Time and tide

Another year over. Time to wrap up, take stock, award meaningless prizes for things I thought were good. It's year fifteen of this, and I may be the only person still keeping to the old ways, as set out by Mark Dredge and Andy Mogg in the heady year of 2009, and later revised. But before that, a tradition of my own: the beer I drink while making up my mind.

I acquired this bottle of Beer Hut's Ebbs & Flows on my visit to Bullhouse East in Belfast last month. It came with the Simon Boyle seal of approval, so if this goes horribly wrong it's all his fault. It's a mixed fermentation blonde ale, aged in barrels for a year and finishing at 6.7% ABV. The cork under the waxed cap was saturated in beer, which was worrying, but it looked well in the glass, the bright gold suggesting it hadn't been oxidised. The aroma says Golden Delicious apples to me. The flavour is greener and more acidic than that, into the Granny Smith zone. It's assertively sour, but still has enough malt density to prevent that being a full-on burn, and so it only hints at white spirit vinegar. That's pretty much all it has to say, really. The barrels in particular don't make much of a contribution: little wine character and no oak spices. It is at least clean, but I don't think I'll be distracted by the taste as I set to work on...

The Golden Pint Awards 2023

Best Irish Cask Beer: Land & Labour Geimhreadh
It means "Winter" but I drank it in April. This is Land & Labour's take on geuze, and it's a pretty accurate rendition. While one might not expect such things to be served on cask, as this was, one does not pass it by either. The same brewery's Bière de Rhubarbe runs it a close enough second to effectively share the award.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Whiplash Oxen
We've been blessed with a selection of delicious barley wines from Irish breweries this year, with Wicklow Wolf, Kinnegar and DOT all stepping up to the plate. My favourite of them, however, was this bourbon aged delight which appeared on draught at the brewery's bar in Dublin.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Black Donkey Yes Marm
Land & Labour aren't the only ones getting the hang of wild yeast in Belgian-type recipes. Black Donkey had a number of wild fermented specials, of which this one, with a subtle hint of Seville orange, was my favourite. 

Best Irish Canned Beer: Lough Gill Blue Blue Sky
I'm surprising myself by putting a hazy IPA in as the winner of possibly the most competitive category. But this isn't about the cerebral analysis of the year's drinking, it's remembering the sheer impact of a load of fresh New Zealand hops, hitting the back of my nose as soon as the tab was popped. From first impressions onwards, the beer didn't disappoint: bright, fresh, fruity and just bitter enough. 

Best Overseas Draught Beer: The Kernel India Double Porter
This little keg found its way all the way from Bermondsey to celebrate the re-opening of UnderDog during the summer. It wasn't, it turned out, the beginning of a whole new wave of Kernel beers on draught in Ireland, but what's rare is beautiful, and this hits all the right chocolate-and-flowers notes for a 7.5% ABV porter. It's nice to read about historic beers, and this feels as though it's as close as we can get to drinking one.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: De Dochter van de Korenaar Rien Ne Vas Plus
Another award based on my memory of our first encounter. I had no idea what to expect from this experimental take on the port wine method, but applied to barley wine. If you'd asked me, I would have said no way any beer would be the better for six years of barrel ageing. There's no disputing that here: six years made it amazing. Brewers rightly get a bit of stick for claiming to be daringly experimental when they tip a canister of blueberry syrup into a pale ale. This is what proper creativity looks like, and how it pays off.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Hoppy Road Coco En Stock
This was a bit of a tricky one to award. My home drinking of overseas beers was fairly down this year in favour of drinking locally. Rummaging through the records, however, I did uncover this fantastic coconut imperial stout which I bought from the Hoppy Road brewery in Nancy.

Best Collaboration Brew: Wide Street / Land & Labour Many Hands
The funky lads are now co-located at Wide Street HQ in Longford, but before Land & Labour moved in, they created this blend of mixed culture beers from both sites, aged two years in Chardonnay casks. You can't tell that there are two different underlying beers, but you do get a massive amount of flavour complexity, spritzy and funky, all at once. It shows that they really know how to do the blending bit to maximum effect.

Best Overall Beer: Land & Labour Geimhreadh
I love that spontaneously-fermented beer of this quality exists in Ireland, and is perhaps even getting a little more commonplace. Land & Labour has certainly had a good year of beers, honing its ability to make future classics rather than throwing out endless new brews. Everything it does pays off in the glass.

Best Branding: Out of Office
It's such a strange theme, but is endlessly fascinating. The Belfast microbrewery has paper darts on its glassware and produced beers such as Pencil Pusher, NSFW and Kelly From Marketing. I'm curious how long they can keep it up, but I'll be continually entertained while they do. A very honorable mention goes to Hopfully for their fun and subversive can art.

Best Pump Clip: Brewster's Decadence
They continue to go out of fashion here, so I'm turning to the year's selection of English cask beer for this award. You need to like Art Nouveau to appreciate a Brewster's clip, and this one is no exception; the lounging lady expresses the beer's name in a most appropriately inappropriate way.

Best Bottle/Can Label: Canvas Bella
In almost a reverse of the previous one, I loved the simplicity of this: lots of white space and nature being left to do its thing. In a very small rendering, the artist has also managed to capture the body language of bossman Moss perfectly.



Best Irish Brewery: Black Donkey
I had a bit of chasing to do to find the Black Donkey specials this year, but I'm very glad I put the effort in. They are one of the leading lights of wild fermented Irish beer, though don't seem to get the same level of nerd attention as the others. If it's been a while since you tried their beer, I suggest you start getting caught up with the likes of Yes Marm, Hive Mind or Phraseology.

Best Overseas Brewery: Boon
I had the good fortune of spending a couple of days at the Belgian lambic brewery back in Spring, including its new tasting room. It's become very much part of the landscape when I'm in Belgium, as I was on three trips this year. There are lots of vintages and blends to explore and it's all good.

Best New Brewery Opening 2023: Mo Chara
Now here's a category that's of its time. New breweries aren't springing up every couple of weeks, as they were a decade ago. In fact, I don't have anything I can report on from a newly opened brewery. So I'll spin it sideways and allow a contractor in. Mo Chara, a bar in Dundalk, has done a range of collaboration beers in various styles with various Irish breweries, and now has a lager all of its own. They look like their hearts are in the right place, so they get the award.

Pub/Bar of the Year: 7 Stern
I made my third visit to this Vienna institution in January and was delighted that nothing has changed, from the bustling multi-level rooms to the wacky-for-the-1990s beer list (Chilli! Hemp!). I feel very at home here. If you want my favourite nerdy beer bar of the year, that was Taplokaal Gist in Utrecht.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2023: UnderDog
It shouldn't really be possible to win this two years in a row, but UnderDog completed its brief sojourn in The Legal Eagle and moved around the corner to North King Street. The offer is the same as it ever was: an ever-changing selection of interesting draught beers and good company. The bonus addition of lunchtime opening hours has done wonders for my ticking workload.

Beer Festival of the Year: Mullingar Wild Beer Festival
It was the second outing for this one, and while it may not have been bigger or better, it was just great to see it back. We have an excellent little scene around this sort of beer in Ireland now, and I love that it gets focused into a dedicated event once a year. May there be many more.

Supermarket of the Year: Aldi
Bit of a shock, I know. Normally you would go to the other one for beer things. Aldi has had some good special editions, however, and the DOT Spin Off Series is what tips it for them here.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Blackrock Cellar
I always come away with more than I went in for. The shop does a very good line in beers that I just don't see elsewhere, and was my primary stockist for those lovely Black Donkey ones. The closure of The Three Tun Tavern means I have less reason to be in Blackrock these days, but the Cellar means it's still worth a special trip now and again.

Online Retailer of the Year: Craft Central
I could just copy and paste from last year. Craft Central makes buying new release beers extremely easy and I still buy far and away the majority of mine there.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: Hop Glossy
Issue 3 of Radka's snazzy look at everything going on on the Irish beer scene landed last week. It's a magnificent endeavour, and done, we're told, just for the fun of it. Long may it continue.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Boak & Bailey and A Better Beer Blog
I mean, who's left? I'm jointly awarding this category for the specific activity of posting a weekly round-up of links to things going on in the beer world -- Alan on Thursdays, Boak & Bailey on Saturdays. They're a regular reminder that there's still life out there for those who care to look. Stan Hieronymus's Monday links are also appreciated though haven't been quite as regular.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @BeerFoodTravel
Who's left, part 2. Liam's posts of beers, glassware, food and vinyl have made for cosy and comforting viewing through the year, so he takes my Johnson for the first time since 2019.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Whiplash
The stream of new beers and revisited recipes from this lot has been phenomenal. Generally, they back it up with lots of background information about what they've produced, and where to get it. I'm rarely left wondering, which is the whole point of breweries being online.


And there you have it. Another year over. I can see the first of 2024's beer winking at me already. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for yet more of the same in The Beer Nut's forthcoming 20th year.

Nancy brew mysteries

It had been almost eight years since I was last in France, and from a beer perspective, it was a very different France back in 2015. One of the things I learned when spending a few days there last month was that nearly two thirds of France's 2500 or so breweries are less than five years old. And, it goes without saying, the newcomers aren't throwing yet more blonde/brune/blanche into the market; they're following what's trendy on the international scene, even if very few of them make it to export.

On arrival in the eastern city of Nancy, it was straight off to La Fabrique des GrÔ, a microbrewery in the suburb of Maxéville. I don't know if they open to the public normally, but they were kind enough to host a get-together for the European Beer Consumers Union, assembling for its autumn meeting.

They've named their flagship lager directly after the location: La Bière Maxéville. It's a middle of the road 4.2% ABV, and I think is mostly clear, though it was hard to tell from the clouded plastic beaker in which it was served. It starts out as a good clean Germanic lager, with some nice celery and rocket hop notes. With a bit of warmth on it it becomes heavier, adding honey and uncooked sweetcorn to the picture, as well as a slick body. Still, it stays drinkable throughout, and I wouldn't be unhappy if my town's name were on something like this.

Level 2 for the beginner drinker is Niasse, a blonde ale brewed for summer. It's another pale and clear one, and while it's meant to be plain and chuggable actually shows a very decent hop complexity. A candied lemon sweetness invites us in, then a harder lime bitterness smacks us around. It's simple fun; a story as old as time. I didn't mind at all that I was drinking it on a dark damp evening in a chilly warehouse.

Things get a bit more special from here. The beer I actually started on was their IPA, Bitter Juice: chasing two trends at once, there. And yet it does what it says. The texture offers a smoothie smoothness in a typical New England way, while the flavour eschews fuzz and is bright and clean in a west coast way. They've added bergamot to give it an extra citrus element, though I got plenty of mouthwatering mandarin from the hops. The whole unfancy and unfussy package is delivered at a nicely poky 7.3% ABV, very nearly at double IPA level. They could have taken this one in all kinds of different directions but, this early in my evening, I really appreciated the balance.

A bottle of Landaise was passed around at one point. This is a pale ale with added Szechuan pepper. I'm used to these looking pale and innocent before they deliver a throat-scorching, sinus-clearing kick of spice. This isn't like that, having only a mildly spicy aroma and actually not a whole lot of flavour of any kind. The hopping in particular makes it undeserving of the pale ale designation and much more like a plain blonde ale. There is, however, just enough spice to be interesting. Maybe this suits the palate of others, but when I see chilli advertised, I expect to taste a goodly amount of it. Here there's only just enough of it to hold my interest.

Finally, Monsieur Le Patron was very keen to show off his boutique barrel-ageing programme, set up in one corner of the brewery. Its first fruit, not yet released to the public at that point, was Barikagrô Moscatel 01. This started life as a saison and was then given nine months of ageing in a Muscatel wine barrel. It's no dry or peppery saison, having absorbed a huge port or sherry flavour from the barrel, and more alcohol than its 8.7% ABV might suggest. The overall picture is of a well-integrated warming sipper; a softly-textured digestif. Breweries often take a couple of goes to get barrel-ageing dialled in. These guys seem to have hit the ground running. I wish them luck and hope to see more of the similar.

Maxéville is also home to a larger operation, called Hoppy Road. It's a good example of how the French microbrewery culture is as resolutely Francophone as everything else in the country, yet brewery and beer names are often inexplicably in English. Pick a lane, guys. Gathered around the malt stacks, we had a super-quick tasting of a portion of their sizeable beer range.

That began with a draught hazy pale, created for the local jazz festival and named NJP '73. As such they haven't put a whole lot of effort into designing it, aiming for sessionable gig drinking. What came out is a 5% ABV hazy pale ale, single-hopped with Ekuanot. I could have taken it for Mosaic: it has the savoury caraway and garlic that it shows when misbehaving. The soft texture helps with the drinkability, but otherwise it's unremarkable, which was very much the point.

Next out of the crate was Flamingo, an appropriately flamboyant name for a hibiscus and lime Berliner weisse. This is only 3.2% ABV and pink coloured. As one might expect, it has been kettle soured rather than mixed fermented, but its funky aroma adds an unexpected and most welcome complexity. That doesn't last, unfortunately, and when we get to the flavour we find it much more simplistic, with hibiscus's pink cherry taste most prominent, and a pinch of citrus sourness being the lime's contribution. This is simple and decent, offering something a bit fun at a very low strength. You could pint it, were it available on draught.

Moving up the scale, next it's a wheat ale of 5.6% ABV called Hopper. The best part of this is the label, reimagining Hopper's Nightowls as a Hoppy Road brewpub. There's a smidge of wheat softness about the texture, but mostly it's a dank and resinous hop walloper, indistinguishable from many other American pale ales. The lemon zest of the aroma softens it somewhat, but otherwise it's no more complex or interesting than the jazz ale. 

Soif!, clearly also meant as a thirst-quencher, is another pale ale, though at 5% ABV we're getting beyond the point of simple chuggability. Chinook and Mosaic are the hops this time, and again it's the savoury side which comes out, loading the palate with sweaty white onion and not a whole lot else. For me this doesn't meet its one-job remit: my thirst wasn't quenched and I was immediately looking for something else to take the taste away. Your sensitivity to armpit-mode Mosaic may vary.

Another wheat ale clocks in at 5.4% ABV and is called White Demon. I didn't get the full details but it was a complete disaster for me: heavily bitter, plasticky, and with a weird rancid grape overtone. I should add before moving on that all these recent beers were doubtless exactly what the brewery intended them to be, with not an off-flavour to be found. It's just that their on-flavours really didn't suit me.

It wasn't all bad, thankfully. The beer called 1984 is one they seem very proud of, and I can't think of any other examples: a saison based on acidulated malt. It's 6.5% ABV and hopped with Loral. Generously, as it turned out, delivering loads of floral and citric brightness. The body is light and clean, meaning the alcohol is dangerously well concealed. The icing on the cake, however, is a punchy lime-like sourness, presumably derived from the malt. Here's another beer that would have worked much better in a sunny beer garden than a rain-soaked industrial lock-up.

Before it was time to go they brought out the house imperial stout, Mazout. This exists as all kinds of variants, but I'm glad I got to taste the archetype. It's 12% ABV with a textbook warmth and softness. The flavour does nothing fancy with the basic components of the style, piling in bitter espresso and high-cocoa chocolate, before a long and almost spirit like warm finish. There are neither bells nor whistles on offer, but it's excellent without them. Only a bit of extra hopping would propel it to the next level for me, but I have little to complain about here.

I was impressed enough by what Hoppy Road were making to stage a raid on the brewery shop, and some time later, back at the hotel, I drank a nightcap of another Hoppy Road imperial stout, this one with coconut added. Coco en Stock is 12.2% ABV. The coconut is extremely pronounced here, adding almost a chemical solvent note. Any possible harshness is offset, however, by layer upon layer of smooth and creamy milk chocolate. And while that in turn runs the risk of making it cloying, the alcohol heat gives the palate a thorough scrub. It's big and it's busy, but it's also magnificently balanced, with none of the different elements pulling it too far in any direction. I'm reminded in particular of Lervig's Coconuts: it's possible the brewer may have had a glass or two of that before getting started.

Back at the shop, of course the double black IPA had been first into the basket. This is Beetle Juice, a very black number with a softly fruity aroma of peach and pineapple. That's done with Citra, Simcoe, Columbus and Amarillo, only the last of which I would consider any way fruit-providing. The bitterness from the others does show up in the flavour: acidic resins and a hard zesty citrus. As is appropriate for the style, there's a backing of dark roast behind it. Oddly, it finishes quickly with a light and fizzy body, which is not what I would expect for something at 8% ABV. Easy drinkability shouldn't be on the spec for double black IPA, making this one not a great example by my personal style guidelines. I liked what it does, but I think it should be doing it at a couple of percentage points less.

There was another of my favourite styles in Light My Sour, a sour IPA at 5.5%. They've absolutely nailed the good points of the style here, even if the ABV is a little on the high side. For refreshment is the name of the game, and a bit like the acidulated saison above, this uses a super-clean tartness to project a ray of unadulterated sunshine. It's not so sour as to be puckering, nor even zesty, showing instead a gentle spritz of ripe lemon and Tangfastics. The fizz is busy and the finish quick, but that's all part of the charm. The extra strength does provide a little more body than most of these, and I think that helps balance it more. It's not a massively complex beer, but it's also not meant to be. Very nicely done, overall.

I wasn't going to pass by a Baltic porter, even if the one on offer at Hoppy Road, Erebus, is a bit of a lightweight at only 6.2% ABV. There's a little too much foam on pouring, and some unexpected dregs at the bottom of the can make it more of a brown colour than black. The aroma is green and leafy, with a pinch of roast, making it seem more like a black IPA than Baltic porter, initially. That freshly green bitterness is there in the flavour too, starting slow but building in intensity towards the finish. Columbus is the culprit, we're told. The body is creamy and stout-like, making me wonder if it's really a lager at all. I'm also looking for the more herbal, liquorice-like bitterness which for me is the style's signature, but I'm not getting that either. It's enjoyable -- chewy and satisfying -- but while it does have the impactful bitterness of Baltic porter, it's the wrong sort, and no other part of it is to style. That's disappointing when it's what I was in the mood for.

Our third big stout, Speedol Star, is a mere 9.5% ABV and billed as a "coffee triple stout". What does that mean? Well, it smells like coffee, tastes like coffee and looks like coffee, so that's three. I'm being flippant, but it is all coffee right the way through. That doesn't leave much room for stout, and you get a rudimentary level of dark toast with some hazelnut or peanut sweetness. Like the black IPA it's simple, balanced, clean and straightforward: a real homebrewer's pitch at precision, but which lacks an individual character. I would like something more than the roast and oils of the coffee: the best of these add some berry or cherry complexity, and that would be most welcome here.

There was a selection of large format bottles in the brewery shop but my groaning bagstrap made it clear I could only take one. That was Balinbarbi, a beer fermented on a French word I didn't know: marcs. I looked it up and out turned out the English translation is "marcs". Apparently it's the waste material left over when grapes are crushed and I'm glad I've never had need of a word for that. The heartbroken varieties here are Gamay and Pinot Noir.

It's 4.8% ABV and pours a pale shade of murky rosé. A head says hello and swiftly goodbye again. On the aroma there's a promising mix of serious vanilla-spice oak, but muted, and overlaid with a fruity summer cocktail buzz. The texture is thin and spritzy at first, though a gumminess follows, from which one can almost see the Brettanomyces strands. It's mostly fruit in the flavour, where it meets the sourness to create something sweet yet still crisp, clean and balanced. It bears a strong resemblance to a quality young framboise, but the ABV is very unBelgian, and that really thins it out. Very nice, but not brilliant by grape ale standards, if that helps you make up your own mind in the Hoppy Road brewery shop.

So that's the breweries. Next, we head for the pub.