No Rec commendations

A new brewery for me today: the abruptly named Rec, from Barcelona. The first tranche of beers included a variety of styles but I picked just two to give me an impression of how they go about their business. 

First, and appropriately for the Friday evening on which I drank it, comes After Work. They've called it an American pilsner, which explains the Strata and Chinook hops, though I don't think haze need be part of the spec. This is quite hazy. It smells bitter and mineral-like, in a way that does resemble both American pale ale and hop-forward European pils. The texture is smooth and it's not particularly fizzy, having a medium, balanced, sort of sparkle. It's in the flavour that it really turns exotic. Strata's fruity side is strongly in evidence, appearing both pithy and juicy, but definitely citric. I get a hint of coconut too, while on the non-hop side, the haze has given it a slight grittiness, so it's not as cleanly pristine as I think a pilsner should be. I guess "American kellerbier" isn't something you can put on a Catalan beer label, yet. There's a modicum of crispness -- a dry grain effect from the malt -- but I found myself reaching for ways in which it fits into the pilsner paradigm, and it mostly doesn't. It's a cheery little fellow, using the combination of hops nicely. It might have worked better on a clean pale ale chassis, however.

I was wary of the next one before I opened it, finding the can worryingly squashy to the touch. Sure enough, Rubik plopped lazily into the glass and I made every effort to coax a head onto it, for the sake of the photo. It doesn't have one really, though. There's a faint sparkle, so it's not actually flat, but this is allegedly a "West Coast IPA", and fizz should be an important component of that. What else did they get wrong? Well, funny you ask. I was taken aback by both the aroma and flavour, which are highly perfumed, starting on lavender and moving on to resinous balsam and spicy incense. There was a brief moment of confusion before my International Beer Judge Sense kicked in. This is Brettanomyces, in its most floral and twinkly mood, simultaneously sparking and funking, with never a dull moment. There's a little hop bitterness in the background, but that's pretty much identical to the sort you get in fresh Orval: zing does not feature, nor pine nor citrus. To say it's "not to style" is a massive understatement. I had my fun, but came away with the impression that this brewery doesn't have its quality assurance up to code, and next time I may not be so lucky.

Knowing me, there will still be a next time, eventually. It's unlikely to be soon, however.

Morrigan rises

Black Donkey's limited edition beers are tricky to find in Dublin, but Blackrock Cellar sorted me out with this pair. Both are barrel-aged saisons, fermented with a mixture of yeasts, including the brewery's own Morrigan, harvested from a local cave.

We pick up the 2023 releases with number 3: Yes Marm. The name references its use of Seville oranges in a blended and mixed-culture fermented saison, given two years' barrel ageing. The result is 6.7% ABV and ochre in colour with a fine and lasting white head. It smells piquant and quite vinous, the point where Belgian-style wild beer meets cava and dry cider. I expected something thin and dry but it seems that Morrigan isn't very attenuative, and there's plenty of malt body left behind, opening the flavour on something close to a malt-loaf breadiness. The fruit arrives quickly afterwards, but it's the zingy tartness of white grape and gooseberry rather than oranges. I love it, but I'm a little disappointed that the headline novelty ingredient doesn't put in much of a showing. Maybe there's a little citrus shred complementing the tartness, but it's at the level where, equally, I could be imagining it. Regardless, this is a fine piece of work: weighty and satisfying, while also brimming with wild complexity. I have a particular fondness for these wine-like oak-aged saisons, and although this is more malt-forward than most, it still presses the correct buttons.

Fourth in the series is Hive Mind, based on Underworld Rua and with added local wildflower honey. It's 7% ABV and a dark rusty shade. Both aroma and flavour are very reminiscent of Flanders red ale, with that savoury mix of sour cherries, balsamic vinegar and oaken spices. There's a citric side to the sharpness; a squeeze of lemon juice, and then a chewy breadcrust malt aspect, showing again that not everything has been fermented out. The sourness subsides, and in the finish it tastes more like Orval than Rodenbach. However you slice it, it's very tasty indeed, with lots of different angles to appreciate it from. It's perhaps a little surprising that it's not smoother and rounder, given the 18 months of barrel ageing, but that will likely come after a few more years in the bottle.

After the last lot of Black Donkey beers I drank, I had set myself the task of finding more and catching up properly. This pair shows that to have been a wise move and one I intend to keep doing. Finding them is hard work, but very much worth it.

On the mean streets of Brussels

EBCU business brought me to Brussels a couple of weeks ago. And of course, in between meetings there was a chance to drop in at some favourite pubs and breweries around the city. Assembly point on the first evening was Brussels Beer Project's wild-beer brewery and taproom on Rue Dansaert.

Here I started on something with the wonderful name of You're A Time Machine, Change The Future. It's a blend of lambic and saison, flavoured with rhubarb, 5.5% ABV and a murky orange colour in the glass. It's nicely tart while still leaving room for a proper rhubarb flavour. There's enough of a body to make that rounded and rich, like a rhubarb pie. Lambic complexity is a little lacking, and there's no funk, only touches of salt and spice. This is good though not spectacular, and it would be interesting to find out what a little further ageing would do for it.

Reuben, meanwhile, was drinking Arctic Summer, BBP's cold IPA. This is an excellent example of the style -- a clear golden colour and using its incredibly clean flavour profile to boost big dank and pithy hop elements. Though a relatively modest 6% ABV it tastes more like the 7%+ ABV IPAs that made the west coast famous.

I stayed sour for my next one, Sonic Freefall, another blend of saison and lambic, this time flavoured with apple pomace and a powerful 7.3% ABV. The aroma is a rustic autumnal mix of damp oak and ripe apple. There's a kick of sourness at the opening of the flavour but no sign of that alcohol, and the central taste is predominantly a raw and sappy wood character. It's subtle in a way I wasn't expecting, and I don't think that makes it a better beer. There was definitely room for something more interesting here. Maybe they don't have enough spontaneously-fermented stock to release the pure product yet. I found the half-way approach a little dissatisfying.

Something a bit more normal to follow: Lutra, a dark lager. This 5% ABV job is quite amber coloured and has a seriously roasty aroma. The flavour is bang on for a German-style schwarzbier, being deliciously dry with an interesting nutty complexity to provide a modicum of balancing sweetness. It's one of those where there's not much to say -- it's just lovely: a classically-styled drinking beer.

L-R: Lutra, Slowmo, TRPL IPA

TRPL IPA is the opposite: a 10.5% ABV triple IPA built for sipping. It's still good, though, having the warming orangey thickness of the original American double IPAs. The bitterness level goes with that, being a punchy citrus and pine at the very front. At the tail end, however, it evolves into something more modern, introducing a differently pleasant juice quality. €10 gets you a half litre glass of this if you are so-minded. It's perfect in small measures, however.

Finally for here, I'm always strangely attracted to beetroot beers, mainly for the novelty value, so I finished with Slowmo, a saison made with beetroot and pear. There's a very full-on earthy aroma, beetroot's signature, and then a flavour of two halves. The beetroot continues doing its thing, giving it a rough and bitter taste with more than a hint of dry soil. Then that all goes away and a light and refreshing pear side arrives. This is fun, if a little route-one in the execution: you asked for pear and beetroot and that's exactly what you get; no more, no less.

GIST was convenient to where we were saying so we spent a bit of time there. I indulged heavily in their handpumped Stouterik by Brasserie de la Senne which was tasting superb. For ticking purposes there were a few interesting-looking ones by Brasserie Minne.

That began with the grandly-titled Ardenne Spirit, in the old ale style and 9.5% ABV. I had a fairly clear picture in my head of what I wanted from this: something warm and mature and plummy, but that's not what I got. It doesn't appear to be aged in or on wood but there was a major oaky tang, like substandard Rioja wine. It's dry and sappy, which is coupled with a rough and dusty mustiness. The brewery boasts of using Orval's yeast strain but it lacks the balanced charm of Orval. It's the wrong kind of funk.

The beer behind it in the photo is Woody Wood Gewürztraminer from the same brewery. This is a blend of grape ale with lambic and is 8.5% ABV. It offers a decent kick of lambic spice but in a slightly watered-down sense that's not as good as the real thing. The grape side is very obvious, being a little sickly in the Gewürztraminer way. I like the idea but I think these two excellent beer styles work better separately.

I stuck to Minne for the second round, opting for Rouge Ardenne, their take on Flanders red. This is 7% ABV and a crystal-clear red colour. That's pretty much where the style fidelty ends because for one thing it is not sour. The main flavour is raspberry jam and pink lollipops. There's a vague dryness to it but nothing like the puckering acidity of the mainstream reds. It almost tastes like a protest against them.

This time the blond beer in the background is the Old Style Saison from Drogenbos. This 6%-er has been barrel-aged and given the Brettanomyces treatment, and here you can taste similarities with Brett classic Orval: the same kind of farmyard horsey funk. There's a large wood character but it's better used than in some of the beers above, adding a dry complexity but not preventing the beer from being clean and drinkable. A white pepper spice arrives late on, plus a zingy tartness. It's an excellent use of saison as the canvas onto which other flavour elements are projected, and it all works harmoniously despite the many moving parts.

A crawl of old favourites brought us, of course, to Toone, where Dikkenek by Lefebvre was the only unfamiliar beer on the list. This is a Belgian IPA at 6.7% ABV, clear amber with an aroma of breadcrust, leading on to a dry and tannic opening flavour. Nothing good comes after that: soap, marker pens and a raw leafy hop character. Belgian esters feature but aren't in any way complementary to the hops. I've said before that Belgian brewers aren't generally very good at making Belgian-style IPAs and this is a very clear illustration of what tends to go wrong.

Carlsberg doesn't have much of a presence in Belgium, but they do have an abbey brand, St Hubertus, and I tried the Tripel Ambrée. This is 7.2% ABV, so a bit light for a tripel, and a warm red colour with a very slight haze. As might be expected it's very malt-driven, showing a little toffee but also a clean profile, minimising the fruity esters and coming across almost like a dark lager. There's a little blackcurrant but no pepper or honey as tripel usually gives. You can tell it's mass-produced but I think it's just interesting enough to be worth drinking when there's nothing better available.

Today's last beer was chosen solely for its label: Lelijke Das -- "ugly badger". It's a pale ale of 6.2% ABV and quite a sweet example, tasting of hard orange candy, spritzed up a little with fresh lemon zest and tropical pineapple, while also weighty and rounded in the Belgian way. It gets a little cloying as it warms, though also has a touch of tannin to help offset that. I wasn't sure at the outset if I was going to enjoy it, but I did.

The trip continues tomorrow. Did you know they have a taproom at Boon?

Playing at craft

An afternoon out and about in central Dublin 8 brought me in contact with the craft-style offerings of two multinational breweries and a chance to see how the big guys are doing when it comes to the speciality beer space.

One of them was, of course, Guinness Open Gate brewery, a regular purveyor of playful small-batch oddities from the behemoth's pilot kit. On this visit that started with their Choc Mint Stout, and I thought I knew what to expect from this 4.5% ABV fellow: it's not an original concept. The execution, however, was pretty special. I got none of the promised chocolate or lactose sweetness, nor the body one would expect from the latter, and instead a huge and almost burning blast of concentrated mint oils. The effect was far too close to toothpaste to be enjoyable as a beer. There's no softness here; no childhood mint choc ice memories, only cruel and uncompromising mint, weaponised and sent to scorch your palate. No thank you.

There was also a Scottish style pale ale on, called 80/- Shilling -- yes, "eighty shilling shilling". It's about the same strength as the previous beer and is an unattractive murky muddy brown. The flavour is mercifully clean, but not very interesting. One expects hops from a pale ale and malt from a Scottish-style amber-coloured ale, and this shows little of either. There's brown sugar and black tea, finishing up so speedily as to resemble a lager. I suppose one could be happy that there's no "scotch ale" gimmickry or cloying toffee, but I thought it came down too far on the other side, being boring and characterless.

The same cannot be said for the beer beside it: Brett Stout. This is a powerful 8.6% ABV though is just as light as the others. The Brettanomyces has been busy with the fermentables then, leaving little behind. What you get in exchange is a massive amount of complex floral and woody spices: cedar, pepper, clove, nutmeg, lavender and good old-fashioned Orval horse blankets. Indeed, the Orval parallels are significant in the whole thing. There's a bit of caramel and some faint chocolate but otherwise it doesn't really bring much stout to the picture. I didn't miss that, however: the Brett flavours are a riot of delight and leave little to be desired in this. Small batch beer should be fun, and this one definitely is.

Down the street at Dudley's they had an unfamiliar beer from Franciscan Well, called Well Hazy. The Molson Coors brewery in Cork has been very quiet lately. It looks to have dropped the recently-adopted flagship lager Archway and cut the canned range back to two: Rebel Red and Chieftain. At least they're still making a play for tap space with something interesting. This is quite interesting. It's a hazy pale ale of just 4% ABV and instead of fruit, as one might expect, the flavour mixes spicy gunpowder or match heads with a clean and dry tannic tea-like quality. It makes for something extremely gulpable and supremely thirst-quenching, in a way that hazy pale ales rarely are. I can see this as an excellent option in bars that don't have anything worthwhile from the independents. Dudley's isn't one of those, but I'm still glad I took this for a spin.

One very good beer each from MC and Big D, then. This may not be a pattern, but I'll take it when it's on offer.

Wild in the beer aisle

It's one of those situations where I hear lots of people talking about a beer I see every week in the supermarket and haven't tried yet. Admittedly it doesn't happen too often, but it happened with Straffe Hendrik Wild. The concept is simple: standard Staffe Hendrik tripel innoculated with Brettanomyces, the intention being that it will transform and develop with age the way Orval famously does. My 2017 vintage had a best-before of 2022.

When I pulled the cap it didn't gush, but I could tell it was thinking about it. The foam ambled up the neck and the glass was two thirds filled with it when I stopped pouring. There's a seriously funky Brett aroma, mostly farmyard but with hints of that sticky peach and pineapple juice it also offers. The flavour lets more of the tripel come through: honey and spices first, set on a candy sugar base. Very warming, at 9% ABV, and very Belgian. The Brett follows, providing a different sort of Belgian character. The funk doesn't cover up the rest, at least not in the first year, though the elements it brings don't exactly integrate with the tripel, merely accompanying it.

I liked this. It's a fun twist on a very decent tripel. I would, however, be a little apprehensive about ageing it. I'm not sure that letting the voracious wild yeast dry it out over time will improve it any. Though obviously there's a part of me that really wants to try it anyway.

Belgian purge

All going well I should be just back from Belgium when this gets posted. It'll take a while to process through what I found to drink there so while I'm stringing those words together I thought I'd clear the Belgian beers that had been hanging around the house before I left. I'd built up quite a backlog of them, thanks to the good offices of my other half.

I started with Sheldebrouwerij's Hop Ruiter. It's a few years since I last had anything from them. This one is described as an "IPA tripel" and they're far from the first brewery to have elided those two styles -- I believe that honour belongs to La Chouffe. Appearance-wise, this could pass as either, being a hazy orange-ochre colour. 8% ABV and an aroma full of bright incense spices definitely say "tripel" to me. The flavours tilt the balance back again with mouth-watering honeydew and nectarine, fresh and juicy as you like. The quintessential spicy Belgian yeast is still there in the background, and builds towards the finish, but it definitely does a complementary job rather than conflicting. There's no real hop bitterness, nor big alcohol heat, making for a smooth and well-integrated experience. My balanced assessment is that it's a tripel wearing an IPA hat for marketing purposes, but that's allowed when it's this tasty.

Moving on to a set from Brussels Beer Project, another operation I haven't written about in a while. First up is Black Bird, a "black rye saison" brewed in collaboration with London's Anspach & Hobday. I wasn't sure what to expect with this and, after the first sip, I wasn't sure what I'd got. It's 6.1% ABV and as well as the rye, Carafa Special I and II and other malts, it has a suite of big-hitting US hops including Chinook, Centennial and Colombus. The aroma is a bittersweet mix of forest fruits and the flavour starts rather plainly with a porter-like creaminess, then dries off the palate very suddenly before the arrival of jammy strawberry and a green rye-grass rasp. The complexity is a little like that found in O Brother's amazing black IPA Bonita, though much toned-down by comparison. I had to work to find the various flavours and if I were drinking it without paying close attention it would probably end up seeming quite dull. Though there are of course elements of saison and rye ale and black IPA and porter in there, it doesn't really make much use of any of them.

The next beer is a double IPA though I'm immediately questioning its credentials at only 7.7% ABV. The name is I Like It Bitter and it backs that up with a claim of one hundred IBUs. This is the "Mosaic & Equinox Edition", which implies that there are or will be others. It seemed a bit flat on pouring, while also looking pleasingly gloopy. There's bit of a mouthfeel all right, though it avoids being unpleasantly hot and heavy: just filling enough. Both the aroma and the flavour tantalise more than they satisfy. The former has a mandarin flesh juiciness and gunpowder spice buried deep within, and I found myself inhaling great draughts of it to try and get the full effect, to no avail. Savoury yeast burr fuzzes out a lot of the same fresh orange-tropical notes in the flavour, and there's a sickly tramps'-beer sweetness that slows down the appreciation of it. I can sense those top-notch hops at work, but big, strong and yeasty is not an environment that suits them. Were White Hag ever tempted to make an imperial Little Fawn, this beer is a clear indication of why that's a bad idea. You want a clean light base for your spritzy tropical hops. This tries to supercharge them with malt and fails miserably. It's not even especially bitter.

I did a bit of a double take when I read the details on the back of Stereo Lips. On the front they call it a "hot rye IPA" and turning the bottle around this is unpacked, revealing rye, smoked malt, smoked chilli, vanilla and a combination of Cascade, Chinook and Sorachi Ace hops. That's a daunting line-up of potential flavours, though in a Twitter poll, 52% of you deemed it "not scary". It looks innocent enough, a deep orange colour with lots of fine fizz and a big fluffy head. Sorachi wins the aroma, pumping out its signature oily citrus peel vapours. This is a major component in the flavour, but it's matched by a hard plasticky taste which I think may be down to the chilli: I've encountered it in badly-made chilli beers before, though this time there's not even any heat. The smoked malt, rye and vanilla are AWOL as well. When the bitterness subsides there is a soft grape and elderflower fruitiness which is the saving of the beer. It's not bad, overall, but I think it could have been achieved with a much simpler recipe. That it's a three-way collaboration is possibly not unrelated to this.

With my appetite for smoke unsated, I looked forward to something more forthcoming from Smokey Li, brewed by Préaris and using Lapsang Souchong tea instead of your actual smoked malt. It's pretty convincing too, golden and sweet with a distinct and fresh tang of smoke. I'm reminded a lot of the classic clean stylings of Bamberg's finest. Rather than smoked ham it tastes of very crisp bacon, the flavour tailing off with a pleasing dryness. The amazing bit is that it's a gigantic 8% ABV and there's not an ounce of heat or malt weight to it. I could drink this all day, but that's probably not a good idea.

The next beer is tantalisingly one of a set. There's a tripel and a blond which I don't have, but this is La Corne du Bois des Pendus Black: 8% ABV and declining to give itself a style, other than, well, "black". It's not even black, either, more a reddish brown. The topping is a steady mousse, not dissimilar to the head on a stout, and it has the same sort of dense creaminess. The flavour is in that direction too, though very much on the sweet side, with milk chocolate and rosewater, building to a heavy perfume that sits uncomfortably on the palate. The sweetness increases as the beer goes, turning to saccharine, aftershave and some half-memory of lurid milkshakes from my childhood, made from chemicals that are doubtless illegal now. Anyway, it's not great. More than anything, I kept thinking it's unBelgian: this is not how Belgians normally make beer.

Moving on to a handful of beers from Caulier, a Wallonese client brewer which confusingly shares its name with an unrelated Wallonese brewery. I hadn't encountered many of their beers before and they only came to my attention now when they opened what is apparently a rather grand bar in Brussels Central Station. Hopefully by the time you read this I'll have been in for a gander myself, but I directed the missus to it a while back and she picked these up for me therein.

Caulier Brune makes much of its "low carb" credentials, which is a bit worrying as Belgian brune is supposed to be heavy and sweet, isn't it? This one is a rather pale red-amber, though smells fun: all wintery roast chestnuts, sweetmeat and treacle. It's not as busy on tasty but is perfectly palateable, and not far from an Irish red ale really: lots of fizz, some candy sugar, summer fruit and woody maple syrup. I was happily slurping it back and letting it quench my thirst when I noticed it was 6.8% ABV. Yikes! It doesn't taste anything like that powerful. I suppose this one should also get a ding for lacking Belgian yeast esters, but to be honest I really didn't miss them and was happy for the bonus cleanness instead.

The brewery's "premium" range all have a big 28 on the label. 28 Imperial Stout was next, an even bigger hitter at 12% ABV. It even smells heavy, a frightening mix of burnt toast, molasses, rubber and tar. Like the beer that preceded it, it's calmer when tasted. Not sweetness-and-light by any means but a more integrated blend of plums, tawny port, treacle and pipe smoke (Latakia, specifically, pipe fans). According to the label this was all achieved with nothing more than water, malt, hops and yeast, but the Caulier website says that this one also includes chilli and coffee: naughty to not say so on the bottle. Though I don't detect coffee notes beyond what's normal in a big imperial stout, there's is a growing heat in the pit of my stomach suggesting the warming caress of the chilli pepper. It's perhaps a little over-boozed but is great as a slow sipper. Pair with a decent cigar.

You didn't think this post was going to end, did you? I certainly had my doubts. But here's the last beer for today: 28 Brett, the 2013 edition, if that's relevant. It's 7.5% ABV and, when I finally wrenched the cork out, an ochre red-brown. The Brettanomyces yeast hasn't been too overworked in there over the last four years as it's still very sweet, tasting of hard orange candy and fruitcake in particular, with a pinch of oily coconut as well. The earthy funk is more present in the aroma than the flavour and from the initial sniff I thought I was in for something very like Orval, but that resemblance goes no further than the vapours. There is a faint Brett tang in the finish but it's more sour than farmyard, giving the beer a Flemish-red edge. Overall it's a bit of a bruiser: the substantial quantity of residual sugar means it's another one to take time over and share. On balance, though, I think I'd like my Brett beer to be Brettier than this.

That concludes the Belgian beers for now. There's plenty more where they came from, however. There always is.

Down on the farm (ish)

In his Bumper Book of Lithuanian Beer, Lars Marius Garshol sets out a hierarchy of breweries, with the industrials at the bottom, then the regionals followed by the modern microbreweries. Above this tier are the traditional-style microbreweries -- the ones that have adopted and adapted the styles and techniques of Lithuanian farmhouse brewing on a larger commercial basis -- and then at the top are the working farmhouse breweries themselves. He mentions that beer from this first-order group is very difficult to find in Vilnius, and even when you get it, it won't be as good as at the brewery. Of course, that line gets trotted out about drinking at the source the world over, but the crucial difference with Lithuanian farmhouse beer is that it isn't boiled during brewing, so the finished product has a shelf life of about 20 days. If you were waiting for these beers to arrive in your local off licence to find out what they're about, that isn't going to happen. The unique yeasts involved mean you can probably forget about clones showing up at your local homebrew club too.

Fortunately, there are a handful of places where proper farmhouse beer is available in Vilnius, and Lars Marius tells us where. Hence, early in the holiday, we took a walk to the Užupis district, to visit Šnekutis. There are a few branches of this small pub chain around the city. It specialises in the most traditional Lithuanian food and beer, and the house draught comes from the Jovaru farmhouse brewery. The Užupis Šnekutis pub itself is great fun: a poky wood and brick shack by the side of the street, filled with all manner of rustic and rusty bric-à-brac. Jovaru Alus is 6% ABV and a murky orange in colour. It's... odd. For one thing it's very sweet: bready, cakey, and with a hint of herbal honey which I'm guessing is down to the family heirloom yeast. A honeyed version does exist but they were all out. No boil means no hop bittering, so what balance there is comes from the savoury bite of the yeast. Despite the strength, the texture is light and the carbonation low which makes it really quite drinkable. It manages a lovely mouthwatering juiciness that has nothing to do with hops. My first experience of Lithuanian farmhouse beer was a positive one.

The next was in a very different sort of pub. Alaus Namai is a large canteen-like bar in the basement of a Soviet-era building and is frequented by a mainly younger crowd. There's a wide selection of draught beers, including several on cask. Ramunas Čižas was on Lars Marius's recommendations of things to drink here, so that's what I went for, it being another from the top-tier real-farmhouse breweries. It was served in a clay mug with a healthy layer of foam but from what I could tell it's a murky brown colour. There's lots of rather homebrewish yeast in the favour and a big Orval-like funk. This jostles uncomfortably with a savoury Bovril beefiness. Orval and Bovril is not a winning combination. I mean, it's drinkable, but I found it hard to escape the overall dregginess. It's certainly nowhere near as nuanced as Jovaru.

On the walk back to the middle of town we dropped into the Vilnius branch of Alynus, part of a national chain of specialist beer pubs. It's not very pubby, the bright lights and shop window making it feel more like a bakery or café. I opted for the house beer, Alyno Šviesusis. I've no idea who makes it or what it's meant to be, but I'm assuming that it's in some sort of traditional style because it's lousy with diacetyl. The smell is pure concentrated butterscotch, the mouthfeel slick, and once you get past the sweetness in the flavour there's just a tiny amount of crisp lager malt left behind and maybe a teeny hint of green hops. However you slice it or make excuses for it, this is just a crappy lager.

I bought a handful of bottles at the supermarket to try, tempted mostly by the way the traditional breweries got their own, stand-alone wood-effect fridge. From this I picked a one litre bottle of Butautų Dvaro Šviesusi, a pale 5%-er by one of the second-tier traditional-style breweries. It's not bad either: there's the characteristic yeast-and-honey thing that I found in Jovaru but it's less complex, more like a simple Belgian blonde ale, though with perhaps a hint of extra pepper. Refreshing and easy-going, as I guess good farmhouse beer should be.

I also picked up two bottles from the Tarušku brewery. Amber-gold Kanapinis Šviesusis didn't do a great job of mixing up those traditional flavours, packing honey, Horlicks and butterscotch into a dense 5.1% ABV package that was a bit of a mistake to attempt after a large meal. And as I plodded through it it didn't get any better as it warmed. Its twin is, of course, Kanapinis Tamsusis, a little stronger at 5.3% ABV though unfortunately just as buttery. The diacetyl is a little less jarring when mixed in with some milk chocolate like this, but it still wasn't enjoyable to drink. It was also the palest tamsusis I encountered, not that that helped its drinkability.

And another tamsusis to finish on: Davra's Varniukų Tamsusis, which happens to be one of our guide's favourites. I got a definite waft of diacetyl butterscotch from this but thankfully it tastes drier and is pleasantly light of texture. A certain amount of toffee does creep in as it warms but it's balanced with a gentle roasted grain bite and a hint of blackberry fruitiness. I think I'd prefer something a little bit cleaner, but that's not how rustic operations like Davra and the others above operate. Take it or leave it.

I got no more than a very superficial skimming of the tip of Lithuanian farmhouse brewing but I think I came away with an impression of what it is. It's certainly unique, as I was told before I went. But is it any good? My gut feeling is that a week of honey and butterscotch would be my limit and I'd be craving something drier and/or bitterer soon after. I offer my best wishes for the future to traditional Lithuanian beer, but I can't say I left hankering for one more mugful.

Sassanachs!

I have no idea what's in these glasses

Even though it has an on-site brewery and is a staunch supporter of local beer, the Hanging Bat beer café in Edinburgh can generally be relied on for a selection of English beers, especially from the more interesting and progressive breweries south of the border. And the readily available third-pint measures means ticking one's way through them is disturbingly easy. So...

A burgundy-aged version of The Kernel's Table Beer? Gimme. Bière de Table is a stonking 4.5% ABV and a very pale shade of yellow. There's little sign of wine or wood in the flavour, this highly attenuated beer being light, cold, clean and very refreshing. There's a very mild sourness but it barely impacted on the rich succulent Hanging Bat pulled pork. There was similar refreshment power in Rooster's Fort Smith: a lovely light lemony zip from the 5% ABV golden ale.

On the dark beer front, I found Henley Dark porter a bit sickly. The summer fruit aroma is enticing but the big milk chocolate gets quite cloying, even when only drinking a third of it. Railway Porter by London's Five Points is an unctuous coffee-laden affair with lots of oiliness and a strong liquorice bitterness. If you're in the mood for a coffee flavoured beer, this will keep you happy but it's not going to be for everyone. Best of the lot was the Dunkel Bock by Harbour Brewing, a long way from home in Cornwall. It's the appropriate shade of red-brown and with an unfussy mix of chocolate, coffee and bourbon biscuit, but then there's also a beautiful fresh green-hop nose which puts it ahead of any German version of the style I've ever tasted. Beautifully drinkable and one I'd be happy to have a larger measure of.

Evolver, probably

And IPAs? The 'Bat's got 'em. The nearest thing to ordinary was The Devil <3s Cascade by Summerwine, a big and sticky 7.2%-er, dark orange and almost headless. The unctuous candy malts are well balanced by a similarly oily resinous hop character, producing a peachy aroma followed by a more serious bitter pine flavour. Bit of a knife-and-fork job, but fun in small measures. Siren's Das Soundwave was the lightest of the bunch, a German-hopped IPA of 5.6% ABV, greenish gold in colour with a zingy orange sherbet aroma. There's a lot of heavy hop dank in the flavour and it leaves with a mouth-watering mandarin flourish. Overall, extremely drinkable yet marvellously complex. The outlier was Evolver from the Wild Beer Co. and I almost didn't order it. The description marks it as a brett IPA and I wondered who in their right minds would want something like that? Why soil the lovely fresh taste of hops with the dirty funk of brettanomyces yeast? I'm glad I ran out of options and had one before I left because it was gorgeous: soft peach and juicy mandarin to the fore, only funked up a little by some well-mannered brett. It's a beautiful blend of what the two elements bring to a beer, reminiscent of fresh Orval only with brighter, more exciting hops.

I returned to the Hanging Bat a couple of days later on a Sunday afternoon, hoping to catch a beer or two from the in-house brewery. But there was none of that, the blackboard was looking a little bare, and the place was loud and packed, so I nipped round the corner to the altogether more civilised Blue Blazer. No stuffy old-man beer here, however: I opted for 2014, a black IPA from Arbor Ales. It's 7% ABV and so densely black I could feel it draining colour from the pints on neighbouring tables. You get a big hop burn from the first pull: pine, mostly, but with some flowery perfume, a pinch of gunpowder and a generous helping of boiled cabbage. Light relief is provided by a squirt of grapefruit zest, but mostly this is a very serious beer. The dark malts and heavy texture lend a tarry burnt flavour, with a tiny hint of bitter dark chocolate peeping through the seventeen other kinds of bitterness it offers. Amazing stuff, and very good value, since it takes ages to drink.

I mentioned previously that there was a themed range of beers at the Bow Bar for Anzac Day. England was represented by Bitter Kiwi from Bristol Brewing. This is one of the best exhibition beers for Nelson Sauvin I've ever encountered. The aroma is beautifully flinty, like ultra-dry Sauvingnon Blanc, with a little bit of added peach nectar, and this theme continues in the flavour: dry white grape, some lychee and succulent sweet peach. Not bitter at all in fact, and not even a trace of cat piss, which is a win.

A bottle of Hobsons Kiss Me Now had found its way north with a family member. This claims to be a stout but its soft plumminess made me think more of warming winter ale, even at just 4.3% ABV. Keeping it sessionable, I found Cullercoats Lovely Nelly on cask, an oddly tart dark gold ale with strange but pleasant strawberry notes. Brewed as a lifeboat fundraiser, it's ironically very sinkable. This was back at the Cask & Barrel on Broughton Street where they also had Broughton Street Domestic Ale on. Never pass up the house beer is one of my rules. Turns out this is a re-badging of Gladiator Bitter, brewed by Hadrian and Border. First impressions are of an unexciting 3.9% ABV brown bitter: biscuity, shading towards twigginess, but a couple of sips in I got a sudden jolt of summer fruit: redcurrants and raspberries. A session bitter deserving of a second chance, then.

Last cask ale of the trip was at the airport where the Wetherspoon had the tail end of their latest international beer festival available in the form of Saint Archer Pale Ale, ostensibly from Saint Archer in San Diego but actually brewed at Banks's in Wolverhampton. It's good stuff: a healthy layer of dank hops livened by some lighter peachy notes and set on a light easy-going golden malt base. The perfect gulp-and-go airport beer in fact.

Judging from this lot, the Edinburgers are picky about which English beers they let in, and reap the rewards it brings.

What would happen if..?

As a dabbler in brewing I know what it's like: the temptation to not leave well enough alone. Sometimes, brewing experiments are born of necessity, other times it's just for the hell of it, or to prove a point. "I've proved a point" is a totally valid response to the question "Why does this taste weird?" Two commercial experiments today, from points as far away as Denmark and New Zealand.

Well, sort of. To Øl is one of those Danish gypsy brewing operations and Ov-ral -- a collaboration with Mikkeller -- isn't actually brewed in Denmark at all. It's badged as an Imperial IPA and is 10.5% ABV, but as the name hints it's had a dose of wild yeasts added in the brewing process like Belgian Trappist classic Orval. And it presents in a fairly Orvallish fashion: a cloudy orange colour and smelling of barnyards and vinegar. The imperialised hopping comes out on tasting, with a bittersweet oily citrus pith at the front contrasting with the sour funk from the wild yeast. Think orange barley sweets dipped in manure and you're close.

Out of interest I cracked a bottle of Orval for immediate contrast and found it tasted of very little by comparison. If you like what Orval does but find it somewhat lacking in character, then this is the beer for you, and you're an idiot.

We head down under next for one from renowned Kiwi brewery Epic, new to these shores. Zythos is a pale amber coloured IPA and has the same citrus and toffee aroma of a million crystal-malt-laden American IPAs, plus a surprisingly alcoholic smell for a relatively modest 6% ABV. But while the nose is quite run-of-the-mill there's a bit more going on in the flavour. For one thing there's a big and very English hit of tannins at the front, and the first taste called to mind a cup of strong black tea more than Californian craft beer. Behind this there's more of the powerful jaffa bitterness we met in the Ov-ral, but also some lighter, more softly spoken, mandarin notes as well. It's a very decent, quite straightforward beer which doesn't try to pull off the same sort of tricks as the Dane and is the better for it.

The experimental novelty factor here lies in the hops: eschewing the more famous American varieties which are often in short supply, this is brewed with a secret blend of more accessible breeds. To be honest I think it hasn't been a complete success and it lacks the welly of a beer loaded with Citra, Simcoe or the like. But that doesn't change the fact that it's enjoyable to drink.

Today's lesson, then, is that messing about with hops is pretty safe, but with yeast it helps to know exactly what you're doing, and preferably do it in someone else's brewery. Big thanks to Richard for providing both of these.

Hanging out with the Dream King

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Morpheus. Morpheus is the house yeast of the Alvinne brewery in Heule, West Flanders. According to their website it's a semi-tame blend of wild yeast and lactobacillus, and they seem inordinately proud of the bugger since lots of their bottles bear the "Morpheus yeast inside" badge. I have a few of them knocking around the collection, and decided on Columbus as the first to open. Hop freshness and all that.

Morpheus did not endear itself to me from the outset: bucketloads of foam gushed from the bottle and pouring became a two-glass job with beer refusing to stay in the bottle for more than a couple of seconds before making another bid for the neck. The stirred-up lees meant each glass turned out a different colour of hazy orange.

7.1% ABV and 136 IBUs says the stats. There's a touch of sherbet in with the sharp yeast in the aroma but the flavour is all about funk: a real down and dirty wild yeast barnyard taste, tempered only slightly by the citric hops. I'm reminded a lot of fresh Orval. It's the same sort of uncompromised tangy sourness, though with a little less balance, and more of an accidentally-tasted-perfume intensity.

I expected more from this. I hoped for more of an American hop character. As-is it's a bit of an awkward, messy, difficult beer, and not really for me. Nevertheless, more from Morpheus in due course. I'll be ready with the buckets next time.

Jurassic Marque

Brasserie des Franches-Montagnes (BFM) from Jura is one of the breweries recommended by Swiss commenters on this blog (hi Laurent!) so I was very pleased to find some in Palais des Bières in Geneva. It's an odd little bar-cum-shop in the basement of a shopping centre selling mostly Belgian beers, with a handful of British and others. And all at outrageous prices: this pair cost me a bit over €6 each. They'd want to be tasty.

The first one I opened was La Meule: 6% ABV and proclaiming itself a bière de garde, one of those catch-all styles that can mean anything as long as its brown-ish and hazy. Which this is. The secret miracle ingredient is sage, for extra farmhouse rusticity, I suppose. The herb leaps out of the aroma combining with fruity citric smells as well. On tasting it's quite dry and rather funky: I detect the presence of brettanomyces in spades. After the initial shock there are some beautiful Jaffa orange notes and a touch of aftershave spice. It reminds me of something and I wave away the late sage flavour which isn't part of the recollection. Orval. It tastes a lot like Orval, only with sage in it. A horror to Orval purists I'm sure, but an undeniably interesting beer and one which I quite enjoyed.

The second one was La Cuivrée. This is a brighter red-amber shade next to its stablemate, topped with a fluffy ivory-coloured head. I get a zingy aroma of fresh hops but they're not so apparent on tasting. Instead its a highly attenuated beer: thin and with a touch of sourness masked somewhat by the fresh hops. You know what comes next: sour; fresh hops... it's an Iris clone. Well, maybe a bit. It's not quite as zingy as fresh Iris, nor as puckeringly sour, but if I was in an Iris-free zone and craving it, La Cuivrée would certainly help take the edge off.

And while we're up the Jura, another brewery from Laurent's comments: Trois Dames. I came across a few of their beers totally by chance in Bavaria Brasserie, a beer hall in Lausanne where I was expecting little other than draught Paulaner but found a fantastic selection of European beers, though not much local. We only stayed for the one so I made it Pacifique, a 5% ABV US-style pale ale.

It took a while to pour as the foam had to be let subside in the too-small branded glass. A hazy orange beer is what eventually emerged under the head. There's a bubblegum mish-mash of fruity aromas, separating on tasting into soft fruit like lychees and nectarines. The sweetness becomes more apparent as it warms, bringing out sticky honey flavours that don't sit well with the busy fizz. This is one to drink cool. From a bigger glass.

It would have been nice to see some of these on draught, but I guess that's the absence of a pub culture for you. Places like Brasserie Bavaria are a welcome substitute. And there's always the €6 take-home bottle...

Tildonk do us part

These guys have been sitting in my beer fridge since the spring and as a result, being bottle-conditioned, they provided a bit of a multicoloured experience. Hof ten Dormaal Blond, from the delightfully-named Flemish village of Tildonk, introduced itself with an assertive pop as the cork came out, and began pouring a hazy straw colour. I let the massive fluffy head subside and poured again: this time more of an amber beer came out. A second repeat of the process deposited gritty tan-coloured dregs on the surface.  And the end result: more orange, shading to brown, than blonde.

The head subsided quickly, leaving room in the glass for dry and woody old-world spices: clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, plus a whiff of that workhorse from Alan's thesaurus: burlap. There's also a bit of a heady burn, showing off its 8% ABV in no uncertain terms. The taste is sweeter than it smells: clove rounds out to banana and a white pepper piquancy enters the mix, though it's hard to get a proper handle on what's going on because of the biting overactive fizz. It lacks the delicate fruit subtleties of (inevitable comparison warning!) Duvel, but it's decent.

The Tildonk Donker (beer that sounds like it's falling down stairs: love it!) is similarly fizzy and an opaque brown colour. In all honesty it's not hugely different from the Blond: the same banana sweetness and a similar clove spice. There's perhaps an extra whiff of farmyard from it and sure, the banana is perhaps a little darker, somewhat riper, and maybe even slightly caramelised. Beyond that, however, there's not much to add. While fine by themselves, these two are just too samey for this kind of horizontal tasting. If picking between them I think I'd go for the peppery Blond over the sweet and sticky dark one.

With the basic beers dispatched I had hopes for the last in the series: that it would give me something more unusual. It certainly makes promises in this direction: Wit Goud is brewed with chicory and is a pleasant, vaguely hazy, shade of gold. The nose shows those fruity esters again, but there's another woody complexity under it that invites closer inspection. The chicory is out in force in the flavour, adding an almost medicinal herbal tint to it. There's a touch of smokiness too, and a sour finish. Not for everyone, this. It's complex and very grown-up tasting: playing the same game as Orval perhaps, though not in the same league. I'd have it again.

I think the unsophisticated rustic branding on these three is more than just marketing flim-flam. They're rough-round-the-edges rude mechanicals of Belgian ales. Don't expect anything fancy.

It's a Hardknott life

I'm still in Amsterdam until tonight, so I'm bringing you back a fortnight to the last Thursday in August when Reuben took a selection of Woolpack Dave's beers, from the Hardknott brewery in Cumbria, along to meet some Irish beer fans in the Bull & Castle.

We started with Woolpacker, the basic 3.8% ABV pale ale. I liked this -- the nose is sharp and redolent of tart oranges. A combination of sulphurous and spicy flavours lie at the heart of the beer and between the mineral and the citric elements you end up with an invigorating, cleansing beer experience. There was just a bit of a bum note on the end with a cardboard aftertaste, but it didn't detract from the whole, or not much anyway.

Second up was the slightly stronger, but along the same general lines, Beyond the Pale. Oddly complicated beer this: a bitter oily aroma and fruity sherbet notes suggest lots of American C-hops, but there's also some seriously earthy, Orval-esque brett funk going on as well -- Cascade sweepings from the farmyard. "Interesting" is the keyword for this one, and I'd say it may be an acquired taste, though by the end of my sample glass I had mostly acquired it.

The amber-orange theme continued with Final Frontier: orange to the eye, orange to the nose, but unfortunately not a whole lot to the palate. The bitterness in this IPA is quite harsh and is all in the aftertaste. I missed any sense of foretaste complexity, other than a vague and unpleasant soapiness. A beer whose single dimension is just not a good one. Sorry Dave.

For some reason Zippy Red is described as an IPA even though it doesn't really fit my profile for IPA, nor is it in the least bit zippy: the big and chewy boozy body makes it much more laid back and sippable. Think fireplaces, dressing gowns and snifter glasses. But those trademark oranges are back, given a Cointreau-like feel by the hot spirity foundation. Another strange but not at all unpleasant one.

Last up was the only bottle filled outside the brewery by an outsourced bottler: the 4% ABV Stout Tendency. It's a stout. It wasn't popular around the table, but I got a kick out of it. The nose is full of smoke and treacle with a definite chocolate hit as well. Despite the low ABV it's remarkably thick and very caramelly tasting -- as stout as this sort of stout gets.

So they're a bit of a mixed bag, the Hardknott beers. As Reuben made clear, and I've no reason to doubt him, these work much better on cask. But there's still a lot going on with them. I doubt anyone could accuse Dave of making dull fare.

It was great to taste the beers behind the blog -- thanks to Reuben for providing the opportunity, and I really hope to get to try them in the natural habitat at some stage.