The call of duty

Any student of British beer history can tell you loads about the direct effect of taxation on the contents of people's pint glasses. All of us on these islands still live in the shadow of the Great Gravity Drop of 1917, after all. Most recently I've been interested by Ron's theory that war hasn't had the same lasting effect on our beery continental brethren because they've tended to enshrine beer styles and strengths in law, and still do in the likes of Germany and the Czech Republic.

It's not always about war, however. Brewers seldom see anything wrong with a bit of profiteering in peacetime too, should the opportunity arise, and so it is with the new 2.8% ABV tax band that offers a halving of excise duty for beers brewed below it. The late Minister Lenihan introduced this in 2008 "to encourage the safer use of alcohol and to make a contribution over time to reducing death and injury on our roads". Since then, not a single new sub-2.8% ABV beer has been brought to market by any of our brewers, meaning the only real effect of the law has been to boost the profits made by British multinational Diageo on their pre-existing golf club editions of Carlsberg and Guinness.

It's a different story in the UK, however, where the same rate has applied only since late last year yet breweries -- reputable and otherwise -- have been falling over themselves to create product that fits. I offer no comment on the reputation of Manchester's JW Lees brewery, but their Brewer's Dark is one from their back catalogue that has been adapted to dodge the exciseman, knocked down to 2.8 from the former lofty heights of 3.5% ABV, whence I tasted it a couple of years ago. I don't know how much of the difference is down to the carbonation method, but I'm getting none of the rich chocolate creaminess of the cask version from this new bottle. There's still a lovely roast bite, however, making it a deliciously refreshing dark quaffing beer. Light, without being watery, thin or dull. Yes, we could do with something in this style over here.

We're not stuck for 4.x% stouts, however, though I was still interested to see Fuller's of London launched a new one last year. This was followed by disappointment when I couldn't get any on a trip to their home turf in April. But, resilient as ever, I tracked down a bottle in Dublin and here it is. 4.5% ABV, so a teeny bit stronger than the draught version they had out as a seasonal last November.

They've gone all-out for density here: almost totally opaque black with a thick dollop of off-white head and a smooth weightiness. The flavour is unusual, showing a little of the unctuous caramel I associate more with stouts in the 6%+ bracket, a distinct dark chocolate dryness and then a bitter hop tang on the end which calls Porterhouse Wrassler's XXXX to mind. Comparisons with London Porter are inevitable and I don't think Black Cab is as well-rounded. Still, there's definitely something different here for the seen-it-all stout drinker, I reckon.

That'll be £18 please, mate.

Under Napoleon's Nose

It was the draw of the Wetherspoon Beer Festival that led me, against wise council (cheers Ed!), to set foot in The Bridge House on my few free hours in Belfast last Friday. It was not yet 4pm so of course the place was buzzing. I felt a bit out of place among the other customers, what with my ability to walk upright and use tools. Had I shown them that I understood the gift of fire I don't know what would have happened. Perhaps I would have been made god of their loud and sticky hell. Anyway, there was nothing from the top flight of the festival listings available, and I settled for 3 Bees Oatmeal Stout. It's a solid, workmanlike performance, very dry for the most part, with a pleasant chocolate complication and a tiny bitter hop bite, shading towards metallic, at the finish, There's a certain charm to it, and it's inoffensive. Quite the contrast to Belfast's JD Wetherspoon and its clientele, in fact. I moved on.

Top of my Belfast hitlist was The John Hewitt, across town. Reputed as one of the city's best beer venues it's run as a non-profit co-operative apparently. The beer selection was not as good as I was led to believe: beer of the week was Cruzcampo, unfortunately. Two cask offerings from Hilden and Belfast Black on keg were the sum total of craft beer. I settled for a pint of Köstritzer and one of Hilden Ale before hitting the streets again, a little disappointed.

Round the corner is well-reputed gastropub The Northern Whig: a cavernous venue which serves nothing at all worth drinking, while nearby is the Duke of York where, with the Hoegaarden tap removed, the selection has got worse since my last visit in 2005. This trip to the beer mecca of Belfast was not working out as well as I'd hoped. A shortcut through the generic-UK-shopping-centre Victoria Square brought us out at Bittles, a quite charming narrow pub where whiskey is the dominant theme. The bottled beer selection is quite decent, between local and Scottish micros, but I plumped for a pint of keg Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Bitter, just for the novelty. It's sweet and Tizery, probably pairing well with a dram or two of the decent. The beer lover, meanwhile, moved on again.

Just across the alley, in fact, to The Kitchen. This pub was demolished and rebuilt as part of the Victoria Square redevelopment. While there's no doubt that a lot of the original charm was carried off in skips years ago, it holds a reputation as a proper beer pub and I reckoned it was well worth investigating. I probably should have known when I met a woman at the door dressed head-to-foot as a Magners pear that my visit wouldn't end well. In fact, it ended some thirty seconds later when I observed that the clips on the two handpumps on the bar were turned around, and everything else on sale was muck. Another blow for my perception of the Belfast beer scene.

I don't remember why I'd earmarked The Garrick as worth stopping in, but I did. A decent selection of Hilden and Whitewater bottles languished at the bottom of the fridge, but I was in the mood for ticking and opted for a couple of Italian lagers. Theresianer Premium Lager is from Trieste and is brewed for a definite Austro-Hungarian feel. It has a soft yet dry character which is unchallenging but decent, as a helles should be. Theresianer Vienna is a lot like the Samuel Adams Boston Lager with which it shares a shelf in the Garrick's fridge: properly Malteser-malty, shading towards Ovaltine, with only a slight tail-end staleness spoiling the fun. For unfussy boozing outside on a warm Friday afternoon, one could do an awful lot worse.

By this stage it was coming close to the train time, yet I was desperate to find some Whitewater beer on cask. My list was exhausted, but there was one sure bet a few blocks away: I headed for The Crown. It's been a while since I last set foot in this Belfast institution: a lavish Victorian "Liquor Saloon", owned and maintained by the National Trust. Trade was brisk, though it wasn't full exactly, and best of all there were three handpumps for Whitewater beer, including my first encounter with Belfast Black on cask. It's not quite as good as Fuller's London Porter, but it's really not far off. It has that sour plums-and-damsons complexity next to the chocolate and liquorice. Perhaps it was just as well there was only time for one: having it in a busy bar full of Guinness drinkers started to induce money-changers-in-the-temple feelings in me. There could have been spillage.

And then it was back aboard the Enterprise and home to Dublin at warp factor 0.0000001. In a way I'm a little let down by what I found. Belfast isn't quite the quality drinking city I was expecting it to be. There are no pubs with extensive world-beers selections like I've seen in CAMRA-award-winners in Great Britain, and local cask ale seems relatively hard come by. The Crown is deserving of a visit all by itself, but beyond that: caveat crawlor.

Amateur night

Bringing your own beer to the pub is great. Drinking beer that other people have brought to the pub is even better.

Last Thursday the Bull & Castle hosted a tasting night for the members of IrishCraftBrewer.com. Seven homebrewers brought their wares along and the standard was, frankly, amazing. Highlights included a hopped-up amber ale, a cherry stout, and a porter which -- were it available on the open market -- would leave Messrs Fuller, Smith and Turner quaking in their boots. It was a good night.

We non-brewers were permitted to bring along any interesting or unusual beers we had come across, and the management generously offered round some of the oddities they had accumulated but had no intention of selling. I don't think the commercial beers were deliberately chosen to make the homebrew look good, but that's certainly how it turned out for me.

Starting with something light, I tried a Tusker, fully aware that it doesn't have the greatest reputation, even among African lagers. It's pretty close to being your average tasteless fizzy yellow beer, but there's an almost weiss-like fruit flavour in there as well. Not enough to make it really worth drinking, however.

I've long been curious about King Cobra, the extra-strength double-fermented version of my favourite pseudo-Indian English lager. I wasn't impressed, however. There's all the corny taste of regular Cobra, but the lightness of body which makes the standard beer palateable is replaced with a heavy, sticky body which just tips over into special brew territory. Not recommended with curry. Or anything else.

Passing real Africa and fake India, we come home to Ulster. Until Thursday I wasn't aware that Whitewater made a lager, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised: lack of imagination can affect craft brewers the same as any of us -- though not the other Northern Irish microbrewery Hilden, who make a superb golden ale for the lager crowd, called Belfast Blonde. Whitewater's Belfast Lager was hugely disappointing. The flavour is dominated by a powerful malty mustiness and I couldn't get past it. I suspect they're going for a full-bodied central European feel, but it's not working for this drinker. How the people who brew the amazing Clotworthy Dobbin make something this poor is beyond me.

One of the event's attendees was just back from South America and, judging from what he brought us, I have to wonder how much he enjoys the company of his fellow ICBers. They were three from InBev's Quilmes range. The Cristal is yellow and basically tasteless, with just a teensy hint of dryness. Quilmes Bock is the same in brown: a bit sweet, but not sweet enough. Not enough of anything, in fact. And then we come to Quilmes Stout. Everyone who tasted it made faces and proclaimed its disgusting sweetness. As the only fan of sweet beer I know, I wouldn't run to damn it outright, but it's still pretty awful. The saccharine quality of the flavour reminds me of nothing so much as a dodgy oud bruin, like Brand. There's also a bit of Belgium's Leroy stout in there as well. If these are your two favourite beers, you'll enjoy Argentina. Once they let you out of the asylum, of course.

The lesson, then, is that when the world gives you bad beer, make it better yourself.

Manic Stout Porters

I'm going through a bit of a black beer phase at the moment. Stout and porter, when done properly, offer a highly complex texture and flavour experience. The way the different elements work in harmony is quite similar, I think, to how a piece of music works. Since this month's Session is on beer and music I'm wondering what it would be like if the international stouts and porters I've had recently were bands.

To England first, and Wychwood's Black Wych. I'm never quite sure what to expect with Wychwood, having had very good and very bad experiences. Despite the name, this is a good wych. It pours to a thick, tight head and gives off a disquieting sweet estery aroma, like cheap and nasty chocolate. There's very little trace of it in the taste, however. Instead there's a sharp dry tang of roasted barley followed by a lasting aftertaste of mild and milky coffee. Best of all is the silky smooth mouthfeel, nearly worth the price of admission alone. If it were a band, Black Wych would be one of those hard-working groups who are head-noddingly good live, that you are always glad to see as a support act, but you're not likely to own any of their records.

Beer does flow and men chunder in the home of the next candidate: Cooper's Best Extra Stout. Like the Sparkling Ale from the same brewery, this stout is full of yeasty floaters, occasionally visible in the deep gloom of the beer. Texture is the strong point here: a lovely creamy mouthfeel and amazing head retention, with a centimetre of parchment-coloured foam lasting for all of a slow tasting. Alas, this beer doesn't come through on the flavour. It's incredibly dry and unsurprisingly yeasty. It's not bitter, however, and without some sort of hops or roasted grain element I can't warm to it. In the music industry it would be a very well-equipped band capable of an amazing sound, but utterly lacking in talent.

The US is next on the hitlist: Sierra Nevada Porter, to be precise. Again the head is thin but resilient and the beer has a promising malty nose. Typical of an American, however, it's inappropriately over-carbonated giving a prickly mouthfeel instead of smoothness. And it tastes of bugger all. It's half-heartedly dry and has these metallic off-notes at the end. As a band, I'd expect it to be a motley assembly of teenage buskers demonstrating little-to-no understanding of tempo, melody and harmony.

The Basque country's Pagoa Zunbeltz brings us back to Europe. This is quite an undemanding stout: light and fizzy with coffee notes in the ascendant. It's a high quality craft beer but I can't imagine growing to love it. That elegant lady singing standards to a light jazz backing is what it is.

We finish back in England with a bottle of Fuller's London Porter, a beer of very great repute. Dark brown in colour, it's smooth yet sparkly, but without much by way of head, relatively speaking. The aroma carries the rich promise of malt and chocolate. It's not overly flavoursome, but letting it sit on the tongue for a while brings forth milk chocolate with a bitter hoppy twang at the end. I was expecting Hendrix on the Isle of Wight, but got present-day Springsteen instead. I can live with that.

(Incidentally, if you were expecting a post about Irish music, all you need to know is in this short film.)