Bristol odyssey

Quite a few of the pubs for which Bristol is famous won't be mentioned in this, my second post from a recent visit. My guiding principle when I went crawling was places I hadn't previously been. And which weren't too far out of my way. Before the work event for which I was in town kicked off, I took a full day to explore, guided mostly by Boak & Bailey's recommendations.

Fresh off the bus, I began in The Commercial Rooms, a grand high-ceilinged Wetherspoon in Bristol's old town. Seeking something gulpable I picked a pint of cask session IPA: Four Point Blanc, brewed at Hook Norton in collaboration with Devils Backbone. Hallertau Blanc is the signature hop and boy does it show through: a bright and quenching honeydew melon topnote. This is... I was about to say "balanced", but it's more accentuated, by dry tannins, adding an even more refreshing air of lemon tea. It's not a pint to savour, however. The charm starts to fade as it warms, the fruit giving way to a floral perfume that grows stronger and more concentrated. I didn't leave it long enough to find out how far that goes, draining the last of it so I could leave with a fond memory.

The day's real beer tourism began later at the Moor Brewery. It's an interesting taproom in that it appears to double as the brewery's front office, with orders being taken, events organised and supplies negotiated all around. Justin was entertaining a group of distributors, or possibly just potential distributors, visiting from Barcelona. If you want to know when Moor is going to be bought out, just sit in the taproom and wait for the guy with the big-brewery branded ballpoint.

It was only just gone noon so All Dayer session IPA seemed appropriate. This arrived an almost luminous orange colour, 3.5% ABV and tasting strongly of passionfruit to begin with. There was a mildly yeasty bitter twang after this, and then a watery finish which probably shouldn't have surprised me. It's sufficiently tasty given the strength, but quite one-dimensional and certainly nothing like the Founders beer echoed in the name.

Just launched was Simpils, Moor's first lager, which was enough of a novelty to get my business. It's thick and waxy -- bock-like at 5.5% ABV. There's lots of crusty bread and then a smack of nettle on the end. Like the session IPA, it's decent but unspectacular; noble pils by-the-numbers. I would have preferred lighter and crisper but that's just how I like my lagers.

Before heading off, a go of their English IPA Return of the Empire. Deep orange and low in carbonation, even from the keg, it looked well. The flavour was way off, however. Musty, funky, cheesy, earthy and dense: my least-favourite dwarves. IPA, even English ones, should be fun, and this one was a real downer. Up the Rebellion!

I bought a takeaway can of Moor's famous old ale Old Freddy Walker and left it by the powerful air conditioner in my room while I was out for the evening. This one has been around for years and has won CAMRA's Winter Beer of the Year twice. I've been very aware of it but never tried it before. It lives up to the hype, even in summer. The balance is exquisite, mixing creamy coffee and strong dark chocolate with the fruity bitterness of plums and blackcurrants, plus a sharper herbal liquorice kick. At 7.3% ABV it packs heat, but not too much, staying smooth and drinkable throughout. A recipe thoroughly out of fashion but not to be tampered with.

Back to the afternoon, and just around the corner from Moor's brewery is The Barley Mow, a pub owned by Bristol Beer Factory and among the best reputed in the city. It has a bit of a country inn feel to it, sited in a double-fronted Georgian-style house with long tables and a big fireplace inside.

I opened my tab with North to the Future by BBF themselves, a 5% ABV IPA brewed with Centennial and Denali. It poured a dazzling golden colour from the cask and smelled perfumed. The texture is a little sticky, emphasised by a honey-like flavour, and then the perfume begins to infuse into it as well, bringing a sweet note of rosewater. A savoury bitter finish brings it home on a complete about-face which still fails to improve it. It's a slightly odd beer, and not in a good way.

I switched to keg for the next one: Bristol Beer Factory's Teardrop IPA. This claims to be down-wit-da-kids double dry-hopped with New Zealand varieties. It's 5.2% ABV, a clear amber colour and has a very attractive aroma, the enticing diesel scent I get from Gewürztraminer wine. The flavour doesn't quite deliver on this, focusing more on the malt, with a stodgy porridge effect and even a sharp hit of smoke. A grassy bitterness slices unceremoniously through it, providing balance of a sort, but no subtlety. This is one of those beers that's worth a half for the aroma alone.

A quick stop in the plush King's Head for an old-time's-sake pint of Harvey's Best, then it was off to the 'burbs. The draw was The Draper's Arms, my very first micropub. It matched expectations by and large: one room with tables arrayed around the edges and beer served from a stillage in one corner. With England preparing to march to victory against Croatia in the World Cup, the house had less than its usual selection: just three beers on offer.

I began with Twisted Oak's Fallen Tree, billed as a "session amber" which is how English breweries are increasingly badging their dull brown bitters. I hope nobody's fooled. This definitely has a feel of Doom Bar about it: the same soft-biscuit cereals with just a tiny hint of peppery spice. At least it makes some sort of effort, but otherwise it's inoffensive and bland, perfect for those who want that in a beer.

L: Subtropic; R: The Usual

When Boak and Bailey arrived in, as they regularly do, they were straight into Bristol Beer Factory's Subtropic, a 4.4% ABV pale ale. It proved worthy of their enthusiasm too. This is quite a simple beer, arguably one-dimensional I would say, but the flavour is so bright and clean that it doesn't matter that there's only one: a sharply invigorating citrus punch. It gets support from a malt base that adds just the right level of density to prevent harshness but without becoming part of the flavour picture itself. This makes for very easy drinking in quantity.

Not for me, though, obviously. The line-up needed to be completed, and that meant The Usual by Milk Street, another brown bitter but not such a boring one. Light caramel meets sweet tea, flavoured gently with dark forest fruits. It's sticky on the lips and perhaps a little overclocked at 4.4% ABV, but it finished nicely clean and doesn't build on the palate. Grudgingly, I can see how the name might be apt.

An essential feature of the micropub experience is getting kicked out when it's still daylight, and so at 9.30 we moved down the street to the nearest unmicro pub, The Royal Oak. It seemed quite a large and rambling place, with multiple bars and plenty of punters as the football ended. Just the one tick for me: Beachcomber, still presented under the Gale's label but really brewed by brand owner Fuller's. It was light and fresh with plenty of lemon and grapefruit: pretty much as advertised, and about as good as a 3.7% ABV golden ale is going to get, after ten hours of drinking anyway.

The following day, with a spare hour in the early evening, I left the hotel and headed in the opposite direction from King Street, for a change. This brought me to The Three Tuns, a bright and bohemian corner pub on the north-western edge of the city centre.

I decided to go all-cask for this set, beginning on Budding, a 4.5% ABV pale ale from Stroud Brewery. This is another one of those honey-and-flowers jobs, but it develops as it goes along, bringing in a harder green bitterness, starting on celery and intensifying towards asparagus. This is enough to balance it and make it enjoyable, although on that particular afternoon it would have benefited from being a few degrees cooler.

Big Cat stout is also from Stroud, and while it's the same strength, it's much heavier going. A tarry texture carries heavy and pungent chemical-herbal flavours. I thought liquorice at first, but it's more like whatever the Satanic blend of spices and minerals that goes into Fisherman's Friend throat sweets is. I think this may be an aquired taste. While it was extremely full and flavourful, I found it just too intense.

The other brewery on the handpumps was Plain Ales, from Warminster. I began with Inntrigue, their "ruby best bitter". Another variant on "session amber ale", then. This is, indeed, well inside the boring brown bitter boundaries, though not offensively so. Crumbly oat cookie meets light treacle, finishing on a barely-there tang of metallic hops. It could be any one of a number of traditional bitters from the large regional ale breweries.

I hoped for better with Innocence golden bitter. It looked nice and clear but tasted awful. Rubbery phenols smack right into the palate from the outset, followed by stale sackcloth and a harsh gastric acidity. I've no idea if it was the way the beer was designed, or if it should have been taken off, but it made for grim drinking.

The grim drinking didn't end there either. About a day later I was homeward bound at the airport, which was thronged with rowdy holiday-makers, especially the bar. They had almost drained the beer taps completely and I would have picked a bottled local cider except I couldn't see any cold. Nothing for it but to choose something I'd been slightly curious about but knew wouldn't be up to much. That was Maltsmiths Pils, the faux-craft brand of Heineken UK which I assume is brewed at Caledonian in Edinburgh. This too tasted old and stale, as disappointing as an unexpectedly soft biscuit. But hey, at least I know now, and never have to go there again.

I do have to go back to Bristol, though, for a family event in the autumn. I might just stick to places I like, this time, instead of trying to get too adventurous.

A yard of ale

As usual, Easter Saturday meant the trip to Cork for Franciscan Well's annual beer festival. I arrived in the city a little early so called in to Market Lane on Oliver Plunkett Street for lunch, and to try the beers from the adjoining Elbow Lane brewery. I'd had a couple of these (stout and lager) a few years back, when they were still being contract brewed, but haven't seen much of them since. The brewery has now added a red, a weiss and a pale ale to the line-up. Sadly, only the first of these, Wisdom, was available. And also sadly it was bady infected. There's a rich and wholesome toffee-laden red ale lurking in there somewhere but it's bookended with a phenolic buzz -- hard and jarring at the front and lasting long into the finish too -- making it taste of swimming pools, leaning towards more severe TCP. I'm always amazed when brewers deem beer that tastes so badly off to be fit for sale. Hopefully Elbow Lane will get their act together as Market Lane is a smart little bistro with good food and superb service. It deserves better beer.

A swift pint of Survivor, now re-named "Dreamcatcher", in Rising Sons since it was on the way, and then into the back yard of Franciscan Well for the 2pm kick-off.

Even though this isn't Ireland's biggest beer festival any more, it still packs the crowds in and it wasn't long before the place was buzzing. 18 breweries were represented, a mix of regulars and new-comers. My starting beer was Seaweed Saison, brewed by Dungarvan when Kjetil Jikiun from Nøgne Ø came to visit. It's 6.5% ABV and a hazy pale orange colour. Dry saison spices are the main action, given extra impact by an unusually heavy texture. A bunch of us gathered round the glass to see if we could pick out the maritime elements and found a touch of iodine and ozone in the aroma and a mild saltiness in the flavour, especially as it warms. Other than that, it's pretty down-the-line for a novelty beer, which is probably a good thing.

Even though they arrive at a fairly regular clip these days it's always exciting to encounter new breweries and there were two Munster débutantes at the EasterFest. Well, West Cork Brewing has been going since late last year, but I missed their beer at the February Winter Ales Festival and was glad to be able to catch up. Roaring Ruby is the red, arriving murky from the cask and, while it could benefit from being a bit cleaner was perfectly palateable. I got lots of milk chocolate and spiced caramel notes, finishing on a slightly acidic green apple bite which helps make this sweet and filling beer surprisingly refreshing. Its stablemate is a pale ale called Sherkin Lass. This is pure apricot goodness, the light cask carbonation adding a sherbet quality making for a very smooth and quaffable pale bitter. It's the sort of beer I could picture drinking a lot of when visiting the brewery's Baltimore home.

Also making their first appearance at the festival was The Killarney Brewing Company, represented by brewer and co-owner AJ, formerly of Figueroa Brewing in California. He had an odd choice of first-run beers on offer, a helles and a golden ale. A bit similar, no? Anyway, Devil's Helles had few fans around the yard, but I was charmed by it. Yes, there's a bit of butterscotch going on, but it's within the bounds of acceptability. The density and sweetness are spot-on for authentic helles and best of all there's a crunchy green celery bite from the hops that really completes the picture nicely. Golden Spear was the other one: a simple and crisp beer with light honey and floral meadows, building as it goes to a more intense perfume.

But if it was perfume you were after, you'd have to stop by the UCC Microbrewery stand. For a second year in a row they eschewed traditional German styles and had a 5.6% ABV pale ale, named pÚCCa on offer. This was a beautiful clear gold colour but the harsh hop perfume made it tough going for me, not at all helped by a thick, almost greasy, texture, like ambergris or balsam. Too intense to be enjoyable. The students' quadruple, Innocence, was much better: dark copper in colour and smelling quite bitter or tart. The flavour is all moist fruit, however: wet juicy raisins and brown banana for a sumptuous sort of fruitcake effect. A liquorice bitterness finishes it on a flourish and there's no sign at all of the whopping 9.6% ABV.

The headliner for the UCC selection, however, was Keen-Wah‽, a beer brewed (obviously) from quinoa. It's a 100% quinoa grain bill in fact and the producers are keeping schtum about the method used, though boasting that the end result is entirely gluten-free. At only 3.3% ABV, I was expecting some sort of thin watery psuedo-beer but it was actually very impressive. There's a big bubblegum flavour, verging on clove and perhaps banana syrup too, but definitely the kind of thing you find in proper German weissbier. I got a certain lemon tartness too, bringing us closer to Belgian witbier. Either way, this stuff does a very convincing impression of real beer and could be a winner if it were commercially viable. I suspect that the cost of the main ingredient is what has kept the ABV down. If it's merely to be appreciated as an example of the brewer's art then fine: I did that.

Two dark beers to finish on. Bo Bristle has a new Stout out. Dave seems quite pleased with it. Its ancestry can be traced to the milk chocolate stout the Offaly brewery produced during the winter, though this is a much more modest 4.5% ABV. It retains a bit of lactose sugar which adds a sweet and tangy complexity to an otherwise straightforward dry Irish session stout. There's a sort of raspberry fruit tart too, which is unusual but pleasant.

And my beer of the festival was Black Lightning, a 6.5% ABV black IPA by 9 White Deer. Lots and lots of fresh Simcoe went in to dry hop this admittedly unattractive-looking murky brown beer. That gave it a fantastic zingy orange sherbet aroma. The flavour features that too, with rounded jaffa and mandarin plus bonus lavender and a tiny dry bitter bite on the finish for balance, the only sign in the flavour that this isn't simply a pale ale.

Cheers as always to the brewers and the hosts. There's talk of moving the festival out of the Franciscan Well yard altogether. I hope its unique atmosphere can be retained once the crowding issues are dealt with.