Het Steir et Château

More Belgian beer today, I'm afraid. In fact, our glass has been runnething over with draught Belgian loveliness in Dublin recently. Last weekend, on the tail of the Porterhouse's 11-day Belge-a-thon, the Bull & Castle got in on the action with not only a bunch of draught Belgian beers, but a food menu to go with them. The mussels in lambic sauce was wonderful -- full of the hot wheaty smell of brew day at Cantillon. Framboise duck was another winner.

The beery highlight for me was draught Kwak -- deliciously sticky with major banana fruitiness, akin to drinking a banoffee pie. It sat in pleasant contrast to the hoppy sharpness of Poperings Hommel Ale.

The new ones on me were both Wittekerke witbiers. The basic one pours a bright, opaque yellow and is predominantly bitter and spicy, with only a hint of green apples holding up the fruit side of the bargain. The dry, almost sour, kick had me wondering if it's some sort of throwback to the days when this type of beer was fermented spontaneously. To take this edge off, they also make a version with raspberry syrup in: Wittekerke Rosé. It takes the edge off, all right, and everything else with it. You end up with an incredibly sweet syrupy pink beer of the sort any sane and self-respecting beer drinker would hate. I drained my half litre in about three minutes, but I wasn't up for another.

Dessert was one not from the weekend specials, but a regular that's been knocking around a while now: Steenbrugge Dubbel Bruin, the abbey beer from Belgian giants Palm with its ever-so-complex neck label arrangement. It's so-so: a touch of fruity bananas but not much else going for it. A real shadow of a strong dark ale when put next to Kwak, and I find it hard to believe this is the same beer I enjoyed on draught last time I was in Amsterdam. Maybe it isn't.

It's nice to have these little diversions from the regular line-ups in Dublin's decent beer pubs, though the rotating cask at the Bull and Castle is also doing its bit to keep my life adequately spiced at the moment. Long may that continue.

Getting German with it

I've been writing a lot recently on Irish, English and American beers, so I thought it's time I went back to basics: random selections from the shelves of Redmond's. Today, feeling the need for things vaguely lager-ish, my first selection was Hacker-Pschorr Braumeister Pils. My only prior experience of this Bavarian behemoth is their Oktoberfestbier. This one is as smooth as one would expect from a Munich lager but carries an uncharacteristically hefty hoppy bitterness which I found a bit off-putting. I suppose when you're making lager that's as smooth as science will allow, you have to go somewhere with it. Between two stools, this one, I think.

From the same stable, in a wonderful swing-top bottle, comes Sternweisse: a dark weissbier, attempting perhaps to emulate the likes of Schneider Weisse. It lacks the oomph, though: the spice and heat of the mighty Schneider. This one doesn't do enough to keep my attention.

Getting darker, we have Erdinger Schneeweisse, a deliciously full-flavoured variation on the standard German weiss. Scheeweisse is only slightly darker in colour than normal Erdinger but drops the fruit in favour of no-nonsense grain. It's Erdinger for men.

Away from Germany, I couldn't resist picking up a bottle of a beer I've been seeing in Redmond's for more years than I care to remember: Poperings Hommel Beer (AKA Poperings Hommel Ale). This hails from the Belgian town of Watou and is a heavily sedimented golden beer. It's not lager and not what I'd call an ale. It's closest in my mind to a spicy witbier, but it's not one of those either. There's a delicate, warming hops flavour and skeins of yeasty sediment floating through it. It tastes rich, heavy and satisfying. I think I'll be coming back to this guy in the winter.

There's no doubting that German beer is great and deserving of its reputation. But it's very much a case of doing a handful of things and doing them well: I'm just glad there are other countries out there doing strange stuff with exotic ingredients. Long live German purity, and let weirdness thrive.