Dropping a twenty

Way back in September, the PR firm for the supermarket Aldi sent me a no-strings €20 voucher. The German discounter has been upping its game recently, as part of the bigger war between the grocery giants which has had beer as one of the fronts for a couple of years now. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see what sort of a selection €20 buys, beerwise, in Aldi these days. Of course, a more sensible and rational human, one without a blog to feed, would have blown the lot on Spaten, a beer which offers about the best quality-for-price ratio in the country. Would I be able to find the beatings of that?

I managed eight different beers before running out of new ones, and didn't even clear the voucher, spending €19.62 in total.

It was just before Halloween so there was a selection of Wychwood offerings available. We begin with Dr. Thirsty's No. 4 Blonde, a whopping 4.1% ABV and a middling lager-yellow. There's a definite caskish feel about it: low fizz and a loose head. I was expecting dull but there is real character here, beginning with a spicy incense aroma. That intensifies on tasting, turning to dry cedar balanced by a bubblegum sweetness and a gentle green bitterness. It sounds busy but it's light enough to carry it effortlessly. This is easy-going English blonde ale done exceedingly well.

So a tough act for Hobgoblin Gold to follow. Another blonde ale, this time a direct brand extension from Wychwood's dark flagship. There's a smidge more alcohol at 4.5% ABV and with a surprising haze. An off-putting funky aroma is how it says hello, and the flavour is roughly acidic as well, with worrying gastric overtones. Hobgoblin isn't the best beer in the world but it's inoffensive. This is rather more extreme. There's maybe a softer element of stonefruit in the background: lychee if you're feeling charitable. Overall, however, it's quite grim stuff.

Williams Brothers supply the next two, starting with Re#Dial lager. "What's this? It's got a good beat!" exclaims the label. It does look well: a flawless golden hue topped by a handsome layer of pure white foam. The aroma is the first sign of trouble: sour and sweaty, like a forgotten gym bag. After the effort of pouring I wasn't sure I wanted to taste it. It wasn't as bad as I'd feared: a little over-sweetened, and yes there's a tinny twang that doesn't belong in decent lager, but the flavour is unobtrusive enough that it can be downed quickly, refreshing as it goes, and not cause offence. It's a mere 4% ABV, and if it wasn't for that woeful aroma I'd go so far as to describe it as sessionable. The texture is probably its best feature: light and spritzy, the carbonation in the Goldilocks zone below fizzy but well above flat.

Its stablemate for this round is Iconic, an American-style pale ale. This one is all Cascade, the ABV rocketing up to 4.4%. It certainly smells of Cascade: that classic, earthy, marmalade-and-metal aroma. It looks well too: the body clear and the head tight. It's another sweet one, with a flavour that's primarily spun sugar and golden syrup. The hops have the measure of this, however, giving bitter cabbage leaf and sharp grapefruit. The end result is an uneasy balance, with both the malt sugar and hop acid threatening to take over at any moment. It works, though, and while it doesn't taste especially American, it's a decent and light pale ale, one which is particularly good value at just €2.19 a bottle.

Medusa is next in line, brewed for Aldi by Marston's under the supermarket's "Harpers Brewing" fake brand. It's a red ale and the label promises "roasted chocolate". Eh? Who roasts chocolate? It's a lovely dark garnet colour, tinting red around the edges and topped by a thick layer of creamy snake-free head. The aroma is a very strong caramel and apples vibe, slightly headache-inducing and every inch of the powerhouse 5% ABV. The green apple is dominant in the flavour, and it's not pleasant, tasting like a harsh chemical solvent. There's no softness, no nuance, just aggression, and not even the good sort. An attempt has been made at something rich and autumnal but it hasn't worked out. This beer tastes of pure hangovers and half a litre was a struggle.

Apprehension, then, going into Wild Bill's IPA, from the same producer. It's a worrying dark brown colour and is once again 5% ABV, with rye and unspecified American hops mentioned on the label. It smells bitter and spicy, which is fine, but the flavour is simultaneously sugar-sweet and harshly astringent, neither of them making for a pleasant sensation. There are hops too, funky and resinous, interacting with the dark malt to create the sweaty taste I often find in amber ales and really do not care for. This is another pass from me. I get how it's been put together but  the harsh aspirin and tin astringency strips it of merit. As far as the UK beers go I think the Williams Brothers take this round with Wychwood in second place.

To Germany next, and an Aldi stalwart I've never tried before: Rheinbacher Weissbier. Seemingly it does actually come from a real place called Rheinbach, just outside Bonn. It's surprisingly dark for the style, looking more like Schneider Weisse than any other mainstream weissbier. Bananas in the aroma? Present and correct, though not overdone. The flavour is a little muted, reflecting perhaps the slightly low ABV of 5%, but I like that. It's very easy to drink and the bubblegum sweetness doesn't clag up the palate. There's enough crisp grain character to clean it off, and even a tiny touch of dry roast. This is a perfect budget weissbier and I don't think I could ask more of it at €1.49.

All that still left me well short of the total so I topped it off with a ten-pack of stubbies. I quite like this format for easy-access, swig-from-the-bottle, lawnmower lager. This one has probably the least imaginative name in brewing history: Brasserie. "Quality Brewers" and "Bière Supérieure" exclaims the packaging, in an almost pleading tone, alongside depictions of what look like competition medallions but aren't, as though it totally could win some, if it wanted to, like.

I was just happy that it wasn't skunked. Cardboard sleeves appear to provide better protection against UV than science was aware. Should one decide to pour it into a glass, one will find it flawlessly clear with lots of bubbles, almost resembling a glass of champagne. Almost. It's only 4% ABV but actually tastes like less: it's very thin and makes you work to find any flavour. There's a slightly contrived malt sweetness -- a bit like powdered malt extract -- and a sharp green bitterness which might charitably be described as grassy, though there isn't enough of it to describe it as anything much. Like I say, this is fizzy and thirst-quenching and isn't really designed to do anything else. There's not a thing wrong with it, however.

A couple of genuine bargains in this lot, particularly on the paler side of the spectrum. I'm still going to advise you to buy Spaten, however.

Beerbliography

The Session for September comes to us from Barcelona's top beer blogger Joan Villar-i-Martí and the topic he's picked for us is "The Role of Beer Books".

I don't have many beer books and very rarely buy them. Beer is a fast-moving subject and well-documented, for free, here on the web so I don't really see the point. I'm not someone who buys books just because it's nice to have them either. People get some funny ideas about librarians (of which I am one) being hoarders of books when in reality we tend to treat them much as a farmer regards his livestock: practically, unsentimentally and as something to be managed.

So my collection is a small one: one shelf, largely made up of freebies I got for review, plus gifts. Perhaps that's the beer book's most important role: an easy gift option to give people who are in any way disposed towards beer drinking. My handful of purchases does include one book which I've pulled out and referred to a number of times over the years, usually when writing commissioned pieces where getting the facts right is kind of important. It's Garrett Oliver's The Brewmaster's Table and I've come to regard it as indispensable. It's over a decade old now so doesn't have a whole lot to say about Awesome Craft Beer™ but it does handle The Classics extremely well: their provenance, their history and practical ideas for matching them to food. The content is timeless and will doubtless still be relevant long after all of beer's current fads have passed away into faintly embarrassed memory.

As a tribute to the book I felt I should review one the the aforesaid classics, one which hasn't had the The Beer Nut treatment yet. And it turns out I've never reviewed Schneider Weisse, although in 2005 I pronounced it my favourite German beer. O to have such confidence today! Since 2010 it has been badged as Schneider Weisse Tap 7: Unser Original and it is a fairly full-on 5.4% ABV. The most distinguishing feature is that amber colour, very unlike most weissbier and almost into dunkelweiss territory. It's achieved with a 1% addition of black malt in the grist, intended to recreate an old-fashioned grain bill when the malt would have been dried to a darker colour.

First impression on tasting is smoothness. Nothing in particular jumps out, there's just a luxuriant soft texture. The typical weissbier attributes are quite subtle: a bit of bubblegum on the nose and sweet clove rock in the flavour. Its secret weapon is that dark malt. It adds an almost imperceptible dark roasted edge whose dryness contributes hugely to the beer's complexity and drinkability. It never gets too heavy or cloyingly sweet, a masterclass of finely-tuned balance.

Though obviously, of course, you'd be better off drinking it than reading about it.

The Baltic to Bavaria

Even though there was plenty of representation from the big international German beer brands at the Berlin Beer Festival, one of the headline sponsors was Störtebeker, a regional brand from Straslund on the Baltic coast due north of the capital. Having never heard of them I made a point of visiting their stand where two very jolly barmen were dishing out a pils and a schwarz.  

Störtebeker Pils is magnificent: a sharp bitter kick gets it going and the middle is smooth and creamy. It's almost in the same league as Keesmann Herren Pils, a beer which I searched vainly for during my festival visits but which didn't seem to be on sale anywhere.

It was a tough act to follow and Störtebeker Schwarz didn't quite manage it. This is a nasty-looking murky brown with big loud chocolate flavours followed quickly by dry roast. As good as many a schwarzbier on sale at the festival, but by no means a stand-out.

Always a sucker for novelty I couldn't pass by the Köstritzer bar without having a go of their helles. I mean, pale Köstritzer? Kerr-azy! The name is Köstritzer Edel and it's a very pale yellow indeed. In an otherwise non-descript lager I swear I was able to detect some of the back-of-the-throat crisp dryness that is the hallmark of normal dark Köstritzer, but I'm well aware of how powerful suggestion can be when tasting beer and I wasn't going to stop to carry out a blind taste.

Of course there was a big showing by Schneider, who had a couple bars on the go. We made a few return visits there: Aventinus Eisbock at €1.50 a glass will do that. But in the calmer hours I took the time to try Schneider Weisse Blonde, simply because it's a beer from one of my favourite breweries which I've never tasted. It presents like weissbier from a normal brewery: pale orange-yellow and hazy. There's the classic clove flavour you get with good weissbier and only the lack of any dark malt complexity marks it out as different from Schneider's flagship product. Not something I'd go rushing back to (unlike the Eisbock) but I'm glad I tried it.

While we're in Bavaria we may as well pay a visit to Andechs. The cheeky monks were ignoring the festival pricing so it was a whole €2 for a sample of their beer. Andechs Hell is a textbook Bavarian Helles: purest pale gold, silkily smooth and just lightly bitter. Andechs Dunkel is less well put together, blaring coffee and slightly sickly toffee but with just enough dryness on the finish to make it work.

A doppelbock was of course necessary at some point and Riegele Doppelbock was the first I spotted and was just what I was after: a clear mahogany, it's properly filling and the flavour dashes between liquorice, caramel, lavender and rosewater. There's almost a barley wine heat and complexity to it.

So we come to the last beer of the post and you'll doubtless all be shocked by the complete lack of rauchbier in my German trip notes. As it happens I only met the one, from a brewery in Franconia which claims to be the smallest brewer of smoked beer in the region.

Fischer Rauchbier is a clear brown colour and exudes massive smoked salmon and bacon flavours which I loved. Backbone is provided by a certain amount of caramel, but it's mostly light and quaffable all the way through.

And that's it from Berlin. It's a city that makes you work hard to find anything different from the orthodox beer styles, even when it's running a huge international beer festival. But what's there, by and large, is pretty good.

Play us out, Hans:

Cheap wheats

I don't know what Tesco's game was a few weeks ago: a sudden avalanche of quality beers across the chain in Ireland, both local and imported. I went in to my local branch more out of idle curiosity than anything else, not expecting to find much new or interesting. But in amongst the British and Irish ales there were these two Bavarian weissbiers I'd never seen before. In for a penny in for 5-for-a-tenner, I thought.

Arcobräu Weissbier Hell poured a pale and hazy shade of gold. Though all of 5.3% ABV it's quite light-bodied, almost to the point of being watery. What would you expect for two euro a go? But give it a minute and the flavour kicks into action. There's a rising clove flavour that builds on the palate as it goes down. Combine with the easy-going texture and you have a wonderfully tasty refreshing and sessionable pale weiss. Bailey once described the Grolsch weizen as a cartoon version of the real thing: this one is similarly entertaining in a simplified way.

High expectations, then, for Arcobräu Weissbier Dunkel. It's not all that dark as these things go: a chestnut shade only a grade or two dimmer than Schneider-Weisse, say. (Also, all those people who get upset about the oxymoronic nature of "Black India Pale Ale": why aren't they up in arms about "dunkelweisse" too?) Anyway, it's just as simply constructed as the pale one but lacks the lovely clove character. The flavour is rather more banana-based but there's not much else: no caramel, no roast, just vague bananas finishing slightly dry, but that could be the fizz as much as the dark malt. Meh.

I've had poorer experiences after dropping €4 in a Dublin beer shop, but when there's O'Hara's IPA and Clotworthy Dobbin in the same offer you're best keeping it local at Tesco.

Full of Easter promise

It was all a bit compact-and-bijou at The Franciscan Well for the Easter Festival this year. The rambling village of brewery bars that in recent years threatened to take over the yard completely if left unchecked was pruned back somewhat for 2012. No representation from regulars Hilden and Barrelhead, while Beoir Chorca Duibhne, Messrs Maguire and the hosts were relegated to taps on the main pub bar inside. It did leave the space less cramped than last year, and of course there was still plenty of beer choice.

But before I get on to that, a few words about one of the absentees. I caught up with Messrs Maguire Olympic Gold in its home pub in Dublin last week. This new seasonal is certainly, well, gold: a darkish shade thereof, shading to amber. Though billed as a golden ale it's very highly attenuated and feels quite lagerlike, its dominant crispness given extra bite from the strong carbonation. The only nod towards aledom that I detected is a slight bubblegum aftertaste, but it's nearly not there. It would be a decent if unexciting summer refresher were it not for a rising disinfectant tang which started small but built quite quickly as I chugged my pint.

Right, back to Cork then. It goes without saying that as well as fewer breweries than usual, there were no newcomers either. A shame, since I'm aware of at least a couple of new operations on the way, including a second brewpub in Cork city itself. Still, these things can't be rushed.

We'd met Scott from Eight Degrees in the nearby Bierhalle just before showtime, where we both tore into the fantastic full Irish they serve. Eight Degrees were launching their new Barefoot pilsner. It's not yet bottled so arrived to Franciscan Well straight from the lagering tanks, unfiltered and not quite fully carbed. And lovely it was too, displaying that wonderful soft biscuit sweetness one gets in good pils, balanced by an almost metallic tang from the hops. It could possibly do with more pronounced hopping, but maybe we'll get that with the fizz.

The people who didn't have a lager, shockingly, was the UCC pilot brewery. Though they abandoned cold-fermentation they didn't abandon their teutonic stylings completely. Moritz was billed as a pale ale but the description of it fell back into the German vernacular with mention of a Kölsch influence on the recipe. It was certainly the correct shade of wan yellow and had a decent crispness to it, but also a jarring slap of butterscotch too which made it tough drinking after the first few seconds. Describing this as "honey" in the tasting notes was a game effort, but didn't leave me any better disposed towards it.

Moritz's brother beer Max was a down-home weiss and it showed that the brewers were on much more familiar ground with this style. A biggish 5.8% ABV but slipping down easily, fresh and fruity with sinus-clearing clove flavours. You could have mistaken it for Schneider Weisse were it not for the golden colour.

In Dublin we tend to think of Galway Hooker as a bit of a one-trick pale ale pony, though it is a fine trick and performed well. Over on the left-hand coast, however, there are a couple more strings to Aidan and Ronan's brewing bow. An earlier experiment with the dunkel weiss style appears to have been regularised into Opus II. This came from the cask at The Franciscan Well and presented as a murky muddy dark brown affair. The weissbier sweetness was transformed into milk chocolate, rendered extra smooth by cask conditioning. A pleasant dash of dry roast hits the back of the palate and is followed by a totally unexpected bitter kick from the hops. I'm not sure how sessionable this would be, but as the first dark beer of the day a half was very welcome.

Also on the Hooker bar was Nectar, an amber ale brewed as the house beer for Tigh Neachtain in Galway City. Allegedly influenced by Samuel Adams Boston Lager, I thought of it more as a dark Hooker. Yes there's a toffee hit up front, but it's followed by a very clear and quite assertive hop tang. The two combine beautifully. While not as full-on as the best American amber ale I was very happy with this and would love to see it given a wider distribution. It will certainly get me through the doors of Neachtain's next time I'm in Galway.

Home brew champion Mark was cutting a fatherly figure by the Trouble Brewing bar when I arrived in, doting on his winning recipe for Spelt Saison. I had a taste of the homemade version when the competition was being judged and Paul at Trouble has got the scaling-up pretty much bang on. The light sour bite is there, created by the tandem action of greedy saison yeast plus a whack of real grapefruit. Generous hopping removes any claims that could be made for fidelity to the saison style, but I don't imagine anyone who drank it cared. There's a little bit of grainy warmth in the background and I can't help thinking this summer refresher would be better with keg carbonation to lift it. Either way, I've never tasted anything like it from an Irish brewery and it proves how vital it is to take homebrew recipes and produce them on a commercial scale. Vital.

Across the way we had something new quirky and fun from Team Metalman. Chameleon is, at the basic level, a light and summery blonde ale, though packing a well-hidden wallop of 5% ABV. The unique selling point, and reason for the name, is that the casks have each had something extra added to them. On Saturday afternoon Chameleon Pacifica was pouring, one that had a gorgeous Opal Fruit juiciness from the New Zealand hops. It was next to the 2012 edition of Windjammer, darker than last year's and similarily Kiwitastic, but with some bonus light caramel. Tragically I missed smoked chilli Chameleon and hope it'll come my way at some point.

I was starting to get antsy with the thought of sinking a cool pint of Dungarvan Comeragh Challenger at this stage, but there was one last tick to be ticked. And I'm glad I didn't miss it. White Gypsy was serving, among others, Red Oak, a 4% ABV blend of two malt-forward dark styles -- Irish red ale and Belgian-style bruin -- which was then dry-hopped. What? Why would you...? Oh. Oh wow. The result is a lightly astringent fruity quencher, brimming with delicious tannins. Irish red meets English mild, with all the complex flavour and extreme drinkability of the latter. A beauty of a beer and not to be missed. But I didn't follow my half with a pint. The Challenger had dibs first.

And so it was back home on the 8.30 train, with some Eight Degrees bottles Reuben had managed to charm out of Scott. Much appreciated, both.

Sometimes the explosion of beer specialist pubs in Dublin (another one opened on Amiens Street yesterday) makes me question the need to travel to out-of-town festivals for beer in the first place. But even with a limited showing, the Franciscan Well Easter Festival offers a reminder that there's no substitute for a yard full of brewers and their wares.

All 'Well and good

Easter weekend once again brings the centrepiece of the Irish beer calendar at the Franciscan Well in Cork. This year, the Easter Festival featured 13 guest breweries from around Ireland, including newcomers 8 Degrees, based in nearby Mitchelstown.

The company is the result of a trans-Tasman détente between Aussie Cam (right) and Kiwi Scott, playfully branded and with big plans for its entry into the market proper. The primary product will be 33cl bottles of three different beers, most likely sold by the six-pack. It's not a standard method of beer delivery for Ireland and it'll be interesting to see how it pans out. There will also be draught, and the first to arrive on tap is Howling Gale, a blonde ale hopped up on Chinook, Centennial and Amarillo. Aren't there a bazillion craft beers like this in Ireland already? Well, yes and no. At 5% ABV, Howling Gale is weightier than most, with a full wheaty body, despite the absence of wheat. It's arguable how well it'll work as a sessioner, given those extra few strength points above most by-the-pint beers, but I can see it performing in the 33cls as long as they get the pricing right. Its other distinguishing feature is the lack of filtering. Only the finest of haze is visible and it more than pays its way with the extra citrus flavours being delivered. Howling Gale is a promising start for the new brewery, and its unusual vital statistics could well be the beginning of a new spin on the craft beer revolution in these parts.

While I'm banging on about filtering, a word on Galaxy Pale Ale, brewed by Trouble as the grand prize in their Trouble Maker competition last year, the winning recipe provided by Rossa O'Neill. You can read his account of his day at the brewery here. I liked the finished product, honest I did: a gorgeous shade of garnet, super-light cask-like carbonation, a firm bitterness and a subtle biscuity follow-up. But I couldn't help feeling there should be more to it, that a fruit and citrus contribution from the hops should be at the centre of the flavour but has been stripped out by the evil filter. No amount of limpid sparkling beauty can make up for a beer that has been gutted like this. If the flavour is bold enough to cover any yeasty tang -- as is the case with most any of these US-style Irish pale ales -- I don't see why the beer can't be cloudy. Rant over; comments welcome.

A smooth and calming glass of stout next, and my first try of Dungarvan's special edition Coffee and Oatmeal Stout. Cormac tells me the recipe is very different from Black Rock, but I couldn't help but notice the similarities, a function of cask's tendency to smooth out distinctive flavours, I reckon. Anyway, it's a rock-solid stout, well-balanced between roasted dryness and plummy fruit esters. I couldn't say I was able to pick out the coffee, but I'm guessing the dry aspects of it were down to this in some measure.

I had a good natter with Seamus and Liam from the ever-expanding Carlow Brewing Company. Liam has begun a series of smoked beers in half-batch runs, and the first example was on their bar at the weekend. O'Hara's Smoked Ale No. 1 is a reddish-brown bitter, with chocolate malt in the ascendant plus hints of raisins. The smoke infuses this with a subtle kippery tang. A few fellow-drinkers were hard pressed to identify this as smoke but it was familiar to me from my own experiments with rauchmalz. Liam was a little disappointed that it didn't come out smokier, expecting more of a bang for the substantial bucks the brewery spent on the speciality grain. The frustration looks like it may well lead to some messing about with peated malt later in the series: then we'll be talking serious smoke. Can't wait.

After many years of sharing a bar, Messrs Maguire were totally separate from former host White Gypsy at this year's festival, serving two beers that Melissa brewed in Dublin herself, plus the sublime leftovers of Barrelhead's Franciscan Well-brewed Pale Ale: eight months old and tasting fabulous, like Harvey's Best on steroids. Meanwhile, White Gypsy was twinned with its new protégé Metalman, making their first appearance at the Easter Festival with their second beer: Windjammer, on cask. Three different New Zealand hops have gone into this (Pacifica, Southern Cross and Nelson Sauvin) and the result is a punchily bitter pale ale which calms down quickly, presenting the palate with a basket of pineapples, mangoes and nectarines. I only had a half, but I want more. Once the palate has adjusted to the bitterness, I'd say the second pint is a marvel. Hopefully I won't have to wait too long to find out.

My final bit of scooping was at the UCC Pilot Brewery bar, once again giving it the whole Teutonic thing, with pretzels, dirndls and Tyrolean hats. Inevitably, the beers were a lager and a weizen, though it doesn't look like much work has gone into the names: Traditional Bavarian Beer (an alleged Oktoberfestbier) and Fruity Wheat Beer. The latter really doesn't look like much on coming out of the tap: murky brown and headless, but as I may have said before, how a beer looks doesn't matter. There's a lovely spice to it alongside the bananas, putting it in the same general end of the weizen spectrum as Schneider-Weisse and that's definitely a good thing. A bit more condition would have lifted these great flavours a bit more, however. The lager was another fruity one: miles and miles from any helles or Oktoberfestbier I've tasted, other than those you sometimes find in wonky brewpubs. Still tasty, though, and clean enough to stay drinkable and refreshing.

Trade had been brisk from the moment the doors opened and the festival yard was jammed by 8pm when I left for my train. It would have been nice to go back and spend another leisurely afternoon pinting my way round the plethora of summery beers I'd been sampling, but that'll have to wait until someone (anyone?) more local to me starts running a great event like this. In the meantime, thanks as usual goes to the Franciscan Well team and the 13 visiting breweries for making it all happen.

Wheat beat manifesto

It's wheat beers on The Session this month, a genre I find it hard to get excited about. Sure, I like the odd Schneider-Weisse or Aventinus, and I'm perfectly content holding a Hoegaarden, but generally speaking I don't go out of my way for wheat beer. It's more of a fallback thing.

In an effort to rekindle my interest, I decided to open something a bit special for this post: Hvedegoop, the "wheat wine" brewed as a collaboration between Three Floyds and Mikkeller. Something about the -goop suffix had me expecting dark beer, maybe along the lines of Haandbryggeriet's Dark Force wheat stout. Instead it's quite a pale cherrywood colour, with a short-lived skim of ivory foam on the surface.

The brewers' renowned love of C-hops is immediately apparent from the aroma on pouring: sticky nectarine fruitiness made extra potent by sweet caramel-candy notes from the malt backbone. That this is a strong sipper (10.4% ABV) is never in doubt.

One expects a certain soft mouthfeel from wheat beers but there's none of that here. Instead the gentle fizz and powerful-yet-subtle booze heat gives it a definite wine vibe, much more like an American barley wine. And that continues into the taste: big big hops, but balanced by lots of sticky malt -- I really can't find anything to indicate we're dealing with wheat malt here rather than plain old barley, and I doubt that any of the yeast strains most commonly used for wheat beers have been employed.

More than anything, it reminds me a lot of Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, which brings me on to Mrs Beer Nut's observation. She liked it a lot, but reckons it needs another year or two of maturation to mellow and soften, just like Bigfoot does. Me, I liked the in-your-face double IPA kick and didn't find it remotely harsh or difficult, however I can't help but agree it would be really interesting to find out what happens to it after a couple of years.

As a strong-and-hoppy late-night sipper-to-share I rate Hvedegoop very highly. Whether there was any point in making it with wheat rather than all barley, however, I really couldn't say. But if anyone's using this Session to argue that wheat beers are intrinsically dull or samey, here's the killer argument against.

Chico and beyond

The internationalism of beer is one of the things I love about it. Local styles are all well and good, but my respect goes to breweries who break the mould a bit, rather than produce another 3.8% ABV bitter / dry session stout / pale fizzy lager / [insert national beer stereotype here]. It was great to see Californian mega-micro Sierra Nevada looking to Germany for a revamping of their previous lacklustre wheat beer. What they've given us instead is Sierra Nevada Kellerweis, and a promise of authenticity you can take to the bank.

Open fermentation tanks and Bavarian yeast were enough to convince Al of its credentials, pronouncing it "pretty spot on". I'd agree with that, in general: it's appropriately cloudy and appropriately orange. There's a nice bit of weissbier banana, but not too much. However, I'm finding it a little lacking at the finish, with no sign of the cloves or hops dusting I'd be after. The body is a bit thin, and it's light on alcohol at just 4.8% ABV. So, yes it would pass muster as a Bavarian wheat beer, but it's just not on the money when put next to my favourite real ones. And where it really fails the quality/authenticity test is the serving size. I had a crisis trying to find a suitable glass for it. Sessionable weissbier is just not enjoyable in this sort of portion.

Funnily enough, I have the same observation I made when I tried the old Sierra Nevada Wheat last year: "Who in their right minds would go for a small bottle of American wheat beer when there's half a litre of Schneider-Weisse on the shelf next to it, probably for less money". It's come to this: quoting myself. Sorry.

The reach of Sierra Nevada goes even beyond Germany, however. Not content with harvest ales made with hops from their own estate and the next state over, they managed to lash another one out in the Spring made with fresh hops from New Zealand. Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere Harvest Fresh Hop Ale, appropriately for such a mouthful, comes in a very respectable 700+ml bottle, so no qualms about serving size here.

It pours a perfect shade of amber and gives off that lovely spiced herbal toffee aroma I associate with the best American-style IPAs. Tastewise, yes, it's very fresh and hoppy, but I got a bit of an unpleasant harsh resinous dryness at the end, around where I'd like to have been basking in peaches and similar soft succulent fruits. The bitterness also covers up what's quite a hefty malty body, delivering 6.7% ABV. Yet of caramel or toffee there's barely a trace, lacking the balance of the brewery's supposed hop extravaganza, Torpedo. Or at least that's what I thought: both Mrs Beer Nut and Thom had a much more balanced experience than me.

It sounds like I'm a bit down on the Chico guys, but I'm not. These two beers really are quality stuff, and the criticisms are purely ones of fussy personal taste. The conscientious attention to detail is to be applauded, not just because it gives a human touch to the beer, but also because of the incontrovertibly interesting drinking experiences it produces.

Goldenest Oktober

It's that time of year again, when the mighty merchandising machines of Noreast and Heineken -- distributors of Erdinger and Paulaner respectively -- flood the quality beer outlets with acres of blue and white chequered material, adorned with their competing brands. Yes: Oktoberfest in Dublin.

The Porterhouse were first out of the traps, launching their festival on Tuesday last. Alt is back for a second year and seems bigger and maltier than before. Perhaps not 100% true to style but you'll have to wait a while for my gives-a-crap face. The imports are always great fun year-to-year, and this time round we've got Einbecker's sweet and warming Ur-Bock Dunkel, crisp dry Früh and a wheat beer I didn't know: Unertl. It's one of the darker weissbiers, though not a dunkel. More than anything else I was reminded of Schneider, though it's not quite as spicy and rounded, going instead for a lighter and crisper sort of wheat character. A nice refresher and leagues ahead of your typical yellow weiss we get in these parts.

The bottled selection of course includes some classic Munich Oktoberfestbier, as well as some interesting oddities from further afield. My eye was particularly caught by three from Münster's organic brewery Pinkus Müller, not only because it's Barry's local, but also because the Original Münster Alt he sent me earlier this year was really good in an odd sort of way. Just my kind of beer. In the oddness stakes, both Pinkus Müller Pils and Weiss stood up very well. They're both pale examples of their genre, with the pils a gorgeous limpid gold and the weiss an opaque light orange-yellow. Here's the thing: the pils tastes like weiss while the weiss tastes like pils. That is to say, Pinkus Pils has a very soft carbonation and fruity esters in with the more typical north-German pils bitterness. Pinkus Weiss, conversely, is almost esterless, being light and quaffable like a tasty but easy-going lager.

Pinkus Special is also in the line-up. This is another pale one with just a little bit of haze to it. You get some fascinating grassy herby flavours, and a light touch of bubblegum (pre-chewed bubblegum, as someone around the table charmingly put it). It's certainly an interesting beer and I reckon I'll revisit it before this weekend, when the festival wraps up for another year.

Thanks, as always, go to the Porterhouse team for their hospitality.

My second Octoberfest event of last week was up at Deveney's off licence in Dundrum, where the monthly beer tasting session was moved to the top end of the month. Good to see, since it's been clashing with the Irish Craft Brewer meeting in the Bull & Castle this past while. There were most of the usual suspects on offer, but also a couple of things I wasn't familiar with. Take Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest Märzen for instance. At first glance, perhaps, nothing unusual there. Sure every schoolboy knows Oktoberfestbier is a Märzen. But only broadly. Hacker-Pschorr's actual Oktoberfestbier can be seen in Ron's blog, here: a bright golden yellow. Actual Märzen tends to be more of a reddish gold shade, which is what this is. It's really rather flat and though relatively light of body, there's a certain syrupy greasiness to the texture that I don't much care for. The taste is predominantly sweet and bready, as one would expect, and it sails close to being cloying. But I think it just stays on the good side, with a nibble from the hops and a warm comforting finish. And with a swingtop bottle? Well, all is forgiven from this home brewer.

I was slightly late getting to Deveney's on the tasting evening and everyone else was a couple of beers ahead of me. Ruth had cued up Schneider Wiesen Edel-Weisse as last on the roster, so I got to hear everyone else's opinions on it before getting to it myself. It wasn't going down well with the crowd, which was disappointing because I was expecting big things from the new beer out of what's probably my favourite German brewery. "Too much pepper" was the cry. I was intrigued.

It appears to be squarely pitched at the American market, with its USDA Organic badge featuring prominently, and the inclusion of Cascade with the Hallertauer in the hops listing. Oh, and the highly unGerman, almost microscopic, inclusion of the word "ale" on the neck label. It pours a pale hazy amber, giving off quintessential wiessbier yeast fruits with a definite spice behind it. This yeast-hops combination has me thinking of the collaborative Hopfen-Weisse straight away. But it's a lot more drinkable than that badboy, at a mere 6.2% ABV. Cloves are in the ascendant, giving it a spice that I wouldn't describe as peppery per se, but would describe as really tasty. The finish is short, but the body is light and soft enough for another sip straight away. I like this a lot. And I'm very heartened to see an old stalwart like Schneider pushing the boundaries of tradition further in the interests of opening up new markets and, more importantly, new flavours. That's my kind of globalisation.

October, eh? It's great to be spending my time whizzing round Dublin on my bike drinking free beer; but it's probably just as well it's only one month a year.

Lagerboy writes

On his recent visit, Velky Al donated some bottles of Primátor Excluziv to a corner of the Irish beer blogosphere (me, Thom and Adeptus). It looks like a junior drinker's dream: a lager proclaiming itself, in massive Lolcat lettering, to be 16%. In ABV terms, however, it's a mere 7.5%, though that's still not to be sneezed at. It pours a lovely shade of amber and gives off heady boozy aromas. The overriding flavour is sweet -- quite bubblegummish -- malt. It puts my experience of central-to-eastern European beers to the test as I'm not sure where to place this. There's a lot of märzen character in its breadiness but there's a fair whack of Polish mocne to be found in the nearly-but-not-quite Special Brew sugariness. All I knew was that it would have to be consumed quickly, while still cold, for fear of cloying. This I duly did, appreciating its filling warmth for some time afterwards. If you're going to be drinking pale lager in the midst of winter, this is the sort of thing to go for.

With the Primátor polished off, I returned to the fridge where I found a bottle of Gösser, an Austrian lager that's been a mainstay of Irish offies for as long as I can remember. It's really very poor -- thin, vaguely dry, barely beery, in fact. At a time when yellow fizz can be bought for half nothing you have to wonder what this is still doing on the market. For sale to idiots like me, I suppose.

And speaking of cheap yellow fizz, the first beer I ever wrote about on this blog was Euroshopper lager. Back in 2005, and for some years previous, it was my dependable house beer -- the one I'd have in for times when I just wanted a lager without having to think about it. The brewer and recipe have changed since then and I've got out of the habit of drinking this style of beer: my old reliables are far more likely to be O'Hara's Stout, Hobgoblin or Schenider Weisse these days, so I've not been in any rush to try the new version. However, there are occasions, especially this time of year, when drinkers of pale lager are going to show up to the house and require refreshment. My cheap beer of choice for this purpose these days is a Belgian: Hackenberg Export.

This is brewed by Martens in Limburg and, surprisingly, bears the logo of Dundalk-based importer Noreast, the people who bring us our Erdinger, Budvar and Shepherd Neame beers. The pils is a pleasing shade of darkish gold and very full bodied, given its place on the market, with a pleasant sweetness adding to its drinkability.

At €1.50 or so a can it's a little pricier than some of the other sub-premiums, but it's far ahead of them in quality terms. And better than any of the high-cost, as-seen-on-TV, lager brands as well. If I still have stock left over on the far side of New Year I doubt you'll hear me complain.

Cloven hefe

It looks like I've finally managed to guilt my Dad into getting some decent beer in. After complaining about his endless supply of crap lager, my latest raid on his garage produced gold in the form of Sainsbury's Bavarian Style Wheat Beer. This rich orange brew is made for the supermarket chain by the Meantime microbrewery in London.

I've no idea which particular Bavarian beer they're seeking to emulate, but this is better than any I've had, save for dark brown Schneider. The main reason is the spice: I love big clove flavours in a weiss and this has them in spades, and they come as quite a surprise after the strong banana aroma. The full body makes for a very satisfying beer, with no trace of the hollow wateriness that often ruins cheap weissbier. It would have been more satisfying if they packaged it in properly-German 500ml bottles instead of 330ml, but they come in four-packs and I'm perfectly happy to bung two into a weissbier glass at once.

The wealth of beer goodness that normally overwhelms me on my rare visits to Sainsbury's means that I'd never have picked this out on my own. Thanks Dad.

Manifestoval

It's beer festivals for The Session this month, and I'm pretty much regurgitating points from a discussion I had a while ago on maeib's blog. He was wondering about the minimum number of beers an event needed to be selling to qualify as a beer festival. I brought up my observation regarding Oktoberfest in Munich: it's not really a beer festival; it's a festival of being drunk. Stonch wasn't having any of this, but I stand by my taxonomy (I'm a librarian -- it's what we do). Oktoberfest is a festival, for sure, in a big big way. But they could be serving vodka or cava in those tents, instead of six specific and unchanging beers, and the whole thing wouldn't be much different. Though there might be more women.

Conversely, when a pub buys in a large variety of beers, it will often put up posters claiming this is a "festival", even though it's business as usual as far as the atmosphere is concerned. I've a few examples of this on here, like the Porterhouse's Belgian "festival" last summer. Beer yes. Festival no.

So, to have a real beer festival you must have both the emphasis on the beer and a proper festive feel to it. In my opinion, the latter cannot be achieved unless the event is held somewhere people can't normally drink. If you're going to have it in a pub you must at least adapt or expand the premises in some way, as the Franciscan Well do when their Easterfest tent (right) goes up in the yard. But the most festive festivals are the ones held somewhere else entirely, since nothing kills off atmosphere faster than one of the locals grumbling at the bar about blow-ins. CAMRA, at least in east London and Belfast, seem to favour dull exhibition space. The lack of music at Pig's Ear almost has me questioning its festiveness, but it still managed to feel properly festivalish. At least the lonely grumblers there had made an effort to leave their usual boozers.

If I had to pick a favourite out of the half dozen or so festival and festival-like events I've been at in the last twelve months, the prize goes to Hilden. It didn't have the beer selection of CAMRA NI's gig, nor the wonderful local emphasis of the Franciscan Well, but it had damn good beer, and most importantly it had a brewery yard full of people -- families, mostly -- just having a fun day out. With top-notch beer. And even if not every grown-up was drinking the good stuff, this infectious enjoyment is what really makes a beer festival so much better than than, say, simply going to a pub with a great range of beers.

That said, family fun is all well and good, but at the same time there was no way I was going to miss The Big One: September's 2000-beer, three-day tickfest in Copenhagen. Anyone else out there going?

Warning: Tenuous theme linkage ahead

Of course, my drinking life is one big beer festival -- an endless amble along the global bar, perusing the pumpclips and labels, picking up samples here and there, and doing my damnedest to make the best use of the time and capacity I have available.

Capacity is a big practical issue where festivals are concerned. I drew a discreet veil over just how ratted I was when I rolled out of the King's Hall last November after inadvertantly completing the strong beer set. So just two strong beers this session.

First up is Vitus, the weizenbock from Weihenstephaner. The only other weizenbock I know is the mighty Aventinus, one of my all-time favourites. I was expecting something along the same lines so was shocked by the bright yellow beer that poured forth. I should really have known that Aventinus is no more typical of the weizenbock style than Schneider is of weissbier. I braced myself for the onslaught of cloying sugariness that so often arrives with strong and pale beers. But no, I got something else instead. The 7.7% alcohol adds a warmth to the flavour, quite reminiscent of the Scheider-Brooklyner Hopfen Weisse I had back in April. A gentle layer of weissbier clove notes adds to the warmth even further, and the result is a beer you could easily curl up with. I'm enjoying it with some strong cheddar which cuts through the spice beautifully. It has been observed that beer festivals and cheese festivals belong together. Vitus and vintage cheddar would make a great headlining act.

And speaking of vintage... The second offering in my home festival of strong beers comes from down under: Cooper's Vintage Ale. I'm not sure what the label, depicting a man being savaged in the face by a badger, says about the product. It could be some kind of health warning about the beer's tendency to attract badgers. Seems unlikely, but I'm going inside the house anyway, just in case.

It pours a red amber which, frankly, looks a bit watery to me, despite the vast amount of dense sediment in there. The head doesn't hang around long, but there's a fairly strong malty aroma which is carried through into the flavour. It's quite barleywine-ish, with rich and smoky flavours as well as a touch of toffee and maybe even damsons as well. I can't help but be distracted by the thinness, though, which is worsened by an inappropriately heavy fizz. It could well be that the beer's still a bit green, being a mere 2006 vintage -- the only beer I've ever seen with a "best after" date stamped on it.

Alan reviewed it recently, but I think he might be better left alone today. He'd enjoy Hilden, I'd say. Bring the wains.