End of the year content filling

Thank you to Alan for the title. And so, once again, it's time to take stock of the year in beer just gone, using an increasingly irrelevant template, last revised in 2013. Changing it now would be akin to re-making Dinner For One in colour HD -- completely missing the point. As usual, deliberations are aided by something from the fridge which is hopefully a bit special.

This year it's a Chardonnay barrel aged wild sour ale from Wide Street, called Réserve Spéciale. It's had two years in the casks and poured a bright golden, almost completely clear. The aroma certainly shows off the wine, and very much that Chablis Burgundy dry fruitiness. The oak is perfectly integrated into this, just like with good wine itself, and there's no tacked-on vanilla or butteriness. At only 5.4% ABV it's light-bodied and crisp, refreshing even, its flavour opening with an immediate kick of Golden Delicious apples, tart gooseberries, soft kiwi and real white grape. More typical oak vanilla arrives late, but doesn't last long, and it finishes on a light saltpetre spicing of which I would have liked more. The fruit is almost at the level of a grape ale, and I commend this in particular to my fellow lovers of that style. In the 75cl bottle it makes for an excellent special occasion beer, and ideal for proselytising the wonders of wild fermentation and barrel ageing. But there's only one special occasion on my agenda today. Time to get on with...

The Golden Pint Awards 2024

Best Irish Cask Beer: Hopkins & Hopkins Sitric
It's a beautiful pale ale, no question, but this award is in part for what it represents: it was the first beer to show up on the revived cask handpump at The Porterhouse on Parliament Street, and it has been a regular there ever since, though occasionally time-sharing with Lough Gill's beers. Neither The Porterhouse nor H&H needed to do this; it's totally out of keeping with trends in Irish pubs and beer, and I've never seen anyone but me order it. But it is massively appreciated by this drinker and adds a wonderful bit of diversity to a beer market that can feel a little samey betimes. A Golden Pint is the least I can do as a gesture of gratitude.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Otterbank Oíche Mhaith
It's probably a lot more common bottled than draught, and the keg which went on sale at UnderDog in February was doubtless a rarity. Nevertheless it counts, and I don't see any reason why 9.4% ABV vatted porters can't be sold on draught in Irish pubs as a matter of course. Everyone just needs to grow up a bit.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Beoir Chorca Duibhne Leann Láidir
Honestly, the headline beer on this post is a contender, and I'm only having my second glass of it now. But on mature reflection, West Kerry's barrel aged rye porter was the Irish bottled beer that best delivered the goods for me this year. That was back in June, so finding it may be difficult at this stage, though I bet it didn't sell quickly and that there are still bottles to be had.

Best Irish Canned Beer: Third Barrel Hello Yes
Maybe it's because I'm quite jaded about IPAs in general, and that's what most canned Irish beers are these days, but it was a struggle to find a stand-out winner in this category. The one I picked is an authentic-tasting Czech style pilsner, though you'll have to wait until next week for my review. Take my word for it, however: cans of this one are still readily available and well worth picking up.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Uiltje Pomme Pressure
I'd say I drank close to a thousand different beers in 2024, though only a handful of them taught me anything new. This dark barley wine aged in Calvados barrels had a very special flavour profile and one that has stuck in my memory as distinctive and delicious. That's enough to mark it out for an award.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Den Herberg Geus Genereus
After a sizeable hiatus, the Toer de Geuze happened for me again this year, and included plenty of beers and breweries I knew little about. The specification of this complex geuze caught my eye from the brewery's temporary festival bar and delivered absolutely all of the implied complexity. Up top, I said that I would have liked more spice in the Wide Street beer. This one had spice enough for both.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Metalhead Metalworks
In the summer I went to Bulgaria, and while the beer I found there often wasn't the best, there were some stand-out moments. Those produced by a group of heavy metal fans on the edge of the Black Sea (possible beer/album name?) were among the most memorable, in a positive way. Metalworks is a barley wine with figs, dates and spices, but pulls off the trick of tasting balanced and integrated while still being a playful novelty beer. They compensated for the frustratingly tiny can with a huge and brilliant flavour. 

Best Collaboration Brew: Sofia Electric / Põhjala Väga Suur
And I'm as surprised as you are to find another Bulgarian beer at the races this year. In fact, this was originally picked for best overseas bottle, but with an absence of other suitable collaboration beers among the year's highlights, it made more sense to slot it in here. It's another complex barrel-aged barley wine which has been skilfully blended to create a unique drinking experience. Bulgarian brandy barrels get filed along with Calvados as ones to look out for. 

Best Overall Beer: Metalhead Metalworks
I look at the eight champion beers and try to think of the one that made the strongest impression on me; the one I can still taste and react to, just by reading its name, and that's the Metalheads of Burgas this year.

Best Branding: Kestemont
Back to the Toer de Geuze, and a visit to a brewery I'd never been to before, nor tried any of their beers. Kestemont has only been going since 2022 and doesn't try to pretend to be a vintage institution making old-timey beers. The branding is clean and modern, though also conjuring a more primitive age, for example the woodcut-like dashing hare on their Oude Geuze.

Best Pump Clip: Fat Cat House Ale
I remarked at the time that the house bitter at The Fat Cat in Sheffield is better than it needs to be, and the artwork on the clip is also a cut above. I don't know if it's based on a real cat or, if so, if said cat actually wears a monocle. I just enjoyed his stoic reaction to the shite Yorkshire weather, as seemingly rendered by Frank Miller. 

Best Bottle/Can Label: Lacada Out On A Shout
Lacada cans are always beautifully designed, but the one that stood out for me this year was a beer I've never had, a pale ale produced as a fund-raiser for the RNLI and making wonderful use of the beneficiary's particular turn of phrase. There's something about how it brings the reality of lifeboat work to the prospective beer purchaser that made it instantly memorable to me. Maybe I'll get to drink it at some point.

Best Irish Brewery: Galway Bay
While the company's pub end took something of a battering through 2024, the work done by the folks on the production side has been excellent. They've cornered the market in Irish-brewed Catharina sours and also rocked the dark and strong styles with Baltic porter, pastry stout, doppelbock and imperial porter of superb quality. And the schedule has been delightfully relentless, with new beers for me to try at The Black Sheep every few weeks. Throw in some excellent lager, which they did, and that's nearly everything I want a brewery to do.

Best Overseas Brewery: Dok
I had some fantastic beers at this Ghent brewpub when I visited last month, particularly the cherry and grape ale, and the black IPA. They narrowly missed out on the individual beer prizes so I'm happy to award this one for their output collectively. Their whole approach is cheerfully upbeat, and the creativity is matched by the quality of their beers. 

Best New Brewery Opening 2024: Smithfield Brewing
I mean, the beers aren't brilliant, being very much designed for mainstream pub-goers at the venues run by the brewery's owners. Rather, this award is for the project: the return of brewing to the old Dublin Brewing Company site in Dublin's north inner city. It looks like they're planning to open for visitors, being centrally located not far off the tourist trail with a bar just inside the entrance. And the old redbrick soap factory they're in is a lovely bit of Dublin's historic industrial architecture. In short, there's a lot of promise, and I hope to see it realised in 2025.

Pub/Bar of the Year: UnderDog
Ho hum, right? Where else would a thirsty person go for a quality selection, constant turnover, and an opportunity to rub shoulders with the cream of Dublin's beer geekery? UnderDog is the place and that's all there is to it, really.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2024: The 108
Strictly speaking this is a change of management rather than a new opening, but enough changed after Galway Bay vacated their Rathgar footprint that I'm counting it as a new opening. While there's a more mainstream appeal to the offer these days, there's still a good choice of quality beers (hello Kinnegar), and getting that out in the D6 boondocks is a rarity to be treasured. I'll throw in a most honourable mention for Bier Draak in Norwich which opened in May this year. It's an extension of the Sir Toby's market stall, but with worthwhile innovations such as a roof and a toilet. The beer list is impeccable.

Beer Festival of the Year: Borefts
It's been a while since De Molen's two-day shindig has troubled my Golden Pints, and nothing much has changed with it in a few years now. But it's my call, and I had a wonderful time at this year's gig. I'm sure the great weather had a lot to do with that, and the fact that I missed last year. It's still a bit overcrowded and some breweries are overly fond of making punters queue for timed special releases, but mostly it works brilliantly, the exhibitors are well chosen and the whole thing is a quality affair. I'm looking forward to next year already.

Supermarket of the Year: Lidl
This year, it's an award for reliability and dependability. Aldi had the turnover of beers, but I bought more in Lidl because they have such solid reliables on the shelves permanently: fridge-fillers like their Crafty Brewing IPA and American Brown Ale, but also modern classics including Little Fawn, Scraggy Bay and Rustbucket. Grabbing a handful for a weekend of unfussy drinking has become a regular habit.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Molloy's
Specifically this goes to the Francis Street branch which has done best at offering me beers that I didn't see anywhere else, and all without having to go outside the canals. Yes, your Martin's and your Redmond's and your Blackrock Cellars have better ranges, but for the convenience/price/selection criteria, Molloy's on Francis Street covers things best.

Online Retailer of the Year: Craft Central
And Captain Obvious's Retail Recommendations continue here. Just as UnderDog is the place where gobdaws like me sit in to drink, Craft Central is where we get our cans of whatever was just released or imported. I don't (often) touch the stupidly expensive ultra-rare imports, because haze is haze and they don't make it magically better in Illinois or wherever, but CC has a proper devotion to Irish beer and even stoops to selling Irish breweries' bottled beers on occasion. As well as this award, I present them with the encouragement to do more of that sort of thing.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: The Devil's in the Draught Lines
We have two books in contention this year, but I think the prize has to go to this wide-ranging, deep-diving and wonderfully person-centred account of women's place in the beer world, past and present, commissioned by CAMRA and written by our own Dr Christina Wade. It's a story that needed told and a document that will stand witness for future writers on the subject.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Belgian Smaak
My runner-up book was Breandán Kearney's Hidden Beers of Belgium, which is genuinely excellent, so I'm very happy to award this equally prestigious Golden Pint to Breandán for his website. Output isn't exactly quickfire but the quality is worth waiting for. Claire Bullen's delving under the skin of Brouwerij Boon, and Breandán's own telling of the Eylenbosch/Boerenerf saga, were literally my two favourite pieces of beer journalism I read this year.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @articnead
I think Simon would have been quite happy for us to include Bluesky under the remit of this award now, and although I'm doing that, and Sinead does have an account on The Nice Place, this is still mostly a Twitter thing for probably the last time. Our winner does a marvellous mix of nordie snark, righteous outrage and old-school good-time bants, often within the same 280 characters, and generally gives proper vintage-era Twitter vibes, the way Bluesky is supposed to but doesn't. I very much doubt she reads this, so you can pass on the good news for me, Sean. Thanks.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: Ballykilcavan
And also in the fractured social media space, we have Ballykay shining a light of positivity, interesting happenings, more righteous outrage, and fleeces, into the swirling maelstrom that is today's beer internet. More Irish breweries should be telling us what they're up to and what's on their mind via a held up phone in a working brewhouse. Casting a new Cleo the spaniel will be a tough task, however.


Is that it? Have we only 25 categories? Cuh! I could have gone on all year. Congratulations to all 2024's deserving winners, and shame on you who got nothing: you've seen the bar, now get planning how you'll raise it. Me, I'm still very slowly getting through the tail end of 2024's Irish beer releases. You can expect opinions about them arriving here well into January. No rush with whatever you breweries have in store for us in 2025.

The new batch

The thing that stopped me from doing something sensible with my Toer de Geuze weekend, like getting the train to Boon and staying there, was the presence of unfamiliar locations on the itineraries. I picked two routes which got me to all four.

The one whose beer I knew best was Lambiek Fabriek, having tried a number of them in the past and even chatted with the owners at a festival last year. I've mentioned before that I'm not a huge fan of their output, and it was instructive to learn that their warehouse in Sint-Pieters-Leeuw is right next door to a sewage plant.

It was one of those Toer set-ups which favours big bottles, so as a solo traveller on the day my options were a little limited. From the draught tap I began with Muscar-Elle: something of a beast at 8.8% ABV and created with the addition of Belgian-grown grapes. It's far from a typical grape lambic, however. It's a surprisingly dark amber colour and the flavour opens with a leafy bitterness that made me think of hops: the sort of effect that lambic brewers try to avoid by using flavourless aged hops. After that surprise, a weird savoury smoky spice, like chipotle or paprika. There is grape in here, buried deep, but it's raw and firm, not soft and juicy. It's still a lambic though, but not a great one, and very typical of how this producer tends to miss my preferences by a whisker.

They had small bottles of a beer they make for a local cycling club, called Sporty Geuze Origin-Elle. Even though it's a niche product, it gave off flagship vibes: 6.5% ABV and a standard shade of orange. Once again, the flavour wasn't where I wanted it to be. A wax bitterness jars with caramel sweetness and there's not much else. The spice level is minimal, only a single twist of black pepper and no nitre or saltpetre. There's a sort of stale sweatiness about the sour aspect which I found off-putting. I hope the bike folks like it, at least.

A rotating "mystery tap" was, I think, pouring Gros-Elle: 7.7% ABV and brewed with redcurrant and grape. This was very difficult drinking, which was unfortunate as the bus was about to leave. It's very vinegary, curdling horribly in the stomach. The currant is there, for sure, but much too harsh for comfort.

My curiosity about Lambiek Fabriek and where it comes from was thoroughly satisfied. I hate to complain about a start-up lambic-maker that seems to be doing everything right, and which definitely attracts a fanbase, but which rarely seems to make a beer I enjoy. Still, I was glutton enough for punishment, or optimistic enough, to buy a bottle of something else they made on my way out, and I'll get to that in a future post.

The next stop was Kestemont, in Dilbeek. They've been brewing here since 2021, and ageing beer for a few years longer than that, in a group of venerable farmhouse buildings clustered around a courtyard. It's a charming setting, even in the persistent drizzle.

They had a draught tap in the yard pouring 1 Year Lambic, a beer that looked even younger than that, being a rough murky orange colour. The flavour was similarly unrefined, with a hard-edged waxy twang; bitter but not sour. It lacks any of the complexity of older lambic and proved a bit of a chore to drink. I could see why the ancient Pajottenlanders began mixing it with fruit and the like, or simply leaving it in the barrel for as long as it took to start tasting acceptable. There was certainly no lack of flavour here, making it a promising proto-geuze.

And so to the "here's one I made earlier" moment: Kestemont Oude Geuze. It's 6% ABV and pretty much the same colour as the lambic. I found it disappointingly bland, with a clean sort of sourness but none of the spice or fruit which make geuze the best beer style in the world. The weird house character appears to be an unwelcome smoky phenolic phenomenon, which makes it distinctive and individual, perhaps, but doesn't make it good beer.

I say it's a house character because I also found it in Kestemont Oude Kriek, one made with the prestige Schaarbeekse cherries. Add a bit of phenol to that and you get an odd meaty, savoury effect, like the kriek-sauced rabbit beloved of Brussels tourist menus. I come to Schaarbeekse cherries for a richer, rounder sort of ripe red cherry flavour. This didn't have that, and instead seemed a bit cheap, with a kind of sugary raspberry-syrup tang from the fruit side.

For me, then, Kestemont files with Lambiek Fabriek as having their heart in the right place but not delivering the goods I want. I'll give them a bit of time and come back to their beer at a later date to find out if it has improved. On damp Toer Saturday, however, I squelched back to the bus a little disappointed. Still, there was a whole other day to come.

The contrast in the weather was enormous. We started an hour earlier on the sunny Sunday, with the bus leaving Denderleeuw station at 9am. First stop was Eylenbosch. There looks to be a bit of money behind this operation. It's all very slick, situated in another farm courtyard in old buildings which have been carefully and sympathetically renovated. They've only been here since 2019 and the spiders have barely got a foothold. That they claim heritage back to 1886 -- from the brewery whose brand they acquired -- is another indication that the people in charge here wear suits instead of overalls. 

The draught Eylenbosch Lambic (brewed at De Troch) was three years old. It was still a little rough, though not as downright offensive as De Troch's own raw product. Cloudy in appearance, there's a harsh, enamel-stripping bitterness at the centre of the taste and not an awful lot else going on.

Compare that to the Eylenbosch Oude Gueuze next to it, looking ever so polished and smart. This is a much better proposition, smooth and dense, though quite light in alcohol at a reasonable 5.8% ABV. Where De Troch geuze tastes to me of full-on concrete, this has merely a seasoning of dry flinty minerals, and then a charming champagne toast quality. It may not be the most complex geuze in the world, but it's very classy, and perhaps would work well for those just beginning their journey. From what I can see of how Eylenbosch conducts itself, it should have no problem getting it into drinkers' hands.

These were enjoyed at the tables set out in the yard for the event, and when it was time for round two it was the wife's turn for some Schaarbeek action. Eylenbosch Schaarbeekse Oude Kriek is a deep shade of purple, and again takes a counter-intuitive approach to alcohol and body. Here, it's 6.5% ABV yet light and drinkable. And it has the cherry character I had been looking for from the Kestemont one: real and luscious ripe cherry flesh, set on a rich and cakey Bakewell tart base. There's still plenty of the wild beer action that gets the nerds' juices flowing: an oldie mouldy funk at the beginning and a spritzy tart finish to cleanse the palate at the end. While it's definitely a fruit beer, it's a very grown up one, and quite delicious.

I decided to gamble. Last year I had my first taste of whisky-barrel geuze, though didn't think much of it. When I saw that Eylenbosch had one on the go as well, getting much point-of-sale hype around the yard, I figured it had to be tried. They've called it Whisky Symphony and it's a whopper at 8.5% ABV. The funk from the kriek manifests here as a kind of blue cheese effect in the aroma, and then it's a weirdly sweet, malt-driven, treacle flavour plus caramel. That might be OK on its own, but then there's the sharp geuze sourness which clashes badly and feels tacked on as a gimmick. It's the other way around, of course: the whisky is the gimmick. Regardless, it doesn't really work, and I retain my sceptical stance towards ageing lambic this way.

There's a whole other range of Eylenbosch beers, both spontaneously fermented and with tamed yeasts too. I look forward to working my way through them when the opportunity arises. But it was time to leave, with just one more brewery on the list.

Den Herberg is primarily a pub, in the village of Buizingen, adjoining Halle. It looks like a jolly sort of place, though one never gets to see them in normal mode during the Toer weekend. The brewery is down the back, and they had set tables along the side alley leading to it (the aptly-named Zenneweg), finding room for the de rigeur bouncy castle too.

Just one beer each, and I picked the most interesting looking one: a blend of 4, 5, 6 and 7 year-old lambics called Geus Genereus, because there's nobody so generous as the Belgians when it comes to ways of spelling geuze. It's 6.7% ABV and an opaque orange colour. The aroma is mildly spicy, which is pleasant, but doesn't prepare one for the huge amount of dry pepper in the flavour -- just my sort of kick. For all that, it's barely sour, and the old beer in the blend gives it a luxurious calm mellowness. The whole thing is restrained enough that a touch of crystalised candy sugar is detectable too: there's nothing as vulgar as "sourness" in here. Top work by the blenders.

Although not constructed in the same involved way, there's something similar happening in the flavour of Kriekenlambic, seemingly a straight 18-month-old kriek. Here the big spices meet a fruity jam effect making it taste like a classy relish or remoulade. It is admittedly sharper than the geuze, but there's a definite mellowness too, which tastes beyond its years. Though only 6% ABV it has a warming, comforting cake-like feel. And my favourite feature was the dense blood-red colour which tells you from the start that it'll treat you well.

The final score in the exploration of new lambic producers was a 2-2 draw. Eylenbosch and Den Herberg have certainly given me leads on more to explore and taste. With the Toer dropping off its final passengers and closing up until 2026, it was time to move on. We had plans...

Eylenbosch