Broadening the horizons

I finished yesterday's post on a bit of a whine about BraufactuM and the whole overpriced corporate "gourmet" beer angle they seem to be pushing. I can't complain too much, though, as there were some very interesting imports on their stand next to their own stuff. For one thing they've acquired import rights to California's Firestone Walker. I took the opportunity to try Pale 31, the standard pale ale. I loved the flawless clear gold colour and the sharp citric aroma which immediately puts the palate on full alert. It's no hop bomb, however, being gently flavoured with hints of peaches and honeydew melon. One of those effortlessly delicious and drinkable beers. Double Jack is the brewery's double IPA and it's a mellow, warming one, again not overdoing things on the bitterness front, but not really on any other front either. A much better strong beer experience came from 14th Anniversary, an extremely boozy 12.5% ABV ale but one where all that heat doesn't matter, especially in a 100ml serve. Up front it wears a big smooth chocolate liqueur flavour: sinful and sumptuous.

A long-time stand-out on my list of must-drink beers is Baladin's Elixir and I was delighted to see it too was in BraufactuM's fridges. I requested a taster and, as no bottle was open already, my server popped a new one and the beer within exploded, foamily and messily, over the concrete floor of the Munich transport museum. Better there than at home or in a hotel room, I guess. Eventually, a sample was poured into a glass for me, at a 50% discount due to the inconvenience. And to be honest it wasn't the beer I'd been waiting for: hot smelling and rather characterless, like a first-attempt homebrewed dubbel. A surprising drop of the ball by the Piedmontese brewery there.

And speaking of hyped-up Italians, there was some Birrificio Italiano Tipopils knocking around and I secured a sip courtesy of Mark. It's quite nice, with a pleasant nettley bite, but to be honest I can't see what all the fuss is about. Maybe I need more than a mouthful to judge it properly.

While we're visiting the neighbours, a quick courtesy call on Austria whose brewers had banded together into a single large bar. Gusswerk were offering that German teenage classic the hemp beer, and theirs is called Synergy. While there's definitely some hempy pepperiness buried in it, it's mostly just a rather disappointing plain pils. At the other end of the bar Gusswerk were offering Horny Betty, a version of their Black Betty with added horny goat weed. I don't recall a style being named but it's dark brown and 9.2% ABV, tasting somewhere along the Belgian-style quadrupel to imperial stout spectrum: lots of dark fruit esters and lots of smooth chocolate too. Far from being a mere puerile novelty, the horny goat weed actually adds a pleasant herbal, medicinal character to the overall flavour.

On tasting Engelszell Gregorius back in February I mentioned I was looking forward to their next beer. Turns out I didn't have to wait too long because here it was: Benno, a tripel. Unfortunately it's not a great example of the style. Appropriately gold, it's missing the lovely fruit and honey and spice one would expect and is instead rather unpleasantly sharp. A shame.

Czech representation at BrauKunst Live! came in two flavours: the big bombastic glitz of Pilsner Urquell and on the other side of the hall, Honza Kočka, single-handedly flying the flag for his Nomád brand of ales. A question about how receptive the German market is to Czech IPA was shrugged off: Honza was mostly there to make contacts, drink beer and have fun. Sounds fair. Easy Rider was the Nomád beer everyone was talking about: a modest 4.8% ABV pale ale hopped with Chinook, Willamette and Cascade and bursting with fresh zingy citrus flavours on top of a fuller, weedier, hop funk. Above all it's sessionable, easy-going and sociable, hitting similar places as the Firestone Walker Pale 31. Its bigger brother is Karel, a 7.6% ABV IPA done entirely with Czech hop varieties. The end result is one of those warming, malt-driven IPAs very much echoing the English style for me. Very enjoyable but not for the hopheads. For them it has to be the novelty 13 Hops, brewed to 13° plato, so somewhere just north of 5% ABV, using wheat, caramalt and guess how many different kinds of hops. To be honest I could only taste nine or ten to begin with, but the citrus kick rises slowly on tasting, building to a sharp acidic finish from the full baker's dozen. It's a surprisingly clean beer, given everything that's gone into it.

We finish our visit to BrauKunst Live! tomorrow with some of the more traditional German beer styles.

Beer speed dating

Although I've been to bigger festivals, BrauKunst Live! in Munich was among the most daunting. Even setting aside the familiar breweries -- headline locals like Schneider and ubiquitous festival fixtures like De Molen -- there was so much I had no clue about and it was really difficult trying to figure out where to start. Fortunately the standard beer measure was only 100ml so at least picking any given beer wasn't much of a commitment.

Happily also, admission came with four tokens for specific stands, one of which was Camba Bavaria from Truchtlaching, east of Munich towards Salzburg. They had a helpful plasma screen above the stand to tell punters what was available, so I kicked off with their Pale Ale. It was terrible and reeked of piss. Surely this can't be typical of the new wave of American-influenced German ale brewing? Over to BrauKunstKeller to try their Laguna IPA. Awful again: brown, and sticky with an unpleasant mix of stale sweat and sugar. You're letting me down here, Germany. The modestly monikered Bavarias Best IPA by Schönramer was rather better. Closest to an English IPA with its gentle marmalade hopping it also presents a strange, but not unpleasant, lagerish grain element too.

What was required here was a bit of direction, and Barry's recommendation was to try Hopfenstopfer. This is a side project by the brewmaster at the otherwise traditional Häffner Bräu brewery in north-west Baden-Württemberg. The beers would be instantly recognisable to anyone who has been keeping even half an eye on what the likes of Mikkeller and BrewDog have been up to over the last five years, though still seem to be in the early "Yay! Hops are great!" phase. So take Hopfenstopfer Citra, for example: 5.1% ABV and a hazy yellow-amber. It's lightly carbonated and provides an ideal platform for lots of herbal, slightly spicy, Citra flavours to come bursting out. There's something similar going on in Incredible Ale only this uses a cocktail of Cascade, Nelson Sauvin and more besides. It's very dank and funky but just at the right level: strong, but not overpowering, which is how I like my dank. For an altogether calmer, more balanced experience there's Jahrgangsbier, a pilsner using local ingredients and eschewing the pale ale bitterness for a light and crisp mineral character. The highlight of the Hopfenstopfer range for me was Comet, a 6.8% ABV IPA utilising Comet, of course, plus German varieties Taurus and Saphir. There's a bit of an acid burn in the foretaste but that fades leaving a lovely balance of citrus and dank, sharpness and funk. This combination of German ingredients and methods with foreign recipe influences was much more what I was hoping to see at the festival, and Comet was one of the few beers that left me wishing I could sit down with a pint of it.

I struck gold again over at the Weihenstephaner bar which was being manned by the students of Bavaria's state-owned brewing research institute. What had first caught my eye was Infinium, the collaboration with Boston Brewing in its very fancy 75cl bottle. 10.5% ABV and using classic German Tettnanger, Mittelfrüh, Spalt and Hersbrucker hops. Though a gorgeous shade of clear dark amber this is all mouth and no lederhosen, being quite a dull but hot beer with not much going on in it at all. However, the students' pride of place wasn't given to this, or one of the long-established heritage beers, but to Banx, a hazy golden pale ale they had made with Topaz plus new German variety Mandarina. It hits that precise sweet spot between US-style citrus and German herbal hop flavours. Beautiful.

One of the very few beer brands I'd heard of before the festival was Propeller. They had a double IPA on tap on their stand, called Aufwind. It wasn't quite on the money for me: a mere 6.5% ABV and much more about the crystal malt toffee flavours than any big hop effects. Nachtflug imperial stout was much better: sweet and smooth and oddly reminiscent of a quality doppelbock, with that silky caramel sensation they do so well.

Sticking with the German stouts, there was the rather pleasant Fritz Ale Milk Stout which completely missed the babyish sweetness that normally comes with the label and instead packed in the dry roastiness, Irish style. I wasn't complaining. Over at Pax, an operation where the cool t-shirts and biker moustaches are more prominent than the beers, there was Black Gold, an extremely dry oatmeal stout with added liquorice. It's 5.3% ABV and very full-bodied. Enjoyable to drink but quite hard work.

Two from the more outré side of things to finish. BraufactuM are a subsidiary of German food and drink giant Dr Oetker, specialising in expensive strongish beers for the "gourmet" market. They had a vast sprawling stall by the entrance of BrauKunst Live! and weren't shy about charging a premium for their tasters. The two I tried were Roog, a nicely balanced 6.6% ABV smoked beer, one which allows the sweet dark malts to come through the smoke and making the most of both elements; and Arrique, a Rioja-aged barley wine, 13.5% ABV with quite a big vino tinto character and some nice woodiness, but overall rather tame for the stack of beer tokens they were demanding in exchange for a sample. Thankfully Mr Dredge's press pass spared us the need to splash out -- cheers Mark!

The very existence of BraufactuM shows that there's definitely a change in the air with German brewing, though personally I'd like to see the Hopfenstopfer model become the more common template for the way forward. Later in the week I'll have a look at how the more traditional German beer styles -- which don't seem to be in any jeopardy from the new wave of craft -- have been given a progressive twist by some of the brewers, but before that let's have a look at the foreign beers on sale at the festival.