Second chances and new beginnings

I've tried a few of the beers from Bristol brewery Lost & Grounded over the years and haven't particularly liked any of them. It has made me very aware of the near-unanimous high regard in which their core beers are held. I have form on this sort of thing: it took me a couple of goes to get the hang of other English classics such as Jaipur and Landlord and I was quite prepared to believe that Lost & Grounded was another example of that. So when they showed up locally, I took the opportunity to revisit. Today I'm giving two a second spin and trying one I've never tasted before.

First it's Keller Pils: perhaps England's best lager, or maybe just the one with most frequent favourable mentions on my Twitter timeline. My previous encounter was in the arcade bar on Bristol's King Street. My aversion to certain German hop varieties when used in quantity was strongly triggered by the beer, to the point where I found a pint difficult to finish. Let's see if it's any better by the can.

Pale yellow, slightly hazy, soft textured and a fine white head: yes, it's keller-y all right. It's sweeter than I remembered, with an almost candy sugar foretaste and an inappropriate burst of tangerine or mandarin, building to less-inappropriate lemon zest. A second or two later the hops kick in fully. Not rotten wood this time, but a weedpatch herbal kick of dandelion and nettle, finishing sharply on grass, wax and plastic: those naughty nobles again. I like a pillowy soft Helles, and can appreciate the crisp edges on a north-German pils (hello Jever!), and while this offers a big slice of both, it ends up less than the sum of its parts. I'm not repulsed by it this time, which is progress, but neither do I "get" it fully. It's too much of a mish-mash of other beers I enjoy, the flavours clashing and not working well with the texture. The best I can describe the impression it leaves is as an uncanny valley take on German lager.

Running With Sceptres I only had a thimbleful of before, at a festival where it shared my palate with about forty other beers. That's no life for a lager, even if it is of the India pale persuasion. "Cloying" and "musky" said 2017 me. I can sort of see where he was coming from. This is very strongly flavoured, set on a dense body with lots of resinous dank and incense spicing. It's complex and impactful, bringing big flavours to the picture at only 5.2% ABV, but it's too busy for me, and too busy for a lager, I think. There's a certain clean crispness in the finish but it makes you go through a lot to reach it. I've blathered before about how "India pale" and "lager" rarely combine to make anything worthwhile, and this is a prime example of why I don't like them. That dank oily thickness needs a warm-fermented base; the light crisp base it got would suit a much more subtle hop presence. By the end of it I was starting to get fed up and thinking that "cloying" was apposite after all.

Time for a clean slate and a totally new beer. Helles is a recent addition to the Lost & Grounded range and has been getting good notices. That said, I don't recall reading any detailed reviews (hardly anybody writes those any more) so had no preconceived notions when I cracked the can on a sunny early-summer afternoon. It's unfiltered and hazy, which is not something I've seen done with anything called Helles in Bavaria. Does that make it a kellerbier? The ABV is only 4.4% which seems unreasonably low. Yes, none of these things are relevant to how good the beer is, but if you're co-opting German labels you can expect variances to be noticed.

From the first sip I decided that kellerbier was a fair descriptor: it has that gentle roughness of brewpub lager; a charming absence of polish. Here the noble hops are present but understated, bringing just the requisite amount of grass and herb. The soft candyfloss malt typical of Helles follows it, and seems untarnished by a lower-than-usual gravity. The fuzz means it doesn't quite get the clean lager finish it deserves but there's a pleasing dryness in how it signs off. It's obviously a conscientiously made lager, and if it were local to me I'd doubtless be enjoying it on the regular, but for this old geezer, the Bavarians do it better, and half a litre at a time too.

I came out of the experience with a more positive feeling about Lost & Grounded, and I will definitely keep trying their beers whenever I see them. Their wares do need to be judged as English takes on German brewing, however, because I don't think they stack up well when the real thing is an alternative import.

A second helping of thirds

As another week in my current marathon of Irish beers comes to a close, Third Barrel is the second brewer to feature twice. Hot on the heels of the last set comes these three, as usual across some nicely diverse styles.

I think Trinity is both the first lager released under the Third Circle marque, and the first 440ml can. "Irish pilsner" is the made-up style designation, and there's not a thing wrong with either of those elements. It is a little rough looking: a sickly yellow and misted slightly. The aroma is mild though a little fruity -- a touch of banana, maybe -- they haven't gone overboard with the aroma hops. There's a certain crispness in the flavour, and a solid pilsner bitterness but the flavour doesn't sit well with me. It's not a big flavour, but there's a harshly acidic quality, on the extreme end of grass stalks and soggy boiled cabbage, heading full steam for burnt plastic and perished rubber. My initial impression was that this had something wrong with it but I'm perfectly prepared to accept it's just my longstanding problem with certain noble hop combinations. I disliked Lost & Grounded's Keller Pils for the same reason, so if you liked that you might like this too.

Back to the usual dinky cans for the next one, a sour and hazy 3.7% ABV beer with pineapple and grapefruit, called Reality Sucks. There's a lot of both fruits in the aroma, with the astringent grapefruit ascendant over the sugary pineapple. And similarly on tasting, it's like fizzy grapefruit juice sweetened with heaps of sugar. Sourness? Beerness? Beery sourness? There's none of that; this is pure fruit punch, though punch that comes with a kick, from the pithy citrus. It has a fair bit in common with the cherimoya and mango one they did a while back -- I assume the base recipe is more or less the same -- but it's not as bold or interesting. As an easy-drinking summer refresher it's better than White Claw, and perhaps that's good enough these days.

When reality sucks what can you do but Keep Smiling and drink 8% ABV double IPA. This is the new one from Third Barrel. The aroma certainly raises a smile: a candy mix of Skittles and Starburst, fun if quite unbeery. There's a more serious switch when it comes to the flavour, turning seriously savoury. I get smoky hummous and baba ganoush. There's a slight syrup behind this, and lots of thick spirituous alcohol, finishing on dry cotton and chalk. Hazy double IPAs are far from rare in these parts -- I know their ins and outs, the good ones from the bad ones -- but I've never experienced quite as much of a contrast as there is between the smell and taste of this lad. I'm going to put it down as a beer I wouldn't have liked anyway that happened to have a fun aroma, rather than one which failed to live up to its promise. This combination of Centennial, Citra and Sabro is maybe one to avoid in future.

Not the brewery's best work, overall, but with an output rate as high as theirs at least the next round won't be long coming.

Royal progress

No sooner was I back from Manchester than it was off again to England, this time for a work gig in Bristol. I was staying around the corner from pub-centric King Street so was well able to nip over there for such swift halves as time allowed. And it's grown! Since I was last there, in 2014, it has acquired several new premises. These were high on my list to check out.

Down at the river end sits King Street Brewhouse. It seems to have been cut from the same cloth as Dublin's Porterhouses, particularly Central, in that it's a voluminous space pitched strongly towards stand-up drinking and big-screen sports. But there is a pretty onsite brewery and it looks like it fairly turns over the cask and keg beers, judging by the prevalence of topical names.

I started with Hand of God, a session IPA on cask. This is 4.1% ABV and arrived worryingly murky looking but smelling great, with bags of juicy tangerine pouring out. The flavour was a little more muted, coupled with a slightly sad watery texture -- ever the bane of this style. An excellent finish pulled it back into my good books, with a long orangey aftertaste contrasting with a biscuit sweetness. For a World Cup one-off, on balance, it's better than most.

To balance my account I went for a keg beer next: Sqornshellous Zeta IPA; 6.2% ABV and brewed with Galaxy hops, as if that wasn't obvious. The hazy orange-beige presentation didn't bother me but the strong vanilla cream and yeast flavours did. This was simultaneously too strong and too sweet. I should have stuck with the cask as that's where they seem to have got IPA hopping right.

The array of types of pubs you get on King Street impressed me last time, and it seems it keeps up with fashion because it now has one of them arcade-bars: Kong. I didn't see it as intended, being the only customer in the dim grey space early one afternoon. The beer range was impressive and included the one at the top of my one-item West Country hit-list: Lost and Grounded Keller Pils. One whole imperial pint please.

It looked the part, being a gently hazy yellow. The texture is beautifully soft too, and the flavour... well... it has plenty. I'm on record as having frequent problems with noble hops, and the more heavily hopped a beer the worse I get it. This beer gave me that in spades: a powerfully pungent mustiness, like rotten wood, and then the harshly bitter green stalks of rocket and dandelion. I'm sure it's perfectly constructed, and everything everyone else says it is, but it really didn't suit me. I feel gypped by my own tastebuds.

I paid a very quick return visit to The Beer Emporium, for just one half of Twisted Oak's Sheriff Fatman (marketing hint: name more beers after Carter USM songs and I will buy them). It's described as an American amber ale but is gold rather than amber. A very English honey sweetness is followed by a slightly German peppery sharpness, and neither is even slightly American-tasting. The texture is thick and stodgy making me very glad I only had a small measure, one over which I didn't linger. Overall, a bit R.U.B.B.I.S.H.

The constant centre of attention on King Street tends to be Small Bar, which has come up in the world since 2014, spawning its own brewery, which eventually grew up and moved out. That brewery is Left Handed Giant and it was one of theirs I ordered when I first stepped in this time. River of Darkness was actually brewed, collaboratively, at Wild Beer. The spec promises smoke, maple and chilli but the beer doesn't really deliver this. Instead it's a simple creamy and chocolatey stout, packing in flavour at 3.9% ABV. I didn't miss any of the bells or whistles.

A second and final visit happened as I was on my way to the airport. I decided I would take advantage of the intriguing range of sour beers, and also their £8 five-beer flights.

One lager made it into the mix: Summer '18 No. 1, collaborated on by Lost & Grounded, Cloudwater and Jopen. I shouldn't have been surprised to find it's another musty one, all nettles and old straw. I will lay one technical fault on it -- it's very thin, and unbalanced in bitterness as a result. Mostly, however, it was my palate's problem with noble hops at fault. Bring on the sour!

L-R: Disco, Action, Insetto, Summer, Reuben

A Left Handed Giant offering first, called Reuben Picks Raspberries. This is 3.7% ABV and is a thick pink emulsion. It looks like yoghurt and absolutely tastes like yoghurt, with real raspberry bits and a velvet texture. Like in a yoghurt the sourness is mild and understated, and not the main feature. I would definitely have liked more of an edge and less of the sugary summer fruit.

Staying pink, next up was Disco Fizz from local brewers Good Chemistry. 4.2% ABV and this time flavoured with blackcurrant. It was the best looking of the set: a rich vermilion topped by pink foam. The watery aroma didn't help, with a grainy hint of breadcrust the only thing going on. Then the flavour proved an unpleasant mix of sweat, rubber and tannins: nothing that suggests actual fruit, and no pinch of sourness either. A beer to just look at, then. Shame.

The last two on the board came from US-based gypsy brewer Stillwater Artisanal. The first went by the unlikely name of Action Bronson's 7000 which is a sour ale of 5% ABV and brewed with Muscat grapes. It's a hazy gold colour and offers a fun but scary aroma of lemon-scented gunpowder. Strap in! Oily and lush Muscat grapes are present from the start of the flavour, finishing a little quickly, but cleanly too, making it very refreshing. There's just enough of a sour edge to balance the sweetness while still allowing all of the luxurious flavour through. The aroma is still the best feature but it's an all-round class act, really.

Insetto was the final third, bright scarlet and, although brewed with plums, having the sour cherry aroma of a classic Belgian kriek. Fruit is the main flavour, and it's cherries again, to my mind. The sourness is a mere tang on the end, and there's a seasoning of Brettanomyces funk going on. It avoids being syrupy or candylike. This is subtle and classy. I wonder if it was brewed in Belgium. It feels like it was.

I mentioned I was staying nearby so I'll throw my pint at the hotel bar in here too. That was Independence by Bristol Beer Factory, on keg. This is an intensively hopped American-style pale ale at 4.6% ABV. It mixes a punchy herbal dankness with a more fun lemon candy in a way that's accessible and balanced, yet complex enough for the fussier drinker. Or this one at least. A spicy bitterness lends it a mouthwatering finish.

There's more from Bristol Beer Factory to come in the next post, and plenty of other local beers too, when I do a bit of exploring.