, this is a class act.

That's almost every beer I drank over Christmas, though I've singled out two oddities for their own post, next.

Call the style police

As it's the beer producing arm of a brewing supplies company, one would have thought that Our Brewery would have all the technicals dialled in. I found some... not flaws, but anomalies, in the most recent set I bought.

I began with Is This How You Feel, presented as a witbier, and it does list wheat, coriander and orange peel among the ingredients, but there's chamomile too. 3.8% ABV is far lower than any Belgian brewery makes this style, and seems a little retrograde. And then the colour is almost completely clear, the shiny gold only very faintly misted. So it's not a witbier as the term is commonly understood. The aroma doesn't do much, offering little other than vague savoury herbs. It's as light as the strength number suggests, verging on watery, though there's enough flavour being carried to keep it interesting. That's a fresh floral character, giving meadowy lavender and violet with a jet of lemon zest and a heavier oily herb side. It's not witbier but it's very tasty and exceedingly refreshing. I can't think of what other style it could be designated as: this is the sort of creation that isn't really done any favours by the whole concept of beer styles. While it's delicious, I don't know that it would score many points in a style-based competition against other beers. This demands to be enjoyed on its own level.

Pils to follow: Any Kind of Weather, single hopped with Nelson Sauvin. This is a flawless pure gold, and with a bit of poke at 5.4% ABV. Immediate marks off for poor head retention, though instant forgiveness for a fabulous tropical aroma, combining mango and melon with a spicy-floral bathbomb background. I'm in. Expecting fruit, I was surprised by the bitterness of the foretaste, and there's a dry grain-husk character as well. Nelson's white grape follows that, and the spice reappears as a jasmine perfume effect, more sticky dessert wine than crisp Sauvignon Blanc. With that comes an unctuous texture which is most un-pils-like. I think they might have mis-assigned the style here, because it's really not much like a pilsner, what with the sweetness, strength and density. Regardless, it's another unorthodox beauty. I love Nelson Sauvin in full-throated tropical mode and that's what's on offer here, although I had looked forward to a pilsner and was a little disappointed it wasn't delivered. I'll take a gummy Nelson showcase quite happily instead, however. 

They're all special to me, so I don't know what makes the American-style IPA, Making Sense Of It All, a "special edition". They're trying to run with the fox and hunt with the hounds here, offering "west coast intensity with a touch of modern haze juiciness". I was sceptical. In the glass it's a west-coast amber, though reasonably hazed up, albeit far from opaque. The aroma is citrus pith and grapefruit segments, plus a savoury seam of fried onion, all of which chimes with the billed hops: Columbus, Cascade, Simcoe and Citra. There's nothing New England about anything there. The body is surprisingly light for 6.2% ABV, and there's certainly none of the full and smooth body that comes with the hazy side. Alas, that onion end of the equation is what dominates the flavour, leaving the grapefruit cowering behind it. No extra flavour dimensions appear either, so there's none of the promised haze character and it's all quite two-dimensional. I expected more at 6.2% ABV. Thin and severe, without any proper west-coast zing, this was quite the damp squib, unfortunately.

Still, two out of three is decent going. It's not like we needed another hazy IPA on the shelves anyway. Bonus points for the brewery's tweaking of the established beer styles and (mostly) making good stuff outside of the normal parameters. That's a more worthwhile type of creativity than bunging in some wacky ingredients.