Desperation

Edinburgh Airport. Servisair lounge: the shitty one for passengers of loser airlines. Only five bottles of Efes Pilsener remain among the plentiful Beck's, Carlsberg and Kronenbourg. Maybe the previous passengers know something I don't.

I last encountered Efes a dozen or so years ago in the beautiful surrounds of Istanbul. It was a lot more forgettable than the city and I had no memory of how it tasted. With a few minutes before the Dublin departure was due to be called, I took the opportunity to refresh my memory and anything else the Turkish lager was capable of reaching.

As befits a hot-country lager, it's a very pale yellow colour, thinly textured with lots of prickly fizz. There's a strange candy-sweet aroma putting me in mind of the hard white sweetie cigarettes I rotted my young teeth on. Tastewise, it's properly pilsenerish to begin with, all green spicy nettles, if rather waterier than any German equivalent. Then the sugar starts to assert itself: sweetcorn, rising to candyfloss, and getting worse as the beer warms even slightly. By the end I was finding it a little difficult to drink, though I did stick it out.

On the way out I wondered if the stock was low because the airport is phasing it out. Let's hope so, for the sake of the travellers. Next time I'm having a Beck's.

...a place to sit and soak in sanit'ry conditions

The village inn, the dear old inn,
So ancient, clean and free from sin
wrote Betjeman in his pre-CAMRA rant about the loss of England's pub heritage. Well, my local village inn, Brady's in Terenure village, is usually pretty clean, but I doubt if it's ancient, and this post largely concerns one of its sins in particular. I'm in there every few weeks for the carvery lunch. From the macrobrews on offer I'd generally have a Guinness. Mrs Beer Nut, a lager drinker by default since she doesn't like stout, kegged ale or Erdinger, has been pitching around for a new regular and decided to give the Beck's Vier a go. Strange sort of beer this one: it appeared in the market a couple of years ago and is made by InBev in Germany exclusively for the British and Irish draught market. Presumably because of the varient "normal" beer strengths in both countries, it's an even 4% ABV in the UK, 4.3% over here. Concentration brewing is great, isn't it? Just add water...

Long story short, Beck's Vier is extremely dull. Yes, you can detect a hint of that maltiness which is the Beck's hallmark and which, I have to say, I quite like. But there's really nothing else going on: they've taken away the flavour and replaced it with water and gas. There's no doubt that Ireland's bars are oversupplied with lager taps. However, following events during the week, our Big Three brewers are now a Huge Two, and when the merger goes through Heineken in Cork will be paying people to make and market Heineken, Amstel, Coors Light, Miller, Foster's and Kronenbourg 1664. Something must give, but I'd say InBev Ireland, and Beck's Vier, will weather the storm.

To the other end of the pub spectrum, then, and the Bull & Castle. A shipment of Maredsous 10 arrived recently. Last year I complained about the tastelessness of Number 6 (be seeing you). Its big brother still lacks the bold flavours I'd expect from a tripel. However, it's smooth, honey-like and very very easy to drink so I think I can just about forgive it. It doesn't have the character of stablemate good old Duvel, however.

And that's me done with pubs for a while. Back to proper beer...

Coals to Newcastle

Here I am in Brussels, beer capital of the world and my first post is about... Irish stout.

Funny story. On my way to the airport on Tuesday I stopped off at the Bull & Castle for a Galway Hooker. Geoff, the manager, was behind the bar and ushered me upstairs to the glass-fronted cold room for a surprise. It was a surprise all right: it turns out that a craft brewer in Tipperary has been quietly making an Irish stout for export, to Russia mostly, according to a recipe from Dwan's, one of the many independent breweries in Ireland killed off by the multinationals. The result is Black Pearl, in full pint bottles, bearing the original Dwan labels and cap.

So it happened that I began my trip by exporting Irish craft beer to Belgium. Later, ensconced in a Ghent hotel room I opened the bottle. Black Pearl fizzes out, forming a short-lived dark tan head. The mouthfeel is far from fizzy, but marvellously silky. Like the classic Irish stout it is, the taste is dry, offering roasted grains and a pronounced hoppy finish. But there's more: a rich chocolate flavour which, coupled with the silky texture, all adds up to a sublime stout experience.

Brewers tell me that stout is one of the easiest styles to make. So why don't they all taste like this?

Commercial Irish stouts are an occasional topic of conversation on the Irish Craft Brewer forum. The consensus seems to be that bottled Guinness, at room temperature, is the best commercial macrobrewed [see comments] session stout in Ireland. Bottled Guinness is something of a rarity in Dublin pubs, but I was fortunate enough to be able to find one on Tuesday before heading to the airport. Believe the hype: bottled Guinness is lovely. Dry, of course. The taste is fairly mild, but the roasted barley is present in a way you don't find with Guinness draught. It's filling as well: you know you've had a pint at the end of this. But the best bit is the texture, to feel the carbonated prickle of real beer instead of the soulless blandness of nitrogenation.

And so to the airport. Dublin airport has the only bar I know whose supply is entirely controlled by Ireland's third biggest brewer: Scottish & Newcastle-owned Beamish & Crawford. So instead of Guinness/Murphy's and Bud/Heineken, it offers Beamish stout and Kronenbourg 1664 lager. Ack.

I've long had an aversion to Beamish, but I'm not the sort to hold a grudge. So, since it had also been spoken of favourably on the ICB forum, I felt it was time to check again. Beamish is certainly more flavoursome than draught Guinness. It is much much sweeter, but to me it tastes watery. On balance, I think I'd rather have a pint of Guinness draught done well, bland and all that it is.

I can't leave the topic with introducing at least one token Belgian element, so here it is: Leroy Stout. This is a thick black stout with an overwhelming saccharine sweetness. It is quite smooth, but it lacks any roasted or burnt flavours, nor is there chocolate, nor even much by way of hops. A miss, then.

Right, that's the Irish stuff out of the way for a bit. Next up, following a side-trip yesterday, it's The Lagers of Luxembourg.