North-west trad

Ireland has a number of breweries whose beers never feature on these pages because they're only available in the immediate catchment area. Not everything finds its way to the big cities, and that's as it should be. I'm grateful to the family member who spotted these while on holiday in Donegal and brought them down to me. All are from the Errigal Brewing Company, based at the Caisleáin Óir Hotel in Annagary.

I started with the red ale, Rua, and was immediately impressed by the thick pillowy head of loose bubbles over a clear copper body. Top marks for appearance, then. It's on the strong side at 4.7% ABV, though doesn't smell particularly rich, with only a faint note of non-specific mineral dryness. That leads to a foretaste which also offers nothing in particular beyond carbonic fizz. It needs a moment, and a little warmth, to come out of its shell (don't we all), and when it does we're back on track for the style: the flavour is centred on caramel, but in a light way, with a burnt dry edge. The counterpoint is those minerals again, which I'm guessing comes from some unobtrusive old-world hops, with England's coming to mind in particular. The caramel flashes briefly in the aftertaste and then we're done. I'm sure it isn't meant to offer a multiplexity of flavour, but with the extra body there's certainly room for it to do more. As a basic, decent and well-made Irish red ale, there's not much to complain about. And if that doesn't sound appealing, there's always something else.

The next something else for me was Óir, the self-styled "gaeltacht lager", with the same name as one of Wednesday's beers. Do the breweries not talk to each other? I tend to be apprehensive when a tiny Irish brewery, using a kit that was most likely designed for ales, tries its hand at cool fermentation. The punters want lager and, sure how how hard can it be? Óir passes inspection as a kellerbier: it's yellow and fairly hazy, with a generous and lasting head. The aroma is husky and grainy, which again puts it squarely within kellerbier parameters. Crispness? Yes, to an extent. In the flavour, the grain husk from the aroma presents as a rye-cracker dryness, but it doesn't last long. An odd, warm-tasting, pear-and-apricot, fruity side emerges after a few seconds, confirming my prejudice that breweries like this aren't really cut out for lager. What  you get here instead is a sort of fluffy blonde ale: well made as a beer, but unconvincing for the market segment it's seeking to attract. Every single Heineken drinker would rather a Heineken than this.

Let's see if they do any better with pale ale. APA, or Anagaire Pale Ale, is named for the brewery's home town. It's 4.7% ABV and translucently hazy, with a thick foam on top. The inclusion of oats in the grain bill is likely related. The aroma is brightly citric, with a poke of sharp lime in particular. The flavour is unfortunately rather plainer, and emphasises the sweet side of the profile, giving me orange candy and vanilla. There's a husky, grainy element, similar to the lager, and one which doesn't sit well with the hops. The citrus arrives back to some extent in the finish, though isn't nearly as bitter as the aroma hinted it would be. This is another slightly rough and retro offering, missing the brightness and cleanness that an American-style pale ale really needs. You would want to be fierce loyal to local to deem this an acceptable alternative.

A porter is altogether more promising, and that's where we finish. Dubh looks well as it pours, a dark red that's mistakable for black, with a lovely and firm off-white head. It smells sweetly of chocolate and wafer biscuits, while the flavour goes full-on for coffee, pushing the oily roasted side at first, then following it with both sweeter milk chocolate and an earthy bitterness: contrasting but balanced. It's let down a little by a thin texture, which I guess is to be expected as it's only 4.3% ABV and is very much built for session drinking. And it's adequately suited for that, being quite restrained in how it goes about its business. There's plenty of interest, however, and after the initial cocoa and coffee, I got some bonus liquorice and burnt caramel complexity after it had warmed a little. There's a wholesome, old-fashioned quality to it, and there aren't many Irish breweries doing this sort of thing by the large bottle any more, unfortunately. 

To me, these seem intended as local beers for local people, designed for mainstream appeal even if they're produced in bespoke quantities. The porter is one which I think deserves a wider audience.

Giving the people what they want

For some unfathomable reason, my posts about Aldi's off-brand lagers are perennially popular with you lot. Never above a bit of click-bait, I filled a basket with ones I hadn't tried on a recent restocking expedition and then dared myself to tackle them. At one stage there was a grand plan to try them blind next to the brands they're aping, as I did with the Peroni one, but it started to look like too much fizz to get through, so these will be judged on their individual merits alone.

We begin with the Budweiser twins. I'm sure there's a very good reason for Aldi offering two different Bud lookalikes, though can't help thinking it must be confusing for a target demographic not used to making choices when it comes to beer. It could be that there's a transition afoot. Breysers is the legacy brand, one which has been around for ages. "100% premium quality ... authentic American style beer ... made in France" is all the essential data Aldi wants to get across to us. In the glass it's a proper pilsner gold with decent head retention, so therefore nothing at all like Bud on that score. There's a slightly metallic tang in the aroma, which does say American light lager to me, but at least suggests the possibility of hops. In the flavour, hops came there none. It's a surprisingly thick and sweet affair, very much unbalanced to the malt side. An initial hit of candyfloss and barley sugar tails off into an unpleasant musty damp-grainsack twang. The upside of all this residual sugar is a big and fluffy Helles-like texture, which is nice and süffig, but very much not the crispness that Bud drinkers will be seeking. This is a poor effort overall, a dismal beer and nul points for resemblance to its originator.

The new kid is Brookston, though they've gone more old-school in their blatant theft of Budweiser's image. This time the can gives us no clue as to the beer's origins, though does tell us it's "premium" four times on the front. Methinks the lager doth protest too much. Maybe it's my imagination because the photos are very similar, but I thought that this bore a closer resemblance to Budweiser: a slightly paler shade of golden. The sweetness has definitely been dialled back but that horrible sackcloth staleness remains, with a weird ready-salted savoury bite. Alongside the extra crispness, there's an accompanying watery quality, making it feel like something has been cut out of it. Some bonus points for tasting and feeling a little like Budweiser, then, but none for being actually enjoyable.

Next on the list for the homage treatment is Carlsberg, and Karlskrone is the Aldi answer. As with the previous two, the ABV is 4.3%, matching the Irish versions of the mainstream brands. It looks well in the Carlsberg glass: the right shade of bright and shiny gold. The aroma is innocent: weighty malt and a mild noble hop grassiness. All very promising. As with Breysers above, the malt leads the flavour, but it's not quite as intensely sweet. There's a certain level of crispness, and no off-flavours. Although it could be accused of being bland, I think there's enough character on display here to tip it into acceptability. I don't know that I would consider it an acceptable substitute for Carlsberg, however -- it's still too heavy and sweet for that. If you don't mind your lager being a little on the sugary side, I would almost recommend this. It's the first one of the sequence to offer actual value for money.

I didn't realise Staropramen had a sufficiently high profile to warrant a clone, but here one is. Strana is a little different to the others in that we are told the brewery of production, and its none other than my old mucker Pearse Lyons of Dundalk. Close followers of the own-brand lager scene will know that Lyons makes an excellent Czech knock-off for Tesco, called Manislav. Strana is the same ABV (5%) so I'm guessing the recipe is at least somewhat similar. It comes in a green bottle, too, so was giving off skunky vibes even before I brought it outside. That's really only in the aroma, however. The flavour is a flawless mix of crisp grain and grassy hops -- hallmarks of a classic Saaz-based světlý ležák. Definitely a cut above the others so far. Shame about the UV-permeable bottle, though.

Finally, what if San Miguel, but cheaper, asked nobody. San Marcos is Aldi's answer. "Tradicional cerveza especial ... brewed in Italy" says the label. It's a little lightweight compared to the real thing at 5% ABV, and looks somewhat pale by comparison too. I'm not at all a fan of that Spanish lager so no points will be awarded for similarity here. It's cleaner, drier and easier to drink, and more appropriate to warm weather. But there's a nasty element too; a plasticky tang that prevents it from being clean, bland and decent like the Karlskrone. The extra strength means it probably works OK as a food beer, where other flavours will mask the flaws. As such, if you're looking for something cheap and relatively cheerful for Mediterranean food -- Spanish or Italian -- this is worth a punt.

A couple of diamonds in this particular rough, then. I haven't decided yet whether I'll tackle the remaining clones. The Corona and Heineken ones are only sold in multipacks and that's a commitment I am not yet ready to make, even for the clicks.

Less than the meaning of life

Last year the War of the Eurolagers took a turn for the historical with both Carlsberg and Heineken looking to the past to secure themselves a prestige advantage over their rivals. The Danes unearthed a bottle of 19th century beer, cultured the yeast from it and brewed what they called The Father of Modern Lager (I reviewed it here).

Around the same time, Heineken went even further back in lager history and brewed a beer using the wild Patagonian yeast strain which was identified in 2011 as the origin -- the "mother" as their marketing guff puts it -- of all lager yeast. The resulting beer, H41°, had a moment in the sun with the beer press then went into hibernation. A couple of weeks ago, however, it started to appear in bars around Dublin and I caught up with it on a quiet Sunday afternoon in Idlewild.

It looks like Heineken. If it wasn't for the tactile illuminated tap badge and the wordy brewer-signed pint glass I would have assumed this was the same old pilsner. On tasting, however, it presents quite a different vista. The first word I wrote down is "melanoidin". It has that particular mouth-coating big-bodied biscuit sweetness that I associate with amber-coloured malts and the whole genre of Vienna lager. I had seen people describe this as akin to a wheat beer and after a moment or two I understood why: partly it's just that big, not-quite-attenuated, greasy texture; but also there's a similar sort of fruit ester, verging on banana but not quite getting all the way there, to my mind. The hops are much less prominent than in a pils, even one like Heineken: just a very light lemony tang, no more than you'd find in a very average witbier.

What does the experiment teach us? Not a whole lot, in my case, other than the observation that proto-lager yeast isn't very efficient. The ABV here is 5.3% and with all that residual sugar in evidence I'm reckoning there was quite a hefty grain bill. From a consumer perspective you'd be as well drinking an old-fashioned lager: something like Samuel Adams Boston Lager will hit a lot of the same flavour points as this. I will give Heineken some credit for the experiment, however. This is far more interesting a brand extension than Heineken Light. That said, I haven't actually tasted Heineken Light yet. Stand by...

Beers among the berbers

(Photo by Bryce Edwards, from Flickr Creative Commons)

The Grand Hotel Tazi is a bit of a misnomer. It's actually quite an inauspicious-looking premises in the heart of old Marrakesh, aiming perhaps for a kind of faded grandeur, only without the grandeur. Its claim to fame is that the bar was once the only place in the medina where one could get a drink, and although several of the touristy restaurants will surreptitiously offer a carte du vins to any customers who look like they wouldn't be offended by such a thing, the Tazi remains about the only "proper" bar within the walls.

Inside it feels more like a down-at-heel canteen or café than an hotel bar, however lacking in swank said hotel may be. The furniture is shabby and mismatched, the lighting severe and the walls in serious need of a coat or two of paint. Threadbare curtains are kept drawn lest the decent citizens outside be scandalised by what goes on within. There's a distinct feel of speakeasy about the clientèle: a few young chancers here to catch the TV football results, and an ever-changing group of elderly gents, coming and going, exchanging gossip and tutting at the general ways of the world. All have Flag Spéciale in front of them, paying no attention to the little green bottles until a hand darts in and a swig is taken, then quickly back to the table as though nothing has happened. Drinking? Me? Heaven forbid!

As tourists, we were served our Spéciales in posh wine glasses, along with a fiery bowl of harissa-laced olives and shredded pickled carrot. How was the beer? It was beer, and that was enough.

As far as I can determine there is just one brewing company in the country, Heineken-owned Société des Brasseries du Maroc, operating three breweries around the country. One occasionally glimpses expensive imported Leffe and Hoegaarden, but otherwise it's Heineken products all the way.

Apart from the eponymous Dutch pilsner, a couple of foreign brands are produced under licence, including Castel, originally from Bordeaux. It's not as commonplace as the other beers and is a little more expensive than most but I was glad to find it on the rare occasions that I did, just to add some semblance of variety to my all-lager diet.

Heineken's bog-standard French lager 33 Export is also brewed locally and represents the only draught beer I found over the fortnight I was in Morocco. This was at The Chesterfield, a rather fun low-ceilinged, wood and leather-lined bar, secluded on a hidden mezzanine within the walls of the Hotel Nassim in Marrakesh's new town. Again, perfectly acceptable, but the novelty of taking pulls from a half-litre mug was almost thrilling.

Back to the domestic beer names, and there is a lower-rent option available under the Flag, er flag: Flag Pils. This was my regular tipple, coming in at around €1.50 for a 500ml can, and only a little more for the 330ml bottles in hotel bars.

Flag Pils is the epitome of beer that's OK to drink and quite refreshing on a warm January afternoon when served sufficiently cold. I reckon the branding could do with an update, though. It's a few decades since anyone thought "I'll choose this one; it's beige".

Another one whose packaging doesn't seem to have received any attention since the French left Morocco is Stork. Like Flag Pils, it's cheap and not particularly cheerful, and it's hard to imagine that the words "Bière De Luxe" are meant as anything other than irony. From what I could gather hanging around in the dens of iniquity that are supermarket off licences (hidden in a corner, with a dedicated check-out for sinners -- it reminded me of beer shopping in Northern Ireland), this is Morocco's old man beer. I opted for a can when I tried it, but the preferred format is a 330ml bottle made from inch-thick green glass and weighing significantly more than the beer inside.

I've had it before, in a Moroccan restaurant in Brussels, but I can't leave without mentioning the national icon which is Casablanca beer. Well, I assume it's iconic: they certainly charge enough for it as it's 50% dearer than most of the other beers and I can't say I detected anything in the flavour to justify that. As well as the 330ml cans and bottles, this also comes in a weird energy-drink-sized 250ml can. Maybe God doesn't object to those quite as much.

And that's where we leave Morocco. If you'd like tasting notes on any of these beers you'll have to look elsewhere, I'm afraid. The Session this month is under the aegis of Oliver at Literature & Libation, and descriptions are verboten. Trust me: you're not missing much.

All beers to all people

I mentioned in passing recently that Molson Coors's operations in Ireland seem to be ramping up somewhat, after three of years of light-touch beer distribution. It really hit home in the weeks that followed and as a result I've ended up with three sets of free samples from the company, which I guess represent three aspects of the Irish beer market.

The PR firm charged with promoting it all sent me a six-pack of their new lager Molson Canadian. From the full-spectrum advertising it's getting this appears to be pitched squarely at the mainstream drinker, a segment in Ireland which seems already to be at saturation point with beers such as Bud, Coors Light (licensed to Heineken), Miller, Carlsberg, Stella, Beck's Vier and Heineken itself, the brand leader. It's a little strange that they figured there was room for another, but there you go. The accompanying marketing material says Ireland is the first territory outside Canada to get Canadian, while the packaging says it's brewed in the UK. It seems unlikely that they're making it across the water just for us, so presumably there are plans to put it on the British market too at some point.

Unusually for this sort of beer it's a mere 4% ABV: 4.3% is the normal strength for these, demanded by the Irish market to such an extent that AB-InBev brew a special version of Beck's Vier at this ABV just for us. I welcome more lower strength beers, but it still seems kinda risky to me. Pouring revealed a pale gold lager topped by a healthy fluffy froth. It must also have knocked quite a bit of the gas out as it was beautifully smooth on the first sip, and nicely sweet too, akin to the better class of Munich helles, with a hint of dry grain husk. It all unravelled pretty quickly after that, however. The sweetness unfolds into a nasty sweetcorn flavour and is joined by a horrible metallic saccharine tang where the hop bitterness ought to be. By the third mouthful, that metal was all I could taste and only the low carbonation stopped it from being completely undrinkable. Quality pilsner it most definitely isn't.

For the casual drinker of "craft" beers, yet another seasonal from Blue Moon, this one called Valencia Grove Amber. The name suggests someone thought that what Blue Moon needed was more orange, but it's actually got less of a sticky fruit thing than usual. Instead the amber malt flavour is to the fore: an intensely sugary biscuit character that builds as it goes down with no hop bitterness or yeast spices to balance it. The finish is a dusty, musty burlap with possibly a vein of coconut through it. 5.9% ABV would suggest a heavy beer but it's not really, and the residual dark sugars reminded me of the sort of effect you get with England's less pleasant heavy brown bitters. Whoever this is aimed at, it ain't me.

It's hard to know whether to take the final two beers seriously or not. They come from a genuine small brewery -- Sharp's of Cornwall -- are of robust and flavoursome styles and are presented in very sober wrappings with thin san serif text and a graphic of the brewer's signature. But then they also arrived with a matching branded bar of chocolate each.

I opened the Honey Spice Tripel first. It's one of those beers that magically transports me straight back to Belgium on the first sip: that beautiful yeast-derived spicy warmth is present from the outset. There's a lovely honey perfume in the aroma and it drinks smoothly, without too much spicing or heat, despite a whopping 10% ABV. The flavour tails off quite quickly, however, leaving a kind of lagerish watery fizz on the end. Not very complex, but tripel doesn't necessarily need to be. Perhaps a bite of the lemon meringue white chocolate would open it out. Nope! The chocolate is delicious but massively overpowers everything else. The intense sugar and lemon zest completely coats the palate and it's impossible to taste anything through it. I began to worry if I'd ever experience another flavour again, and ended up using the remains of the tripel to try and wash it off. When that didn't work I reached for the water biscuits. Lovely chocolate, but not a match for beer or anything else.

To the Quadrupel Ale next, a reddish brown beer, so a little pale for the style, I think. It's also 10% ABV. The aroma is quite, quite beautiful: fresh C-hops in abundance giving an amazing mango and sherbet effect, like the best American amber ales. This is not a beer for aging. It tastes powerfully fruity, full of prunes in particular, but with elements of dates, figs and similar dark chewy loveliness. After a few sips I began to find the sweetness a little bit jarring but the peachy hop echo in the aftertaste makes it worthwhile. The chocolate is a 70% cocoa dark one and is a stroke of pairing genius: the bitterness counteracts the sweet malt perfectly, without interfering with the hops and actually helps clear the palate, something chocolate is not normally known for. With the prunes subdued, the more vinous qualities of the beer come out and I begin to see why the marketing bumf suggests this as an alternative to port as a digestif.

Molson Coors may not be supplying the best beers on the Irish market, but they certainly can't be faulted on the variety.

Blind tiger

The hardest rocking man in suburban Dublin, Mr Joe Elliott of Stepaside (erstwhile frontman of popular Sheffield beat combo Def Leppard) has teamed up with The Porterhouse to produce a beer promoting his latest musical project Down 'n' Outz.

It's a lager, suitably labelled in the new band's livery and presented in the Porterhouse's infuriatingly titchy 33cl bottles. The labelling itself presents a bit of a marketing issue, since the band seem to have based their logo on Heineken's brand. To then apply this to an actual beer is a bit odd, making the craft lager resemble Heineken from the outside. Maybe it's subversive. I dunno.

Anyway, I nipped up to Porterhouse North one afternoon last week to give it a go in the surrounds of the newly-refurbished beer garden. The pub wasn't open yet, as it turned out, but fortunately the management were around and Dave very kindly sent me home with some bottles of the newbie to try out.

It is, I suspect, a very close relation of Porterhouse Hersbrucker: a beer I cannot stand on draught but isn't half bad from the bottle. Cara Malt gives it a dark gold colour and a caramel sweetness, while the brewery's signature Galena bittering hop, finished with Nugget and Hersbrucker balance the malt with a fairly intense and complex waxy, grassy bitterness.

I like it. It would have been nice to have in time for summer as the flavour withstands chilling excellently making it a tasty refresher. It's certainly a clear cut above the standard macro lagers, so I don't see how it all went so wrong for Joe here:

(or link)

Festival season

It's been a busy few days, beerwise, involving some thorough investigations into the new wave of Irish beers on the scene right now. It began with the kick-off of The Porterhouse Independent Irish Beer & Whiskey Festival on Thursday. This year, joyously, the range is too big to squeeze onto one bar so it took trips to both Central and Temple Bar branches to get a taste of all the newcomers.

Pale ales are something of a theme at the moment, and alongside Carlow's heavy O'Hara's IPA, Whitewater have produced Copperhead: a 3.7% ABV sessioner. It's the dark gold shade of Budvar and gives off a peachy fresh-hop aroma. After an initial strong and waxy bitter hit, it provides punchy citric notes, all on a smooth and very easy-to-drink body. I love this beer, and especially the way it crams so much flavour into a low level of alcohol, guaranteeing the first pint is followed by a second, no matter how many new and interesting beers are on the bar next to it.

At the opposite end of the scale there's Golden Otter, a new one from Franciscan Well. A distinctive, vaguely familar, aroma leapt out of the cloudy brown liquid and continued to dominate the flavour on tasting. It took me a few minutes to figure out what it was, but I eventually pinned it down as Marmite: that sharp, almost beefy, yeast flavour that tends to indicate beer which has been left fermenting too long. I couldn't help but think that this is more a beer for spreading on your toast than drinking. Additionally there's a barnyardy funk to the flavour as well, adding up to an ale perhaps most kindly described as "rustic". Not one I'll be ordering again.

White Gypsy have three newbies out and about at the moment. One, Bruinette, is described as an Irish red and as a Scottish export, depending where you read. It's definitely darker than the typical Irish red with next to no carbonation, leaving it feeling a bit thin. Yet the lack of fizz allows lots of malty flavours come through uninterrupted. I got chocolate, raisins, cherries and some dry roastiness too. Bruinette appears simple but actually packs in a lot if you take your time over it.

On the lighter end of the colour spectrum there's White Gypsy Emerald, a cask IPA. The Porterhouse had this on gravity at Temple Bar where it poured really quite lifeless and dull -- perhaps not yet ready for consumption. Across in Galway, however, The Salt House are serving it from their handpump with a super-tight sparkler ensuring the beer comes to life and performs for the drinker as the brewer intended. Its density means a long wait for it to settle, but when it does you're left with a beautifully clear pale amber ale topped by a firm and lasting blanket of foam. The hoppiness is quite subtle: it's bitter but not intensely so; fruity without being zingy per se. In short, Emerald is a solid, enjoyable sup of the sort that wouldn't elicit any special remarks in Northern England but is fantastic to encounter in an Irish pub.

Last of the Templemore three is Amber, a simple deep gold lager with the smooth body, bubblegum fruitiness and no-nonsense drinkability of a quality blonde ale. This won the Best Lager category in The Porterhouse's competition, and rightly so. I'm not generally a fan of Ireland's microbrewed pale lagers, but this is one I would keep coming back to. For the record, the bottled version of Porterhouse Oyster won best beer overall: not necessarily my choice, but a very fine beer indeed.

There was just one new black beer in the line-up: O'Hara's Easter Stout. It's not a radical departure from the flavours in O'Hara's usual stout, or their cask Druid's Brew: only the emphasis is different. Easter Stout, perhaps appropriately, is all about the chocolate. It's rich, dense and smooth: like concentrating two pints of regular O'Hara's into a single glass. Yum.

I mentioned above encountering Emerald in The Salt House. This was on Saturday in the run-up to the Irish Blog Awards. The Award Fairy passed me by on the night, but landed in the seat to my right when Nine Bean Row deservedly took the gong for best newcomer. Congratulations to 'Neen, and to the dedicated team of staff writers, photographers, researchers and editors whose tireless work makes her blog the success it is.

Meanwhile, back at the pub, James has dealt more blows to industrial swill since my first visit to The Salt House, ditching the last few bottles of Heineken from the fridge and removing the Carlsberg tap, leaving Guinness as the only remaining factory-produced Irish beer in his bar. For now. In addition to the hand-picked import lagers on draught, there's now Galway Hooker Pils. As it happened, Aidan the brewer was in The Salt House late on Saturday evening, and he said it's not an especially inspiring recipe -- more a workmanlike made-to-order job. I have to say I quite liked it. Its best feature is a lack of fizz which makes it smooth and very easy-going. Nothing in the flavour really jumps out, but one interesting feature is a lemony fruitiness before it fades to a dry grainess, just turning slightly unpleasantly to must at the end. Still, no harsh bitterness and no funk: as a pale lager it does actually work better than most brewed around these parts.

And that's the end of the Irish beer for the moment. Festival season reaches a crescendo next weekend with The Franciscan Well's annual shindig in Cork. This year it's not only debuting new Irish beers, but also two brand spanking new breweries helmed by regular commenters on this blog: Cormac and Co's Dungarvan Brewing, and Thom, Paul and Stephen's Trouble Brewing. I'm so excited I'll hardly be able to demand my free samples.

More than pants

On my last trip up North I made a point of checking out the beer selection in Marks and Spencer, having heard interesting things about their new range. I hadn't expected it to be quite so extensive, however, and found myself having to choose carefully for transport purposes. As was I came away with just four, but I thought I'd picked the ones that would best suit my tastes. (And hooray to M&S for having beers that are even suggestive of my tastes).

Dark 'n' strong is one of the ways I like 'em, so the Christmas Ale from Cropton was a definite. It's an appropriate shade of dark red-brown, pouring quite flat and nearly headless. The nose gives off a suspicious plastic whiff, as of a Christmas-themed air-freshener. My first taste impression was good -- sweet and chocolatey, overlaid with lots of cinnamon and clove. The light, thin body was a warning sign, though, especially in a supposed 6.5% ABV warmer. Beneath the seasonal flavours there's a certain citric edge, one which reminded me of mulled wine when the fresh oranges and lemons have just gone in. Mrs Beer Nut described it as "cheap champagne-cider with orange juice", thereby demonstrating she's a veteran of many more crappy Christmas drinks receptions than I. Still, I was enjoying the beer and decided to let it warm up a bit to see if it rounded out any. And it sort of does, just not in a good way. That plasticky spice sensation enters the flavour and it starts being tough going to drink while still being rather thin: a mortal sin. So, despite my sweet tooth and fondness for spiced beer, this one just doesn't cut it.

Something along similar lines happened with the Cheshire Chocolate Porter. The alarm bells started here with the ingredients listing: "Wheat syrup"? Is that just to beef up the gravity to reach 6% ABV? The beer itself pours a remarkably pale amber colour. Once again it's very thin and I found the chocolate flavour to be horribly artificial. And yet again, as it warmed it got worse, even sicklier. Though this time Mrs Beer Nut lapped it up and asked for more. Dunno what that's about.

Back to the wintery brews, and I confess to being rather sceptical at first about Southwold Winter Beer, a seasonal ale brewed to just 4% ABV. It pours a clear shade of copper and balances some seriously heavy caramel sweetness with a solid, funky English Fuggles bitterness. I thought for a second I detected a hint of skunkiness, but after a moment I realised it was more of a mineral sulphur vibe, the sort I love in crisp Adnams Bitter. Could this be..? Yes, it's brewed by Adnams. Well that makes sense. I still don't know how far I'd venture to label it a "winter" beer, but as a beer and nothing else, it's lovely. A summer session on this would suit me fine.

And lastly the one that caught my eye before all the others: M&S Scottish Ale. It's brewed with thistles! Thistles! It didn't disappoint either -- another dark ruby body, though with loads of fizz through it. It remains entirely drinkable, however. The flavour starts with a flash of spicy ginger and follows it quickly with a herbal complication which, I'm guessing, is from the dried pointy lads they've thrown it at some point. The finish is dry, maybe leaning slightly towards metallic, but I loved it and could quaff it merrily. More thistle beer please.

Though more of any of this lot would be good, to be honest. I went along to a Dublin branch of M&S and was pleased to see that a number of beers in the range had made it across the Irish Sea: about five lagers and four or so ciders. And the Cheshire Porter. And that's it. It's such a stupid, facile, misreading of the market. Yes, Irish people drink lager and cider (and black beer to a certain extent) more than anything else. But they drink it branded. Giving them a fake Heineken and a fake Bulmer's isn't going to work. And I doubt the people who pay M&S prices for their booze will be tempted. Conversely, British ale is a novelty. It could very easily be one of those things you go to Marks for because you can't get it elsewhere -- think Scotch eggs; think pork pies. It seems incredibly short-sighted, to this amateur market analyst, but there you go. One bit of cross-border shopping our recent excise duty cut won't prevent.

Taking care of business

It was a busy three days in Amsterdam. We arrived on Tuesday to glorious sunshine and, not used to such things, immediately scurried for the shade of 't Arendsnest. Among the beers we kicked off with was SNAB Pale Ale, a deliciously sherbety faux-American number. There's a light touch on the hops, but just enough to convey peaches and mild grapefruit to the drinker. Mrs Beer Nut's pale ale was Wiegeleir, a cloudy amber beer flavoured with apriccots. I didn't really latch on to the fruit in this, spotting orange blossom and bubblegum instead, with the whole overlaid with sharp and bitter yeast tones and a whiff of bleachiness. It's a complex beer but not always in the right directions.

Barry showed up on Wednesday and we planned the afternoon by the canal in Haven van Texel over the Texelse Dubbel. A light and fruity take on the Belgian dark ale standard, with almost a bit of citrus zest thrown in. No plums, figs or similarly heavy fruit, but a surprising amount of fruity banana esters. It's a lunchtime sort of dubbel.

At De Bekeerde Suster, my companions both went for the uninspiring house beers, but mine was a Deugniet tripel. Despite bottle conditioning it pours a very clear blonde with an aroma of fresh, juicy melons and succulent peaches. The flavour adds spicy orange notes to this, turning a little bit harsh at the end. Deugniet loses its charm as it warms, picking up cloying orange flavours like vitamin C tablets, but it's great beer right up until then. From there we headed to Gollem for a light pre-prandial. My wife chose Witkap Stimulo, a very pale cloudy beer with just a bit of lemon and a hint of herbs, but otherwise quite dull. Meanwhile, I was back with the safe bet of John Martin's Pale Ale.

With dinner put away, it was time for the main event. Amsterdam's newest specialty beer bar was packed. Elbowing my way to the bar I met Ron who was similarly engaged. With an armful of drinks each we made our way out to the yard.

Beer Temple specialises in American craft beer and the chief draw, I think, will be the presence of draught beer from Anchor, Left Hand, Great Divide and Flying Dog. I only got a chance to glance at the bottled menu, but it looked very impressive, with Southern Tier among the additions. Beer Temple provides a new focus for the beer tourist in Amsterdam and underlines the wonderful internationalism in the city's beer merchants, a feature which places Amsterdam above Brussels in my evaluation of European beer cities.

Among the samples we, er, sampled there was Left Hand's Blackjack Porter, a super-chocolatey treacle-thick black beer which, while very sweet, is filling and satisfying rather than cloying. Among the handful of non-Americans at the taps, there's a house beer commissioned locally for the bar. Tempel Bier is a blond ale with wonderful American hop flavours of the mild variety, imparting peaches, manadarins and bubblegum.

After a good old natter with 'Neen and a brief chat with Beer Temple proprietor Peter, and with regret that I couldn't find Rick who had suggested the whole thing in the first place, Barry, Ron, me and herself set off for In de Wildeman.

Order of the day here was a driedoppelrauchbock, weighing in at 9.4% ABV and going, naturally, under the name Affumicator. The nose is typically rauchbier-esque: smoky bacon and iodine to the fore; a shock followed by pleasing anticipation. It tastes as sweet as you might expect from a big doppelbock and is similarly sticky, but this is infused thoroughly with those big hammy rauchbier flavours and a bitter kick right at the end. I sat and sipped this for a while, enjoying every mouthful.

Among the other beers tried from Wildeman's massive selection, there was Mug, a spicy pale gold bitter with hops on the nose and a very Chouffe-ish peppery fruit character. Barry moved to Oesterstout, an imperial from Amsterdam's Scheldebrouwerij. I wasn't a fan: too much artificial candy flavour for my liking, like fake chocolate, with unpleasant fruity overtones. We called it a night soon after.

To kill the time next morning before the pubs opened, Barry and I went for The Heineken Experience. I was pleased to see that the picobrewery in the main hall (mentioned by Ron here) is still going, though he was too busy chatting up the American girls to tell us anything about his beer, and it wasn't on sale in the gift shop. The most interesting experience in the Experience happened at the tutored tasting, a slow and measured analysis of the lager. The sample we were given was not Heineken -- or if it was, it was Heineken with an extra complex dose of bitter and fruity hops. It was really quite tasty, but that was the last we saw of it: in the tasting bar at the end we were back to plain, dull, thin, tasteless Heineken. So at least they know how unpalateable their beers are.

Staying with Big Daddy H, our meanderings took us next to a crappy English theme bar where, out of sheer novelty value, I went for Murphy's Red. I assume this is brewed in the Netherlands as it hasn't been seen on these shores for many a year. The beer is a pale copper colour and watery as all hell, with just a sugary background and a nasty cardboard aftertaste.

And then it was lunchtime. Our restaurant gave particular promenance to 't IJ's beers and I took the opportunity to try Natte, the dubbel, having been denied it last time I was in the Netherlands. It's quite a beautiful beer: sharp and yeasty with that characteristic IJ brett flavour, but light enough to be easy-drinking and lip-smacking.

The weekend was drawing to a close and we finished where we came in, holed up in 't Arendsnest. Barry went for SNAB's Otter SB, a chewy, malt-driven pale beer which I found a bit stale overall. Mrs Beer Nut picked the La Trappe Bockbier. It's quite understated -- a bit of the expected caramel and toffee, with a very mild undercurrent of violet and lavender. After Barry departed for his train our last drinks were De Friese's Speltbier which is interestingly dry and grassy, while being spicy and herbal at the same time. The herb prize, however, goes to the hopless Jopen Koyt. It's a murky shade of fawn with mild spice on the nose but with lots of fascinating herb and spice flavours. I can't think of a better descriptor for it than "medieval" and reckon it would go great from a clay mug.

We were only in Amsterdam for a bit over two days, but as usual we crammed a lot into it. Too much for this post, in fact. More Dutch beer stuff coming up...

A drop of Irish

The wife and I took the day off on Friday and headed down the coast to Bray, a town we hadn't visited in several years. This is where The Porterhouse began, before the building of their (now dismantled) Temple Bar brewery, and it still retains a more traditional vibe, with Guinness and Heineken on tap. The annual Belgian beer festival is on across the chain at the moment, and in addition to some lovely draught Belgian ales (Abt 12, Tripel Karmaliet, et al) they've brewed up a new batch of their wonderful Chocolate Truffle Stout normally only seen in the spring. Chocolate, Belgian: geddit? A couple of pints of that in the front yard, overlooking the sea, made for a fine start to the weekend.

Saturday was brew day at home: an uncertain attempt at a dubbel. After the clean-up we headed for the Bull & Castle where the cask of the moment is Carlow Brewing's Curim Gold. I've never really been a fan of this in the bottle: it's a little bit bland and soapy. They'd never casked it before, but did so on request from the Bull & Castle who wanted something light and summery for the handpump, after a succession of stouts. Good thing they did, because it was fantastic. Belgian witbier is the closest approximation, and it has that spicy yeast character on top of refreshing zingy lemon flavours enhanced by some supreme sparkly conditioning -- so good you'd nearly think it was from a keg. Between four of us, we had the barrel drained by closing time.

There was just one deviation to the wheatiness -- a recently-arrived strong red ale from Hilden called Cathedral Quarter. It's the second in their series named after districts of Belfast, and I have to say I wasn't keen on the first one -- Titanic Quarter. However, the pour from this 5.3% ABV beer was promising, offering up summer fruit aromas and more than a hint of a Fuller's-esque toffee effect. The first sip was a major let-down, then. Stale, musty and cardboardy: a shame because there's clearly a good beer under it. As I drank, I found it mellowed a bit and the toffee returned accompanied by milk chocolate and butterscotch. I was getting quite into it by the end, though Níall who was drinking one beside me was less impressed. Can't really recommend this, I'm afraid.

It can be a bit swings-and-roundabouts with Irish beer sometimes, but with a gorgeous chocolate stout and a delectable cask wheatbeer in exchange for a musty red, I reckon I'm still up on the deal.

Beer in the park

I've been going to Taste of Dublin for the last three years. It's an annual highlight on my calendar and generally involves a large group of friends and some superb food. I don't think it's just my perception that the event has been getting beerier -- appropriate, perhaps, given that the venue was once the Guinness family's back garden. As with previous years, many of the country's big importers were there, but there were some interesting new additions. The Porterhouse were sporting their new design livery, plus a bigger range of beers than before: I was very happy to be able to get a pint of the marvellous Wrassler's XXXX. They also had some very cool looking mocked-up bottles on display, a hint that we may not have to wait much longer for bottled Porterhouse beers? None of the other Irish micros had a presence, though I did meet Kay and Seamus O'Hara from Carlow Brewing, there in an unofficial capacity.

The biggest beercentric event was the Beer Naturally Academy, organised by the macrobreweries' campaign to promote beer and food matching. They had flown in beer guru Marc Stroobandt to run the half-hour seminars, and he did a pretty good job of it, especially considering the tasteless materials he had been given to work with: Carlsberg, Heineken, Paulaner, Smithwick's and Guinness, matched with cheddar, chili prawn, smoked sausage, cheese tartlet and Belgian chocolate tart, respectively. Thom gives a full run-down of the gig here. It's easy to be cynical at this sort of thing, but there's a lot to be said for driving home the message of beer and food, and the emphasis on cheese and chocolate was particularly welcome. Stroobandt knows his stuff and is well able to deliver it in an entertaining way.

I missed getting to taste the Mexican chili lager one of the stalls was enthusiastically pimping, but I'm sure I'll get round to it eventually. It looks horrible. Instead, I hot-footed it from the Jaipur stall to California Wine Imports and announced "I have curry; give me beer!" Jonathan presented me with one of his newer arrivals: Black Diamond Amber Ale. "British Inspired" it says on the label, which explains why it's not as incredibly citric as the likes of Speakeasy Prohibition, say. What the English hops lend it is a gentle, tannic, very slightly metallic bitterness, sitting on a beer that's very much malt-driven: smooth, big-bodied and well-balanced. Jonathan also gifted me a jar of Sierra Nevada Stout Mustard, something else he's bringing into Ireland. I look forward to trying that -- it sounds brilliant. He also raised the possibility of adding the Stone beers to his range. That would be nice. Very nice.

And that was Taste for another year. Thanks to Jim and Liam from the Porterhouse, Dan from Beer Naturally, and the California Wine Imports team for their generosity. The variety of beers available was truly heartwarming, and here's hoping for even more beer goodness next time round. Perhaps another Irish micro might want to take a stall?

Fasting and abstinence

With a handful of exceptions, sales of alcohol are illegal in the Republic of Ireland on Good Friday. It's a social policy which has led to Holy Thursday becoming one of the biggest drink-buying days of the year, and there was certainly an atmosphere of panic in my local supermarket last Thursday evening, with almost everyone in the queue in front of me laden with cases of Heineken and Miller. I was just picking up a couple of bottles of O'Hara's Red for an engagement the following morning.

A friend had invited a few people round for a late breakfast at his place. I said I'd bring the beer and was carrying a bagload of Schlenkerla Märzen from DrinkStore, figuring it would go great with the full Irish that was planned. The O'Hara's were for anyone who wasn't up for the smoky goodness -- it's a beer I know works beautifully with the porky delights of a cooked breakfast. As it happened, they didn't get opened as the Schlenkerla was consumed with gusto. Comments from the newbies included "seawater" and "disinfectant", though in a good way, of course.

With the plates scraped clean, we were off home, where a beautiful afternoon was shaping up. We sat out of the bank of stones which will, some day soon, be a patio. Mrs Beer Nut opened a bottle of Weihenstephaner Tradition dunkel that was in the fridge. It's quite tasty, though very thick, sweet and treacly, making it perhaps not the ideal garden beer. I don't do sunshine so I was in the shade with a Westmalle Dubbel, a case of which I received recently through the kind offices of RealBeers.ie. Cool and sharp, this is a much better sunny day sipper.

As afternoon turned to evening, it was time to eat again. Business was booming down at the local chipper, with fish being the obvious fried dead thing of choice. To go with mine I picked the Amberley Pale Ale from New Zealand's Brew Moon. It's a cracker of a beer, this: a very pale yellow and only 4% ABV but absolutely loaded with fresh citric hop flavours. There's quite a bit of sweetness to it as well, so the end result carries juicy notes of melon and peaches on a full and satisfying body. As an accompaniment to battered cod it's absolutely perfect, but even as an everyday sessioner it would still be great. The 64cl bottle is the ideal serving measure too. It's quite a while since I bought it in Redmond's, but I'll be looking out for it again.

And that's where I left my Good Friday drinking. By 9pm I really was fasting and abstaining, ahead of the following day's trip to Cork for the main event of Ireland's beer calendar: the Franciscan Well Easter Beer Festival.

Loved lager: The Session round-up

Thanks to everyone who got down and clean-tasting for my lager-themed Session last weekend. 49 participants is a very respectable showing and I think between us we really covered the topic -- one which I hoped was usefully broad, even if some of you disagreed.

I've spent the last two evenings going through the posts and have thoroughly enjoyed it. However, I couldn't help but start categorising them into those who gave me the mass-market beers I wanted, and those who just couldn't bring themselves to do it. So, without it being any measure of the quality of the posts themselves, I give you the Fails and Wins of Session 25:

The Fails
First fail, of course, was me. Some microbrewed lager and then a rare specialty? I really didn't represent my home country's crap lager very well, though neither did any of my fellow countrymen and countrywoman for that matter, as we'll see below.

Thom at Black Cat, for instance, tries to hide his fail behind science, picking an African import, and rather liking it. Hop Talk's Al also went for an import because he happened to be mostly drinking Samuel Smith's last week and far be it from me to change that.

Ray of The Barley Blog reckons he's found the "the perfect beer for this month's Session, both in terms of style and relevance." It's an ale. That word again: Ale. Maybe I didn't make the theme clear enough in the title. At Musings Over A Pint, David tells us there's enough good lager out there for us not to be concerned at the reputation of the mass market stuff, but gives us nothing on whether that reputation is deserved or not.

Paul of A Flowery Song is among the conscientious failers: denying that his beery exploits began with pale lager, and refusing to go mass-market just this once. His Frugal Joe's Ordinary Beer is just a bit too knowingly cheap to count, I think: classless beers are only fun when they're trying to be something they plainly aren't.

Mario would like us to believe that he had to make do with a Lagunitas Pils, because every other beer he saw for sale was a powerful and/or hoppy ale. Maybe that is what "Sonoma Joe Six-Pack" goes for when he wants a lager, but by the sounds of it he doesn't have much time for the style at all. Up in Portland, Bill has similar trouble and opts for a retro-styled local craft lager. A World of Brews also goes craft on me -- Coney Island Lager -- but does put in a good word for Pabst Blue Ribbon when out with the Hash House Harriers. Rob of Pfiff! is another claiming the California Defence -- no crap beer to be found -- and refuses to go out and play with the other kids. Top marks for title punnage though.

Edmond of MMMM....Beer gives us Legends, a Virginian micro-lager up with the best Germany has to offer and therefore a total fail. At I'll Have a Beer, Couchand tells us that Millstream's Iowan pilsner is leaning more towards Bavarian than Czech influences this year. Well fancy! Fail. At least Tom has an excuse for his microbrewed Stoudts Pils: he works for the distributor. Cha-ching!

I sympathise with, and apologise for, the crisis I induced in Damien when he just couldn't bring himself to buy a full six-pack of crap as his beer shop didn't do singles, and opted for something more interesting instead. Similarly, my attempt to lay the smack down on Ted of Barley Vine failed as he avoided the beer equivalent of Kraft Singles and steered a middle course for something decent, local, but generally avoided by serious beer-drinkers for no good reason he can see.

Beer-O-Vision's Dan manages to avoid telling us much about drinking beer, with no mention of any actual brand of lager, but then he was judging a homebrew competition.

I missed talking to Thirsty Pilgrim Joe at the Cantillon open brew day on Saturday, and I also totally forgot to pick up a bottle of the Slaapmutske Dry-Hopped lager while I was in Belgium, even though I meant to. But Joe skips past Jupiler to get to this, so it's a fail, I'm afraid.


The Wins
Velky Al and Adeptus, living in the Czech Republic and Germany respectively had fishes in barrels for this one. Al gives us a run down of the Czech Republic's legendary lagers, and why they should be stripped of their status (corn syrup!), then shows us where to look for the good stuff. Adeptus really went above and beyond with the theme this time round, staging a blind tasting of five common German lagers for his pilsener-loving workmates. It looks like Jever isn't the German classic it's often made out to be.

From the Acceptable Uses For Bland Lager file, we have Steph's game of frisbeer and Jimmy's moving-day philanthropy. Leigh goes for the sun holiday -- several, in fact -- but comes back home to big up Yorkshire's Moravka lager as still enjoyable even in the heart of Real Ale country. Brad, meanwhile, goes far beyond the lawnmower to list a variety of mileux where crap lager is acceptable, nay, desireable. The Cellarman gives us some alternative uses for mass-market lager other than drinking the wretched stuff, and his suggestion of slug-bait gives me an excuse to post this wonderful practical experiment.

Boak and Bailey creep in under the wire with a review of Skinner's Cornish Lager. Yes it's an independent English brewery trying to ape a Mexican giant, but it seems to be getting ubiquitous enough, they say, to count for the Session. It's certainly bland enough.

We welcome Beer Sagas from Norway to the Session and he can find no greater pleasure after a long flight than a plastic cup of Heineken. Too right. Extra points for being the only participant to mention the world's favourite lager.

On Beertaster.ca, Devoid gives us two down-home world-famous Canadian beers, and notes the universal truth of industrial lager: they all taste the same. Alan also stays local with some Keith's and associated memories in the hope that it'll make me happy. It did, Alan. It did.

Beer Sage keeps it short and sweet on My Beer Pix, summing it all up with a picture of some recently-pounded cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon in a sunny back yard. That'll do. The multimedia PBR carnival continues at Geek Beer's podcast about it and a couple of other American macros -- the first Session podcast there's been, I think.

Wilson of Brewvana has never had Schlitz before, and believes he may have found himself a new lawnmower beer. So we achieved something on Friday.

Mark at Pencil & Spoon gives us the full lager-based biography from helping Dad with the lawn, through teenage rebellion, to the background noise of any beer drinker's life. Conversely, Todd at Krausen Rising was denied the proper lager education most of us receive in our youth but does manage to recall a brief encounter, later in life, with some Hamm's. He gives us at least 60 degrees of the macrolager flavourwheel: "swamp water, despair, trailers, warehouse shows, barbecues where things go horribly wrong and end up with helicopters circling the house". Beautiful.

At Red, White and Brew, Brian says he hasn't touched the bad stuff since his student days, but avoids failing by whipping out Colin, the trusty lagerhead he keeps on his spare bed. Every home should have one.

Buttle struggles a bit with the notion that "fancy-pants imported beer" is a relative term depending on where you happen to be. He opts for Genesee Bock anyway and as it's a local mass-market affair I'm happy to let it pass.

Even though I'm sending Jon of The Brew Site back over old ground, and even though he lives in Oregon, he still takes the time to tell us about Pabst Blue Ribbon and Coors Original and defend their existence. Wonderful dedication to the daft topic. D M goes one further and heads undercover to a dive bar to seek a kind of full immersion in macrolager culture. Captain Hops has his own personal macrolager culture, an active outdoorsy one he expresses, of course, as Beer Haiku.

Jay Brooks straddles the Win/Fail border with Reading Premium. Certainly there's no arguing with his account of it as the cheap and available beer of his youth, but when he veers into the recently re-introduced micro-version "updated to modern sensibilities" there's a danger we may be talking about something special, and therefore verboten for this Session. I'll let it pass, however. Similarly, Laura tells us about an ordinary everyday lager on Aran Brew. It just happens that it's the ordinary everyday lager in Jamaica rather than Ireland -- a win on a technicality, that one. Stan does the same for Germany. Mmmph.

The Reluctant Scooper succumbs to the inevitable Underworld reference, begins with a run-down of own-brand UK supermarket lager (including the joy of polyvinylpolypyrrolidone) but gradually becomes a soapbox piece on the importance of crap lager in the life of the conscientious beer drinker. I think I struck a chord with this one.

It's certainly a factor for the distracted Lew of Seen Through A Glass: Narragansett offers something to drink when you just don't want to have to pay attention, whereas Tomme Arthur prefers a Mickey's Malt Liquor in similar circumstances -- something that started as an April Fool's joke but stayed with him. Generik, meanwhile, finds macrolager just the ticket once palate-fatigue creeps in after a night on the tasty stuff.

From Peter at BetterBeerBlog we get a deeply personal story of love, loss and light lager. Ally also reminisces, over on Impy Malting, and continues her education in British culture by learning a new (lager-related) word: ladette.

In California, Craig of the Beers, Beers, Beers team reports on the erratic Truman pils, brewed in Berkeley by an Austrian brewery. Quite poorly, as it happens. Chris at Pint Log, finally, gives us some superb thoroughness, right down to the essential brown paper bags -- a great first Session post.


And that's your lot. Thanks everyone for participating. If your link got lost in the flabby folds of my inbox, or I've linked you up wrongly, or misspelled your chosen ersatz pilsner, drop me a line. On April 3rd we're doing something called rauchbier (?), courtesy of some yank called Bryson (?)

But before I go, another lager and some good news. Local readers may remember the late great Dublin Brewing Company of Smithfield which went out of business back in 2004, just as the progressive beer duty law kicked in. Well, it looks like they're getting back in the game: same logo, same font, but Big Hand Brewery is the new name. No beers of their own yet, but they've started by importing three from Van Steenberge in Belgium. One, of course, is a lager -- an unpasteurised pils called Sparta. I sampled it in Sin É on Ormond Quay last week. It's rather different from the beers I covered in my own Session post, being much sharper with an uncompromising but tasty bitter bite. The first own-brand product out of Big Hand will be a revival of DBC's Wicked Cider. Can we expect it to be followed by D'Arcy's, Beckett's, Maeve's and Revolution? Here's hoping.

Between these new imports, my recent weekend in Brussels, and current shape of my stash, I've a feeling things are going to be fairly Belgian around here for the next while. Oh well...