The inevitable Danes

Our tour of the breweries at the Borefts beer festival this year brings us to Denmark next. Well, sort of. Mikkeller is still brewing in all corners of Europe and beyond, and there was certainly no lack of diversity in the beers they presented. They even had comedy legend Chris Morris helping out at the stand.

I went for a couple of the sour ones first, attracted in particular to Rhubarb Lambic 2010. Though I'm not big into rhubarb generally, I have known it to work really well in beer. This cloudy pale yellow beer doesn't have much by way of rhubarb flavour characteristics, but is more appley, with a pungent cider aroma and apples sitting next to the normal, invigorating, lambic tartness. The texture is very interesting, with a dry bicarbonate of soda style fizz. Not a beer I'd drink lots of, but great as a palate cleanser in small quantities.

Though a variety of fruit lambics were on offer, the other one that really interested me was Spontancranberry as I'm fairly sure I've never had a cranberry beer before. It's not too tart and the hefty 7.7% ABV goes a long way to mute the sourness with alcohol. Instead of sweet fruit, the cranberries impart a pink peppercorn piquancy, finishing a little bit acrid. I think this would be a better beer at a lower strength, but I liked it.

I just had a quick taste of the barrel-aged edition of Mikkeller's smoked chilli porter. Texas Ranger Speyside is much like the original version, not giving much bang for all it promises. There's some dry powdery chocolate, a mere suggestion of chilli, and an unfortunate wet cardboard finish.

Mielcke & Hurtigkarl appears to be a house beer created for a Copenhagen restaurant. A spell in sauternes barrels is the draw here. I can't honestly say I would have guessed that from tasting it, but it is rather nice: broadly in the tripel style with a little extra spice to liven it up. Great with posh nosh, I'm sure.

I was a little underwhelmed by Mikkeller's Monk's Elixir at the 2008 European Beer Festival in Copenhagen. As is the way of these things, the recipe has moved on since and spawned an array of variations. Monk's No Brett is a particularly odd one: dark brown and sour like a Flemish oud bruin, gushing fizz. It's stopped from all-out sourness by a sweet milk chocolate flavour which sounds like it should clash but actually provides a weird sort of balance. But even this seemed normal next to Monk's Trippin' On Cherries. Full-on Rodenbach Grand Cru vinegary intensity follows an enticing sweet and sour nose from a dark dark red beer topped by innocent pink foam. The cherries come through the vinegar quite assertively and the whole experience is intensely weird, but in a nice way. I could have had another but there was one more Mikkeller I couldn't pass up.

Again, a bit like racehorses, it's possible to guess the pedigree of this beer from its name. BooGoop is one of a series of collaborations Mikkeller has done with the Three Floyds brewery of Indiana. This is a 10.4% ABV "buckwheat wine" and starts with huge peach and apricot aromas, following it up with more of the same on tasting. The immensely heavy body was offset by a low serving temperature and it came out really quite refreshing in the end. A great beer on which to leave Mikkeller.

Just one other Danish brewer was at Borefts. Amager had a choice location in the shadow of the windmill. I've always found them to be a little staid in the branding department, though the quality of their beer speaks for itself. However, it looks like they've put a bit of graphic design effort into their series of beers based around the seven deadly sins, two of which (arguably the best two sins) were available at the festival.

Gluttony is an orange-coloured pale ale and very much hop-forward, offering a refreshing bitterness plus lots of fresh and summery hop high notes. Lust wasn't so popular among my drinking buddies but it hit the spot with me. A beautiful conker-red and very sweet, almost worty. Give it a moment, however, and there are hidden depths: a vinous complexity and some lovely tannic notes.

Amager were also serving a couple of different versions of their Hr. Frederiksen imperial stout. The plain one is a heavily textured and massively roasty example of the style, with lots of dry fresh-ground coffee on the nose and palate. Amazingly, Hr. Frederiksen Whisky Barrel edition manages to bury all that with a combination of big boozy scotch and a little touch of unpleasant vinegar. Stick to the original is my recommendation.

That's Denmark done. Where next?

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.