Never mind the sugarbombs

I've been drinking Mikkeller's Spontan beers, occasionally, for eight years now. Yet I've never had Spontancherry, which must be among the oldest varieties. This is the Frederiksdal edition, with Danish cherries but still brewed in Belgium by Proef.

It's a deep deep blood red colour and smells of macerated and fermented red cherries, which shouldn't be surprising as that's presumably what it's made from. But it doesn't smell sour. The flavour continues in that vein: real ripe and juicy cherry flesh, but little more than a dry tang from the base beer beneath it. That's a very tasty combination but it's not what I was expecting. Confused, I let it warm up. A buzz of Brett funk emerges behind the jam, but doesn't subdue it, the heat from a frankly excessive 7.2% ABV becoming more apparent too.

Overall, I liked the strong concentrated fruit character of this, being a proper cherry beer but still reminding me of the sugary sweet ones I once loved and still carry a torch for -- Bellvue Kriek in particular. But... I expected more complexity and certainly more tartness. For me it's just not far enough from the sugarbombs to be taken completely seriously.

Santa Gueuze

You have to hand it to De Troch's Chapeau range of beers: they keep on surprising. I mean, they look like knock-off candy-lambics: doing a pineapple version suggests they aren't even trying to be taken seriously. And then this came my way: Chapeau Winter Gueuze. Sour lambic and Christmas spices are not a natural pairing, so what have they done here? With trepidation I popped the cap and pulled the cork.

It's 5.5% ABV and a murky red-brown sort of thing, light on fizz despite the thick champagne glass and double stopper. Mostly it smells like a kriek, with perhaps a little extra warmth: cherry strudel, maybe. The kriek theme continues on tasting, coming across like one of the sweet baby-steps starter krieks like Mort Subite or Bellevue. That strudel thing comes in again shortly afterwards and suggests raisins and stewed apples alongside the cherries. To finish there's a barely-there woody sourness of the sort you find in mild Flemish brown ale.

To be honest it's hitting neither my Christmas beer nor lambic receptors. It's really just a thick sugary concoction and the sort of thing I quite enjoy but wouldn't be running to recommend to anyone else.

So my scepticism levels were high when I turned to Cuvée Chapeau, their purported oude gueuze. It seems a very serious and difficult style for a brand which tolerates tropical fruit and cartoon Santas on its labels, but they have managed to pull this one off, I think.

The aroma from the dark gold beer isn't overpowering but it does more than hint at the sourness, complicating it with elements of flint and white grape as well. The first sip is properly puckering but the recoil doesn't last and an inviting warmth follows it, suggesting more than the 5.5% ABV. After that it finishes quite quickly with just a bit of not-unpleasant wine cork mustiness. So while it's neither as complex nor as quaffable as the top-tier oude gueuzes it certainly doesn't taste like fake lambic to me.

Two more reasons to regard Chapeau as the most surprising lambic producer. Here's wishing all my readers more lovely surprises this Christmas. Pass the cheese.

Hopping up to Dundrum

There was quite a turnout on Friday evening for the second beer tasting evening run by Deveney's off licence in Dundrum. Ruth did a great job keeping the punters' glasses filled, and in the correct sequence too.

The theme was Belgian, and there were a few in the line-up I'd never had. Vedett Extra White, for instance. Though I'm not a fan of Vedett lager, I thought this worked quite well, and had a hoppy bite you generally won't find in a witbier. It's a tasty alternative to Hoegaarden, even if not quite up to the standard of St Bernardus Wit in my estimation.

I was also quite impressed with Chapeau Kriek -- a wonderfully aromatic and easy-drinking cherry beer which put me in mind of Bellvue Kriek, an old favourite now gone from the Irish market. I can see myself getting a few of these in for al fresco drinking as the longer evenings arrive.

Find of the evening, however, was another of those oh-so-fashionable hoppy Belgian blondes: Gouden Carolus Hopsinjoor. Unlike most of the others I've tried, this has a really crisp, green, fresh hop character sitting on a very typical blonde Belgian ale which is not a million miles from the likes of La Chouffe. Remarkably, the hops aren't crushed under the sharp bitterness of the Belgian yeast. Ruth had some LeFebvre Hopus -- another of this style -- lying around, a beer which I tried recently but hadn't yet got around to posting about. I was interested to try them side by side to see if the Hopsinjoor really is hoppier than the opposition.

Hopus gives off an innocent and sweet tropical fruit aroma: mangos, melons and the like. There's quite a bit of head, which settles stiffly after a few minutes. The fruity aroma is complemented by that sharp yeasty character once the lees are poured in. The bitterness in the flavour -- and there's a lot of it -- is probably half-and-half from the yeast and the hops. It's peppery and tangy, unlike the raw vegetal Hopsinjoor, and the 8.3% ABV gives it a very pleasant overall warmth.

The bottom line is, I guess, if you want your hopped-up blonde to taste of actual real hops, the Hopsinjoor is the one to go for. However, if you'd like them to contribute to a more complex overall fruitiness, then Hopus is your only man. As a person of simple tastes, I think I'd go for the former, but that's not to say Hopus isn't a great beer.

Thanks to Ruth for her hospitality again, and it was great meeting Lisa of What We Eat as well. I'm heartened by the interest in quality beer being shown by the upstanding citizens of Dundrum. Long may it continue.

And if you're in the area, don't forget to drop in to Deveney's to pick up a bottle or two of something interesting.

Goosey früht

For some reason kriek gets a bad rap from many serious beer fanatics. I am an unashamed kriek fan, however, and enjoy both the zesty fruity ones (Timmerman's, Liefmans) and the drier, more mature sort (Bellevue, Lou Pepe). Since the cherries are more of an add on (to make geuze more palatable), most kriek-makers also make a variety of other fruit-enhanced beers. Nobody, to my knowledge, does a range quite like Floris. The selection extends beyond fruit into honey, chocolate and cactus(!). Not surprisingly, these aren't all as delicately crafted as the beers of more specialised labels. Floris Kriek, for example, is a super-sweet syrupy kriek. The label boasts that 30% of it is macerated fruit. The underlying beer is rather rougher and fizzier than your typical Belgian lambic, giving the whole product a thrown-together feel. That's not to say it doesn't work as kriek, however: the cherry concentrate makes for a similar sensation to eating cherry pie. Just, if you are planning to reappraise your kriek opinion, don't start with this one.

Which brings me to la pièce de la résistance of the the Beerhall Challenge: Goose Island IPA. Well, it's not an IPA as I understand it, in the English vernacular. It's quite green tasting: hops comes right to the fore of the taste. It arrives via an explosion of fizz and flavour, and lasts right into the aftertaste. English beer has conditioned me to look for a complexity that this Yank doesn't have, but it's a damn good ale, and one you could drink quite a few of without feeling overstretched.

The other new beer from the challenge sheet is Früh, a German kölsch. My only experience of kölsch hitherto is that made by the Porterhouse, which I found just that bit too dry. Früh is better, though. It's dry but more subtly so, allowing more of the malt to come forward. Like the Goose Island, it's not terribly demanding and engineered to make you order another.

The Challenge continues...

Sour times

A La Bécasse in Brussels is one of my favourite bars in the world. Their Lambic Doux is a very fine beer, being a sweet version of Brussels's bitter local speciality. I happened across a kriek being sold under their brand recently and decided to give it a go. I'm a big fan of kriek, in its sweet to medium-sweet incarnations. Liefmans is the benchmark, with honourable mentions for Bellevue and Timmerman's. I was expecting something similar from La Bécasse. I was wrong. While there is no doubt that Bécasse kriek wears its ripe cherries up front, at heart it is an unreconstructed, down home sour Brussels gueuze. The contrast in the flavour is remarkable and is unique as far as I know. Despite being made by monster brewer InBev, this stuff couldn't be more Brussels if it tried and is well worth sampling if you can find it.

Last of the Fruity Belgians

As I've said before, there's a lot to be said for mucking about with standard brewing practices: weird methods and ingredients are what keeps the industry fresh and interesting, and I have huge respect for the small producers in particular who take chances on these things.

It seems one of the world's largest brewers is at it now, too. InBev (formerly Interbrew) have recently launched Hoegaarden Citron. It's a lighter (3%) version of plain Hoegaarden, with an added lemon flavour. The lemon hint in standard Hoegaarden was one of its strong points, and what we have now is some kind of ultra-sweet alcopop for people who don't like the taste of real beer. You have to wonder what focus group prompted this one.

InBev also make Bellevue Kriek, one of my favourites of the genre. At a motorway service station in Belgium I discovered Bellevue Kriek Extra. It comes in little Red-Bull-style cans, and is lighter than the normal product, at 4.3%. The idea is that it contains even more fruit than usual. It certainly tastes sweeter, but the dry gueuze character of Bellevue is one of the main reasons I like it. Once again, I'm not sure what the point of this beer is.