De la casa

Brewpubs! One of the few beery things I'll go out of my way for when I'm abroad. In Buenos Aires out of my way meant a lot out of my way: the city sprawls like none other I know, with good bars and restaurants scattered far across the suburbs, and transport links which range from awkward to none. Standard Argentine opening hours make it all even harder, with most pubs closed until 6pm, restaurants to 8 or after, and the metro closing up at 10.45. The drink-eat-get-home window is rather small if you don't want to taxi everywhere.

We were lucky then (and it was pure dumb luck) that one of the city's brewpubs was a three minute stroll from our hotel in Recoleta. Buller is squeezed in to a narrow plot on a strip of restaurants but stretches back from its front door to a wide back room and upper mezzanine. The substantial brewkit sits on display at the entrance, something I always like to see. Six beers grace the laminated menu, with a seasonal on the blackboard behind the bar. Let's take it from the top:

Buller Light Lager (yes really) was actually the last one of the set I tried, for obvious reasons. As with Porterhouse Chiller (the only other craft-brewed version of the style I can think of) I surprised myself at how much I liked it. It's crisp, it's clear, it's very easy drinking and properly refreshing. In fact it's a hell of a lot better than most of the Argentine macro lagers I tasted.

The Hefeweizen is a small step up: translucent and anaemic, with hints of orange blossom and dry grain it's almost more witbier than weizen. But it's tasty and thirst-quenching and does the job. And the Oktoberfest is in the same vein. Pouring the dark amber of an American Oktoberfestbier it has more of those lightly sweet oranges from whatever hops they're using. Unlike most American Oktoberfests I've met it's entirely uncloying, keeping things light and breezy throughout.

Yet more oranges in the India Pale Ale, giving it an air of Englishness. However, it's far too sweet, neglecting the bittering hops and piling on sticky toffee where it doesn't belong. Served cold to be consumed cold, I guess. The real oddity in the house line-up was the Honey Beer: an 8.5% ABV stonker with a waxy aroma and loads of honey flavour in amongst the heavy sticky malt. It's Sugar Puffs in beer form, and not at all easy on a by-the-pint basis.

Buller Dry Stout completes the regulars. Quite a simple one this, with a little bit of roasted grain complicated by some mild dark fruit flavours, shading towards plum sourness at the finish and just catching the back of the throat with its acridity. I felt somewhat shortchanged by the whopping 5.8% ABV strength: a better brewery could do this kind of thing well under the 5% mark, I reckon.

The seasonal beer was another dark one, a Porter. Pulled straight from the homebrew handbook this was loaded with brown malt for a gorgeous smooth and rich espresso flavour, finishing with a similar fruity tang as the stout. No points for innovation, but full marks for making a top notch beer, and one of my favourites of the trip.

On to another far-flung district of the city and I'm really not sure if I should be counting Bar De Cao for this post. It's a bit of a mystery whether or not it's a brewpub, a mystery largely of my own devising due to my inability to articulate "Here, do youse actually make this stuff here?" in Spanish. On Scoopergen, Gazza says De Cao has a brewery attached, and elsewhere I've seen one of the company's other bars -- La Poesía -- listed as the brewery site. Anyway, I've been to both and saw no brewing equipment, but I did get to try the house beers. (Also, a tip of the glass at this point to Gazza for his Argentina beer guide which provided a couple of great pointers for bars in Buenos Aires. Much appreciated.)

De Cao itself is a lovely pub, being largely unspoilt since its founding in 1915 and reminding me lots of the Irish spirit grocer style of boozer, only with a bit more of a colourful Latin flourish. Their brewery, wherever it actually is, turns out three brews. De Cao Negra is the good one: very close to quality Irish stout with its light roast and hints of chocolate, but once again showing signs of mild sourness that add to its complexity. I could have stayed drinking this. I should have stayed drinking this.

De Cao Rubia is orangey-amber, hazy and looking to me more like a weissbier than a blonde ale. There must have been a complete failure on the hop utilisation front, because it's horribly porridgey: a little bit sweet and grainy and then just watery afterwards. But hey, at least it wasn't infected. De Cao Colorada, on the other hand, was. It looked so promising, with a loose-bubbled cask-like head over a hazy red body. The carbonation is very low, but that merely serves to accentuate the vinegar and the overall impression of a glass of cold runny sick. As you usually get with infected beers, somewhere underneath there were traces of what it should have been: some lightly toasted grain, a bit of gentle roast, but they were very hard to find.

"Ack! What the hell happened with this one?!" is also missing from my Spanish vocabulary, alas.

Love lager

When it comes to beer, Ireland is pretty much synonymous with stout. As far as I can tell, this is largely down to Diageo's marketing power rather than what anybody actually drinks. The latest figures , from 2006 (p.12 here), say that 63% of all the beer sold in Ireland is lager (stout is most of the rest, with ale a mere 5%). The typical Irish pub certainly offers a dizzying array of locally brewed lagers. You'll find Bud, Carlsberg, Heineken, Miller and Coors Light side-by-side on almost every bar. More upmarket places will also have draught imports like Stella Artois and Beck's Vier, and bottles of Sol, Corona and Tiger as well, while pubs serving a less affluent clientele will have local Amstel and Fosters bringing up the rear.

When Ireland's first lager brewery closed up shop in the summer of 1893 after a meagre 19 months in business, I'm sure Mr Stoer who owned it never dreamed that the daring new style he found in Bavaria and the US would one day rule supreme in Irish beer. Yet when the latter-day beer pioneers Oliver and Liam set up The Porter House in the 1990s, it was inevitable that lager would be a key component in their success. The first brews were called Probably Lager and WeiserBuddy, each with its own distinct and individual branding.

Of course, the multinational which holds the licence to brew Carlsberg and Bud in Ireland threw a fit, and the beers were hastily renamed. I've already covered the Porterhouse's Bud clone back here and today I'm looking at the other two lagers they make and sell: Temple Bräu and Hersbrucker. And yes, I'm well aware that by writing about fancy-pants microbrewed beer I'm breaking my own Session rule on plain everyday lager. Sue me.

I got my first sip of Temple Bräu in just before the rain started and we had to leave the beer garden of Porterhouse North. I hadn't tasted it in a long long time so had basically no expectations, other than what you see here: a fizzy yellow lager aimed at the mass market. I was still surprised, however. It's nice. The body is quite full and comes close to the creaminess you get in the best German pilsners. The aroma indicates a definite hop character and it tastes pleasantly bitter with a long aftertaste. All is not completely rosy in the beer garden, however: there's a bit of a metallic tang as well, right in the middle of the whole thing, though not enough to spoil the enjoyment. Despite its flaw, Temple Bräu remain a tasty quaffer for sunny afternoons.

Inside, I moved on to Hersbrucker. Once upon a time, this was Mrs Beer Nut's regular tipple but she quit a couple of years ago, citing an unpleasant change in the beer. I had never been a fan so was very much on the alert as I took my pint back to the table. Rightly so, as it happened. Hersbrucker, slightly darker than Temple Bräu, is damn near undrinkable. The only thing that saves it is its watery hollowness. The flavour starts with nothing but is followed by a massive disinfectant flavour: pure essence of hospital. Sharp, tangy and unpleasant. I did, in its defence, finish the pint, but I couldn't help thinking that I might have been better off with a pint of Carlsberg, sadly.

I was going to leave this post here, but the guilt about drinking microbrewed lager got the better of me. I had to go back to my roots.

It's very hard to find a pint of Harp in Dublin. It was still relatively common in the mid-1990s but pretty much disappeared soon after. Diageo brew it in Dundalk and just about all of it heads north across the border. Fortunately (or not), there are a couple of hold-outs around town, one being O'Neill's of Suffolk Street, a vast pub that seems possessed of the desire to stock every draught beer that exists anywhere on the Irish market. They have a Harp tap. Since it's the beer I drank most when I started drinking beer, I felt I owed you all a pint.

And it's not awful. I was astounded at how unawful it is. It's not in the least watery and has quite a sweet foretaste with a bit, but not much, of a bitter kick at the end. To be completely frank I doubt I could tell this blind from your typical pale Czech lager. In fairness that's probably more a damning indictment of what the multinationals have done to the established lagers of Prague and Plzeň than any kind of kudos for Diageo, but still: I could actually drink Harp without complaining. That's an eye-opener for me.

And that's all I've got to say on the yellow fizz of Ireland. Post your linkages somewhere on here, or e-mail me or whatever. A round-up will be forthcoming some time in the next week. In the meantime, I'm off to Belgium for the weekend where I won't be so much as tempted by a Jupiler. I'll likely be Twittering my way through Cantillon's public brewday tomorrow, but unfortunately won't be able to read your jealous howls until I return.

A sudden chill

It's a damning indictment of the state of Irish beer that our largest independent brewer, owner of a chain of pubs which does not stock the vapid products of Ireland's macrobrewers, has always had a Bud clone in its repertoire. Because it has to. (Ireland's Bud, for the record, is brewed by Diageo down at the old Smithwick's plant in Kilkenny.)

I'm sure I tried this Chiller way back when the Porterhouse (or The Porter House, as it was then) first opened the doors of its Temple Bar brewpub. Recently, however, after years of tireless beer education I've become curious about it. How accurate a rendition is it? How do you make a tasty, hand-made beer that trades on its tastelessness?

Today I gave in and had my first Chiller in eleven years. Believe it or not, it really does take the worthwhile elements from pale American cooking lager and put them in a proper beer. It's very dry, but in a refreshing way, almost like my old friend Fischer. The mouthfeel has a stimulating sparkle to it which leads to criticism number one: the gassiness. I can't imagine drinking very much of this without becoming bloatis in extremis. Perhaps the reason the Porterhouse is so fond of ear-splitting skiddley-eye music is that it covers the belches of the Chiller drinkers.

More problematic was the chemical aftertaste that came with it, a bit like disinfectant. Could have been a bad glass or stale beer, but I sincerely hope it's not supposed to be there. I'll confirm this on my next tasting in 2018.
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Michael Jackson, inspiration, RIP.