Fail ale trail

They brew 'em strong at Nébuleuse in western Switzerland. I had three of their bottles in stock and deciding a drinking order was complicated by all of them claiming some palate-pounding heft. In the end I let hops call the shots so began with their saison.

Namur Express is no lightweight, however. 7% ABV and pouring the dark gold of apple juice. In defiance of the brewery's name, I managed to keep the lees out of the glass so perhaps that's why there wasn't much of a saison character to the aroma, just the hot esters you might find in a super strength tramps' lager. There's not much happening in the flavour either, to be honest. It could be that first impression of the colour, but I get apples again in the taste: grainy red ones. There's a bit of syrupy candy, and a thick texture to go with that, but none of what makes saison a distinctive style. While not flawed in any specific way, if you'd told me this was an industrial Belgian blonde I'd have nodded along and spent the time I was drinking it thinking about what's up next. Not an auspicious start.

What was up next was Shaddock, a "strong bitter". Strong, here, means 6% ABV. While the marketing speaks mostly of its malt pedigree, the hops are Chinook and there's added bonus grapefruit so citrus was expected. It wasn't found in the aroma: it doesn't smell of anything much, in fact. It looks like a brown bitter, though, the dark amber of strong black tea. And again, that appearance is affecting how it tastes, because the first flavour I get is the heavy tannins of over-stewed tea. It's not pleasant. Rather than adding zest, the hops and grapefruit produce an unpleasant soapy effect, so the last thing you need is the dry, stale, sweaty finish that follows it and the growing bilious acidity which creeps in as it warms. This is a disaster of a recipe, like Bombardier's even-more-evil twin.

So high hopes, then, when facing into Embuscade. While the others were reluctant to form a head on pouring there's no such shyness here. An awkward amount of foam had to be dealt with as I poured slowly, trying to keep the yeast dregs out of the glass. "Ambush" is an American-style IPA of 6.5% ABV and a wholesome, clear, west-coast gold. It definitely smells of citrus, which is in its favour, though it's a candy lemon-sherbet effect which suggests the hops are not going to have everything their own way. Sure enough, on tasting, the hops are damn near undetectable. There's a raw sweetness that tastes to me like dry malt extract, followed by an almost smoky savoury quality which could be yeast autolysis but either way is very out of place, accompanied by an unwelcome metallic aspirin tang. An acrid squirt of Jif lemon in the finish is all the hops get to say, and I don't blame them for being angry. I'm angry too.

It may be that Nébuleuse (est. 2014) is on a journey towards making good beer and these are just juvenilia -- baby steps on the way to proper brewing. But I'm slightly amazed that they're letting them out of the brewery. Clearly, the aim is to make beer as good as brewers do it in Belgium, Britain and the US, but on this showing they have a long way to go to get there.

Priorities

It feels odd even writing it, but it's true: on my last visit to England, a two-day trip in mid-June, I didn't visit a single pub. My friends Sarah and David were getting married in a remote corner of east Cornwall and the most straightforward way of getting there was flying into Bristol and driving down. We opted to stay in a precariously positioned clifftop cottage near the venue, which meant nipping out to a nearby licensed hostelry wouldn't really have been an option, had we had the time to do it. But none of that matters: the wedding was wonderful and there was decent beer aplenty.

In fact, beer was the theme of the wedding, each table named after a hop variety and decorated with tasting glasses and a beer which demonstrated the specific hop in action. I don't know who I pissed off to get seated at Fuggles, but there you have it. Mercifully the showcase beer was a last-minute substitution and instead of Bombardier it was a local(ish) Devon brew called Otter Bright. I'm happy to report it's a largely malt-driven beer, a golden ale of 4.3% ABV. The nose is a little off-putting, being slightly musty and oxidised, but the beer underneath is sound. There's lots of golden syrup and pale sugary biscuits. The hops are mostly present in a final bitterness that balances it nicely. Even at room temperature, this was a success.

While I didn't get to go to a pub, I did drop into a brewery briefly. There was a concern that the beer supplies laid in might not have been enough, so on the morning of the wedding I was dispatched on a 120-mile mission along most of the length of the county to Redruth and the Keltek Brewery, sited in an unglamourous industrial estate outside the town. I wasn't even tempted to swing off the A38 at the signs for St Austell and fill the car with Tribute and Proper Job instead of what was ordered.

What was ordered was two 10L polypins of Keltek beer: Golden Lance is another slightly musty golden ale, though dry and very drinkable. Magik is a smooth brown bitter with lots of puddingy caramel, great for dessert. It was my first experience with beer-in-a-bag-in-a-box and I felt the carbonation could have done with being upped a bit more, though I don't know if this is a gripe with the dispense method or the brewery.

And so it was back on the road again on the day after the ceremony. Obviously, I called in at Buckfast Abbey on the way back to Bristol: as an Armaghman one simply does not pass up the opportunity to see such an important part of one's heritage. At Bristol airport, with the car (a ghastly Vauxhall Meriva: don't ever buy one) back in the lot I checked in and was able to, for the first and only time all trip, walk up to a bar and order a pint of beer. Butcombe Bitter was on the one and only handpump. There'd be times when I'd dismiss this as a boring brown bitter, but at the end of a long trip it was a delicious cool copper pint of pure refreshment. On the whole it's quite dry and rather tannic in a marvellously thirst-quenching way. There's a touch of eggs in the aroma and a hint of soap on the flavour: stereotypical faults of English beer, but they compromised my enjoyment not a jot. If my flight hadn't been called madly early, I'd have launched into another no problem.

I returned home eager for more travelling in England. O to have time for those interesting excursions off the motorway, to stop in those villages and drink in those pubs. And to fill the car with cases of cider from those farms. Some day.

Double Trouble

I've been drinking it fairly regularly all month, so apologies for only getting round to telling you about Trouble Brewing's Dark Arts porter now. It made its first appearance at the Food & Wine Magazine fair in the RDS a few weeks ago, followed by an official launch in the Bull & Castle on 30 November.

It's an unfiltered dark brown session porter of 4.4% ABV which starts out quite roasty and dry but follows this with a long-lasting chocolate and caramel sweetness. Just on the end there's a nip from the hops adding a bitter, slightly sour complication.

Dark Arts is a beer of marvellous balance: light enough for session drinking, but properly warming as well. It's on tap at the Bull & Castle and L. Mulligan Grocer for the next while.

In addition to this and Ór, a third beer comes to us from the Trouble kit, though its origins are rather more obscure. Last year Dublin pubs Sin É and Dice Bar began selling beers badged with old Dublin Brewing Company brands: D'Arcy's Stout and Revolution Red, names that hadn't been seen since DBC went under in 2004. Word around the campfire was that these were Young's Double Chocolate Stout and Bombardier, imported from the UK. And then, just a few months ago, I spotted a new poster outside Sin É proclaiming that Revolution is now brewed in Ireland. Investigations led to Trouble where, I'm told, the management rent out the kit to Revolution's owners and leave them to it.

The beer is quite good too: very sweet, with lots of toffee and smooth caramel. There's a nice roasted element to the flavour as well and just a tiny bit of hop aroma. A well-rounded Irish red, basically: not going to set the world alight but quite enjoyable to drink. And while it's quite possible that it's not terribly different from the kegged Bombardier, I really like that they see "brewed in Ireland" as a significant enough selling point to actually go to the bother of arranging it. Well done them.

By royal disappointment

Last week the Franciscan Well released its 2009 Christmas ale, under the jolly seasonal name of 3 Kings. Having adored last year's mad maple syrup and ginger confection, Phúca, I was well up for what Russell and the Cork gang had for us this time round. When I heard there was rauchmalt involved, I was off to the Bull & Castle at the earliest opportunity.

Unfortunately the reality didn't live up to expectation. Yes, there's smoke there, but rather than the hammy goodness I love, it's the rather harsh iodine-like smokiness you get in the likes of Laphroaig scotch. The late great Messrs Maguire Imperial had this as well, but it was balanced against the sweetness of dark roasted malts. Here there's just more bitterness and no cheery seasonal spices or warming sweetness. It rounded out a little as it warmed, and I did manage to get through two mugs of it -- Mrs Beer Nut not able to handle more than a mouthful -- but it was a disappointing experience.

Thankfully, Colin and 9 Bean Row of California Wine Imports were on hand to whisk us us away from all the pain. It was Colin's birthday and celebrations were in full swing at the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art -- celebrations which included a keg of the fabulous Speakeasy Big Daddy IPA. When this ran out it was replaced with Gordon Biersch Märzen, just as solid a lager on draught as it is from the bottle, and nice to get a full pint of. Thanks for a fun evening, guys.

And back to Irish beer to finish. Carlow Brewing now have an Irish red -- Traditional Irish Ale -- in Aldi's own-brand line-up. When I first heard of it I assumed it was rebadged O'Hara's Red, and the ABV is the same, but anyone I know who's tried it has said it's different. Only one thing could settle this (well, I could of course have asked the brewer, but where's the fun in that?): a taste-off.

They're both the same colour, and I got a better head from the Aldi one, though I put that down to it being at a slightly higher temperature when serving. First impressions confirmed that these are not the same beer. They're similar, though, and it took me a while to figure out how. The Aldi ale is heavier and warmer than O'Hara's, and finishes drier. It might not look darker, but it tastes it. The O'Hara's compensates with a bit more spice shining through the sweetness.

Interesting that Carlow have opted for the world "traditional" on both beers. This is a tradition that doesn't date further back than about 1960, when Guinness finally took complete control of Irish ale brewing and set about downgrading the national pale ale to appeal to a wider audience and extend its shelf life. As a result, beer that was probably indistinguishable hitherto from English bitter, became what Michael Jackson in the following decade dubbed "Irish red". It follows that when English breweries followed suit -- kegging and blandening their beers -- they'd end up with the same thing. I got to put this theory into practice recently when Dave set up a blind tasting of red ales that I went along to, with Mrs Beer Nut, Laura and Séan.

O'Hara's came away as the favourite of most -- that signature piquancy comes out far more in the keg version than the bottle. Just about no-one in the group was able to express a preference between Smithwick's and kegged Bass, and it was a 50-50 for who could guess which was which (they're both watery rubbish). They are, essentially, the same beer, proving my theory. One of the upshots is that if one were foolish enough to decide that "Irish red ale" is a beer style all its own, then you'd have to include John Smith's Extra Smooth, and the keg versions of beers like Worthington's in there too. Probably kegged London Pride and Bombardier, for that matter. Daft.

Nevertheless, I hereby claim Watney's Red Barrel as the sovereign territory of Irish ale. Where's my flag?

Pubs and such

I had my back to the foreign beers for most of my evening at Pig's Ear last week, unwisely, perhaps. However, I did turn round enough to grab one beer of interest, namely Chimera by Del Ducato of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy. I thoroughly enjoyed several of the artisan beers I had last time I was in Italy, and was keen to try more. The phrase that struck me on first tasting the hazy orange ale was "malt bomb". It's not one of those sickly sweet jus des vagabonds nightmares: far from it. Instead, the beautiful hazy orange body is packed with big sticky toffee flavours. Very tasty, but I couldn't help thinking that a solid dose of big hops would have done it the power of good.

Last beer of the festival was one I didn't even bother getting out of my chair to get -- thanks to whoever passed me a glass of Mikkeller's It's Alight. There's a very nice, smooth, Cantillon-grade sourness to this saison, with more than a hint of farmyard earthiness. Only 4.5% ABV but very much a beer to take time over.

And that was Pig's Ear for another year. I didn't have far to stagger to my lodgings: the Boak & Bailey Travel Agency had me set up in The Old Ship Inn in a back alley across the street. Despite access to 24-hour cask ale I managed to resist the urge for a post-festival pint, and was glad I did: when I came down for breakfast next day I discovered that Bombardier would have been my only option. They seem pretty green in the whole hotel stakes, and the kitchen doesn't yet open for Full Englishes of a morning. It probably wouldn't have been economical for them anyway as my only company in the dining area as I munched my muesli was a tiny, but seriously rotund, grey mouse. This is what happens in pubs too posh to keep a cat.

Work was long, arduous and finished near 6 in Mayfair. I had the usual option of sprinting off to one of London's famous beer pubs, virtually none of which I've ever visited, to chug a pint or two before zipping back to Paddington and the train to Heathrow. But I decided that I really just couldn't be bothered. Instead I wandered up through Marble Arch and made for John's local-from-local, The Victoria on Strathearn Place.

This cosy traditional pub is a multi-award-winner, including a recent spell as Fuller's Pub of the Year. From the spiel on the menu it's clear that they care a lot about their beers, and while they're not shy about throwing a guest ale or two on, only Fuller's core range was available on my visit. So I settled in by the open fire for a textbook pint of Pride. I find it hard to get excited about this beer. It's good, unfussy, understated, but I have to say I prefer a bit more oomph to my ales these days. I had hoped that my follow-up ESB would be in one of the beautiful wide stemmed glasses everyone else had, but it wasn't to be. I still really really enjoyed my pint: all the weighty caramel and fruit characteristics were wonderfully pronounced.

The Victoria is definitely a pub to note if one is in the vicinity of Paddington. Thanks for the recommendation, John: you claim your ramblings are random, but I can see why you'd direct them to this place. Best beer of the day, however, was in the unlikely surrounds of Heathrow, where I idled my last half hour over a delightfully tart and fruity pint of Adnams Bitter.

I really really do need to spend some quality time drinking in London. These stolen hours between meetings and flights just aren't good enough, ESB and Adnam's Bitter notwithstanding.

Blake's 2

Bombardier is one of those beers that just doesn't do it for me. Kegged, casked or bottled, it's a deceptively delicious-looking dark ruby ale with virtually no redeeming features in the flavour department. Not that it tastes unpleasant, I just find it dull as proverbial. It doesn't help that the brewery's nationalistic brand campaign is rather daft: country of origin as a selling point? Is that all you've got? But then all flag-waving, anthems and the whole things-being-objectively-better-owing-to-the-imaginary-boundaries-within-which-they-were-created seems incredibly stupid to me. I think it's because of where I grew up.

Anyway, my reservations about the brand and the basic beer weren't enough to put me off buying a bottle each of two new ones that Charles Wells has put out under the Bombardier marque. It was the porter that attracted me in particular, but I reckoned the golden ale would be worth a punt too, even though I wasn't expecting to like it. The marketing department, brand consultants and focus groups seem to have decided that phrases from William Blake's Jerusalem, England's unofficial national anthem, were the best way to name these oh-so-patriotic brews.

So first up is Burning Gold, and as you can see from its clear glass bottle, it's a lovely rich shade of amber. The aroma is delightfully pungent, the brewers having plainly decided that it would benefit from extensive light-conditioning before drinking. The body is big and rich: none of the wateriness that occasionally plagues the UK's paler summer ales. But there's bugger all by way of actual flavour. Rolling it around on the palate I get a vague bittersweet orange flavour, briefly, but the label promises "zest" and there's nothing here I'd dignify with that term.

As I said, I wasn't expecting much from the gold one, but I had higher hopes for Satanic Mills, a beer which glooped out of the bottle quite beautifully, forming a thick, slow-rising, beige head. Once again they have fashioned a superb texture; but that marvellous creamy mouthfeel is an empty stage. There's a faint hint of roasted plumminess in there, but it makes you work to find it. The viscosity means it's one for drinking slowly, but without any big flavours to entertain the drinker between sips, this beer amounts to a complete waste of time.

I'm adamant that my informed prejudice against Bomabardier the beer and its Al Murray sensibilities have not coloured my dim view of these new ones. I'm fairly sure what we have here are dumbed down versions of styles which somebody in the non-brewing end of the business figured there was a demand for, and which the company ought to be exploiting. This is beer designed by and for a committee, and you'd want to be insanely loyal to the brand to derive any enjoyment from drinking them.

London (not) for beginners

It's 3.30 yesterday afternoon. I've just come out of a meeting in Camden, north London and have arranged with a colleague to meet at Paddington Station at 5 for the train back to Heathrow. At Camden Town tube station I discover that the Northern line is severely disrupted and all service on the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines has been suspended. The question: have I time for a quick pint of St. Peter's excellent cask ale at the Jerusalem Tavern in Clerkenwell?
'Course I have.

Had I not been navigating on the hoof I'd have hopped out at Euston, walked to Euston Square, and taken the Metropolitan line to Farringdon. I didn't spot this easy option, however, and opted instead to leg it from Euston, across Bloomsbury, past Gray's Inn field and into Clerkenwell.

I arrived at the Jerusalem in Britton Street at 4.15. It's a strange, simple little pub, furnished in rickety wood and giving the appearance of being held together by paint and varnish. The taps on the bar serve Bitburger and Aspall's cider. Behind it, however, a row of spigots promise beers from the pub's parent brewery: St. Peter's in Suffolk. Though tempted to order something I know, and compare its cask and bottled incarnations, I went instead for a pint of mild, a beer style which is nigh-on impossible to find here at home. St. Peter's Mild is very dark, with a thick creamy head. The taste is indeed mild, offering subtle coffee and roasted grain notes.

As I sunk my mild, I consulted my map and figured that I'd be able to take a much shorter route back to Paddington: from Farringdon, changing at Baker Street. And that meant I had time for another pint. This time I went for St. Peter's Grapefruit beer, having read good things about it, and to find out how the wizards of Bungay do fruit beer. More than anything, it reminded me of Früli. It doesn't look like it, taste like it, smell like it or feel like it, but it has a similar beer-fruit relationship, with the fruit definitely wearing the trousers. It's clear, almost headless, a deep red-gold colour and tastes overwhelmingly of real grapefruit. Marvellously refreshing and innovative.

At this point I took my leave and was back at Paddington at the appointed hour. We arrived at Heathrow with time to spare. Anyone who flies at all regularly between Ireland and Heathrow will be very familiar with the complex of metal tubes housing gates 80 to 90 of Terminal 1, affectionately known as "The Paddyshack". Time was, the Paddyshack Wetherspoons had Theakstons on draught and the last couple of pints at the airport was something I always looked forward to. Alas those days are gone, and it's necessary to drink landside in order to get anything better than Heineken these days. Armed with this knowledge I led us to the main landside Wetherspoons, where the handpumps were pouring Schiehallion, Marston's Pedigree, Bombardier and Deuchars IPA. The last of these was the only stranger to me, so that's where I started. I was disappointed from the first sip. This is a rather bland affair, lacking the hoppy citrusy warmth one expects from British IPA. Instead, it's creamy and smooth with only the fainest hop character at the very back.

Having polished that off I should really have opted for a Schiehallion, knowing that I really like it. Instead, I decided to give a dull beer a second chance. Having been disappointed with bottled Marston's Pedigree, I tried a draught pint and found it to be exactly the same forgettable sensation. Marston's should be proud that their bottling process manages to reproduce the cask experience perfectly. If only it were an experience worth having...

Tales from the Dual Carriageway

I'm in England today and just went for a couple of pints in an uber-generic off-ramp pub, the kind of which dots arterial roads from Truro to Sunderland. I was quite pleased, in such a wash of generic lagers, to find Old Speckled Hen on tap. Old Speckled Hen is the kind of English beer that other beers should look up to. On tap, however, it is a whole different ball-game, it seems. What I received was ice-cold with a frothy nitrogen head and took about half an hour in the sun to develop something resembling the taste of Old Speckled Hen from a bottle. However, I'm taking a positive slant on this: by drinking this beer by the bottle back home I am getting a better experience than those consuming it in the pub in its country of origin.

From the same McPub I tried Bombardier. This was at least honest in its approach (or maybe it's just that I've never had it from a bottle). Again it was cold and frothy, but this time there was no attempt at flavour: this is one of those ultra-smooth ales which goes down silkily but basically tastes like air. It's not an unpleasant experience, by any means, but it really drives one's thirst for a decent cask ale.