Eight guys named Mikkel

Mikkeller's Single Hop series has been around for a couple of years now. I first encountered them at the 2008 European Beer Festival, but only tried the Simcoe one, which I didn't really enjoy. There are nine ten (thanks Bob!) in the series, all IPAs, all 6.9% ABV. Each has been completely hopped with a single variety. It's the sort of project that appeals to half-cut home brewers at big beer festivals. Perhaps we should count our lucky stars that only eight were available at the 2010 Great British Beer Festival: pink-labelled Warrior and blue Chinook are missing from the photo.

Inasmuch as my notes make any sense, Cascade was about the best: smooth and clean and nicely balanced between fruity fun and serious bitterness. Nelson Sauvin does a great job of showing that hop at its lightly grapeish best; likewise East Kent Goldings with all the lovely chocolate orange flavours and none of the metal you sometimes get. A return visit to Simcoe was much better than first time round (it didn't burn) though Centennial was surprisingly disappointing, being much blander than I'd have expected. Amarillo also didn't hit the mark hard enough: mandarins, yes, but not enough of them. I found Nugget to be a little harsh around the edges, with some yeasty flavours that detracted from the citric hops. But the wooden spoon goes to Tomahawk: sickly and cloying like undiluted orange cordial.

And now we know.

Division of labour

The six-pack I bought at the Big Mikkeller Launch back in September has been sitting quietly in my attic ever since. Most of the bottles could do with a bit more ageing, I reckon, but a couple had dates recommending drinking by next autumn, so I figured they were ripe enough already.

At first glance it's hard to tell what separates silver-labelled Kølle from bronze-labelled TræKølle: both barley wines are the same strength, same bitterness level and from the same company (Amager, in association with Mikkeller, with co-operation from retailers Ølbutikken and ØlKonsortiet). Rather than try to pick a drinking order, Mrs Beer Nut and I decided to open them both at the same time and take it from there.

Kølle has that typical heady, alcoholic barley wine aroma: sweet yet hoppy. It follows this with a massive super-concentrated grapefruit hit, then comes a big metallic, galvanic tang -- nasty, like licking a pencil sharpener -- and then a long slow burn of citric hoppiness. It reminds me a lot of the insanely unbalanced Mikkeller Simcoe IPA being served at the European Beer Festival. A glance at the label suggests that Simcoe is indeed the single hop employed here. A bit more ageing might have let it mellow, but I couldn't be sure that something as good as, say, Bigfoot, would be likely to come out the other end. It's an awful lot thinner, for a start, making it hard to believe the strength is a stonking 10.5% ABV.

TræKølle, it seems, is the same beer matured on bourbon barrels. It's a little darker and strikingly lacks that fresh citric hops aroma -- all taken by those greedy angels, I guess. Unsurprisingly, the flavour is dominated by vanilla oak notes, the bourbon history being more than suggested. I'm inclined to say that the hop character is low, but that could be just by comparison with the other Simcoe bomb. It is bitter, however -- both beers claim 90 IBUs -- though here it's more of an acidic character against Kølle's sharp fruitiness. TræKølle is a mellower, calmer, sipping sort of barley wine, even though it does share the skinny body of its wilder sibling. We both preferred this version.

So there we have an object lesson on the effect of bourbon barrel ageing on outrageously hoppy beers. I reckon we can expect more of this kind of thing as 2009 progresses. Barrels are in.

Mikkeller, su keller

Day two of the European Beer Festival, like the first and third ones, dawned bright and breezy. After a hearty breakfast I walked around the corner from the hotel to find a queue outside the local beer specialist Ølbutikken. We were there for the launch of several new special edition beers from Mikkeller, a gypsy brewer situated just next to Carlsberg's headquarters where the festival was happening.

Judging from some of the labels I saw in the shop, Mikkeller and Ølbutikken have a very close working relationship, making for what I suspect are some of the tastiest shop-branded beers in the world.

A few minutes after my arrival, the Mikkeller funk soul brothers appeared from the nondescript shopfront and began filling punters' glasses with Jackie Brown. I really enjoyed this when I picked up a bottle recently and was quite prepared to make a second breakfast of it at 10am on a chilly Copenhagen morning.

Next, I noticed that customers coming out with their six-packs were holding something different: deep purple and interesting. Chris_O from RateBeer told me it was Blåbær Lambik, Mikkeller's blueberry lambic. Inside, a tap had been set up on the counter and free samples were being generously dispensed. This stuff, I'm told, is aged two years in Cantillon barrels. It's absolutely wonderful, beautifully tart yet still full of blueberry sweetness. Amazing harmony and a really nice shade of purple too.

So there we were, basking in the cool sunshine on a Copenhagen sidestreet, about fifty of us, inspecting our purchases, sipping lambic and chatting about beer, all to the bemusement of passers-by. Events like this, I thought, are what makes this a festival rather than just drinking in a warehouse for three days.

My fascination with Mikkeller had begun early, as I perused the beer list on the plane over. Inside the venue, their banner was a handy meeting point, even though the bar around it was always thronged. And with good reason. Two cask festival specials were my starting point on the first two days. On Friday it was "Beer Geek Breakfast Pooh Coffee Cask Festival Edition", marked simply on the cask as Breakfast Pooh. It's an aged stout laced with kopi luwak, fresh from the arseholes of Vietnamese civets. This is a surprisingly mellow vanilla flavoured stout, smooth and creamy with just a hint of bitter chocolate. Dunno if it's worth the poop-scooping, but still delicious. Bizarrely, this didn't appeal to everyone, and the cask was still there on Saturday when it was joined by Beer Geek Breakfast Chilli/Chocolate. This provides a low-level full-mouth long chilli buzz, but the taste is dominated by strong coffee and chocolate notes. Tasty, though I think I'd have upped the chilli quotient to something sharper. But that's just me -- I'm not complaining.

I mentioned yesterday the solvent sensation engendered by one of Nørrebro's beers. I got this from Mikkeller's Monk's Elixir as well; only the strong chocolate flavours saved this beer for me. A much better proposition was their Black: an imperial stout alleged, at 17.5% ABV, to be Denmark's strongest draught beer. There's a sharp bitter kick up front followed by a long dark chocolate and rum flavour -- very tasty indeed.

There was only one Mikkeller beer I didn't actively enjoy, though I think I may have been alone in that: Simcoe IPA. There's a mild hoppy aroma which left me totally unprepared for the harsh acidic sting of the hops. With nothing else going on, this ended up tasting like the smell of a brewery floor -- hops and boiled water. Too unbalanced for me, but clearly one for the hopheads.

And that brings us back to the fruit lambics. In the festival they were selling Redcurrant Lambic, another sharp and tasty one from Cantillon's barrels, but easier on the fruit, making it outstandingly refreshing.

I barely scratched the surface of what Mikkeller were up to, but I'm not singling them out just because of their beer. It was their bells and whistles, like the countdown timer before the launch of the various limited editions, the Ølbutikken event, and lots of blokes in silly wigs, that gave the impression of a bunch of people having fun making beer for a receptive market. That kind of enthusiasm is what beer festivals should be all about.