Whatever you're into

I have a real fondness for how Galway Bay Brewery, a big player in this country's independent beer scene, tends to follow the interests of its head brewer in its output. I guess it's because the core range, vertically integrated into its pub chain, is the main part of the business, whereas the stuff I buy and review is a tiny fraction. Regardless, it's charming. So we get lots of lagers and today it's nods towards Belgium and American IPA back when it was good.

We begin with Beers That Nobody Asked For, a Boundary name on a Boundary collaboration. It's a petite saison: golden, hazy and 3.8% ABV. The aroma is a mix of sweetly fruity bubblegum and savoury herbal spice. The latter is, I assume, down to the lemongrass advertised on the label. Seems like it might be a bit busy but the flavour is altogether more restrained, presenting a dry pithy note: a little grapefruit and a little straw. The strength is apparent from the mouthfeel but it's not unpleasantly thin, being instead light and drinkable in the table beer fashion. There's not much by way of complexity on offer here -- it's made for quenching thirst more than offering bloggers something to analyse. But analyse I have and it's too late to change that now.

Continuing the Belgian theme, this bottle of The Bots Are Back In Town was a kind gift from the brewery on the first night of the revamped Against the Grain when it refused to come out of the shiny new taps. It's described as a Belgian pale ale and the packaging format is intended to hold in considerable carbonation. I poured carefully and sure enough a stiff mass of froth formed quickly over the subtly hazy straw-coloured body. A light and fresh aroma of peach, pineapple and pepper tells us we're definitely in Belgium, via Oranmore. There's more of a citrus tang in the flavour, but in the old-world fashion of big jaffa oranges and grapefruit marmalade. Beside it is a funky farmy spice with more than an echo of fine saison about it. Pleasingly, the fizz doesn't get in the way of any of this -- the texture is soft and the whole thing very approachable. It doesn't have the flavour intensity of, say, De Ranke XX Bitter or Taras Boulba, but it's still very good: both 4.5% ABV and built to savour slowly.

Oregon Grown is back for a fourth round, this time with Columbus, Centennial, Chinook and Cascade. It's an old-fashioned combination but it wears it well, ensuring first of all that there's a steady malt base in place. That gives it an amber colour, retro-clear, and a pinch of toffee sweetness. You don't get much time to appreciate the malt, however, because those hops get very busy very quickly. It's insanely resinous, jam packed full of marijuana, pine and grapefruit zest, opening bright and fresh then finishing on a hard damp-grass bitterness. It's not subtle, nor meant to be I'm sure, but there's a subtle fruity nuance of strawberry and blackcurrant. While the general west coast revival has shown a tendency to fudge things on matters of clarity and bitterness, this one is all-in authentic-tasting.

But of course they couldn't leave it there, and added a companion fifth Oregon Grown: Idaho 7, El Dorado & Azacca. More importantly than the hop list, this one is hazy, and properly so. It's every bit as New Englandy as the previous one is western. The mouthfeel is full-on creamy and the flavour blends sweet and juicy mandarin with a touch of pithy bitterness and a kick of dank resins on the end. 6% ABV means it's light enough for by-the-pint drinking, and none of the flavour elements builds on the palate enough to make it difficult. I don't know if this pair is where the series ends, but they're an educational set, reminding drinkers respectively how American-style IPA should be, and how it actually is now.

When the ex-head brewer of Galway Bay, Chris, was back in Ireland over the summer they had him help with an IPA, allowing it to be badged as a collaboration with his current employer Fuerst Wiacek in Berlin. The result is PDA, a hazy sunset-coloured one, 6.8% ABV and hopped with Idaho 7, Citra, Mosaic and Nelson Sauvin. It smells simultaneously juicy and pithy, which isn't all that surprising given the combination. The flavour goes bitterer than I expected from that: the Nelson swings in with its hard grassy minerality, teaming up with Citra's oily lime peel. There's room for a sweeter tropical side but it doesn't materialise, finishing tangy and acidic instead. Despite appearances, this isn't really for haze fans. Although the soft mouthfeel leaves it far from the west coast style, the flavour profile is very much in that direction. I wasn't wowed, but I liked what it does. A higher proportion of Nelson might have brought us somewhere a little more interesting but I can't really complain: all four hops have their say.

End-to-end quality product, and now the wonderful smoked Märzen is back too. Happy Christmas to me!

Random Belgians

After a few years off the roster, my wife is once again making regular work trips to Brussels. And, legend that she is, this has meant a bit of a beery bonanza for me. Here are some recent examples of things she brought back and was kind enough to share.

Kasteel's Barista was first out and I'm guessing this was created with an eye to the export market. "Chocolate Quad" is definitely written in an American accent. It's 11% ABV and, typically of Kasteel, tastes like all of it and more. Even before tasting there's an intensely sweet chocolate aroma and this follows straight through into the flavour which is unpleasantly sickly. By way of balance there's just a touch of wheaty breakfast cereal dryness, but it does little to counteract the building layers of hot mocha, adding an old coffee sweatiness to the syrupy chocolate. So, not a subtle beer. Maybe the brashness is deliberate, designed to appeal to the broes who'll chug an 11%-er and pretend to like it. Not me though. This beer needs to go away and calm down.

Something much lighter to follow: Session 4 is the abruptly-named collaboration between London's Brew By Numbers and Brussels's De La Senne, top notch operations both. Yes it's 4% ABV -- insanely low strength for Belgium -- and from looking at it I was expecting to see "east coast IPA" in the description: it's that sort of opaque pale yellow. That's where the similarity ends, however. It's billed as a blonde ale and that's how it smells: all cereals and honey. It's rather more complex on tasting, introducing a lovely moist melon fruitiness and a very slight hop acridity on the finish. This isn't a million miles from Senne's own classic pale ale Taras Boulba, though like Taras Boulba I think it would be even better if it cleaned the yeast out. But that's not the way of things in Belgium, or Bermondsey, for that matter. Onward!

The next beer lays its cards right on the table with the name: Full of Hops, a white IPA by Het Nest Brewery in northern Flanders. It's the pale lemon yellow of a typical witbier, hazy but much less so than the previous beer. I get a rather homebrewish twang from the aroma, a sort of earthy funk that I don't believe belongs in either wit or IPA. A big burst of fizz is the first impression in the gob, but behind this there's a rather cultured and elegant beer, with a dry prosecco grape character and then a more intense hop burn in the finish. White IPAs aren't normally my favourite beer style but this one dodges the soapy pitfalls rather well. Still smells rank though, which is unfortunate.

Enough craft messing, it's soberly traditional Dupont next, and their Bière de Miel organic honey beer. They've got their money's worth out of them bees as the end result is 8% ABV. It's a hazy pale orange colour and smells warm and sugary with that uniquely Belgian savoury yeast funk. I get more honeydew melon in this, but it's a lot more: intensely sweet. That turns to a distinctly honeyish perfume in the finish, one which fades off the palate in a mannerly, unsticky, way. As expected, this is a classically understated sort of honeybomb, showing off the key ingredient but not getting in the drinker's face with heavy amounts of booze or sugar. I don't know that I'd drink more than 250ml at a time but it's an entertaining sipper which leaves a pleasant wholesome warmth in the pit of the stomach.

And lastly Viven Master IPA. I thought I'd covered this in my last Viven round-up back in 2012 but it turns out I didn't. Having really liked the double IPA I was expecting big things from it. It's a muscular 7% ABV, though pale and innocent-looking in the glass. Quite a bit of alcoholic heat comes through in the aroma, with just a small element of juicy peach struggling to make itself heard. It really steps up to the mark in the flavour, however, where the soft stonefruit is right out at the front, backed by bitterer grapefruit and lime. The two sides work perfectly in tandem for a well-rounded classic US-style IPA experience, minus any crystal malt toffee, thankfully, and only a slight yeast burr serves to remind you that this is actually a Belgian. Like the honey beer, a building belly warmth is its legacy after it has departed from the palate.

A bit of a ropey start to this lot but some lovely examples of the Belgian brewer's art here.

Crushing hard

What are those people with the exploding stockpots up to? Why are they so terrified? As usual with Brasserie De La Senne the entertainment starts before the cap comes off.

Crushable Saison was brewed in collaboration with Tired Hands brewing of Pennsylvania. It's 5% ABV and certainly looks like a saison: yellowish and hazy to the point of opacity, and it has the massive amounts of fizz you'd expect from the Energizer bunny of beer yeasts. The similarity more or less ends there, however. While there's a hint of wheatiness and barnyard in the aroma the dominant smells are sharp grapefruit and lemon zest. There is less sharpness in the flavour and far more juice: mango, nectarine and peach, with just a rasping dryness on the end as a final reminder of its true nature.

Taking an innocent saison and C-hopping it nine ways from Sunday is probably neither big nor clever but it does make for rather good beer. This is one for drinking hyper-fresh, so you've probably missed the best of it by now, but hopefully there'll be a repeat or a clone. I can see this being a very agreeable younger sister to Taras Boulba.

Leuven large

A return to Belgium was top of my to-do list for this year. It's been so long they've probably changed all the beers in my absence. Certainly there was no shortage of new things to try. Most of the weekend was spent in Leuven, the university town near Brussels playing host to both the Zythos Beer Festival and the EBCU spring meeting. More on the the former later.

I arrived into town on a sweltering hot afternoon and started with a leisurely stroll from the station to the town centre. I'd been here once before, 11 years ago, and the Domus brewpub was among the first I ever drank in. It hadn't changed: still a slightly rambly multi-level bar, all bare brick and bric-à-brac, with the brewery in an adjacent building. A friendly waiter showed me to a table I could plonk myself at and I picked the unfiltered pils from the menu, a beer somebody chose to call Con Domus and nobody chose to stop them.

At first I thought it was a mistake: the beer that arrived was perfectly clear, the clear gold of many an industrial lager. The flavour was a lot more interesting, however: sweet at first, then suddenly bitter, reminding me of dipping a finger into hopped malt extract. A simple, decent beer, and bang on the money after a long journey on a warm day.

At this point I spotted the three-beer tasting tray on the menu and opted for that, confirming for myself that it was the house pils I'd just had, not a macro alternative. The other regular beer they make is Nostra Domus, a hazy dark orange ale with lots of very typical Belgian yeast esters. The carbonation is low and there's a little toffee but not much else. Another simple beer but pleasantly full-flavoured. Too many mass-market Belgian amber ales have an unpleasant watery core, but I have no such criticism to make of this.

The seizoen on the day was a Blond, though I thought it was a witbier the first I saw it, as it was the exact same hazy yellow colour. An immediate kick of nutmeg spice begins things, followed by a little bit of banana and a growing warmth from the alcoholic vapours. Eventually it just got a little too heavy to enjoy properly and had me hankering for the cleanliness of the pils again.

The designated meeting point for EBCU delegates was M-Café, attached to the city museum. The selection here was certainly a cut above the normal museum café, with five non-macro beers on tap and dozens of bottled options. Special of the day was a comparison tray of St Bernardus Abt. 12 and Westvleteren 12 for €8. You wouldn't get that in Collins Barracks. I ordered a Taras Boulba while I made up my mind what to have next and, occasionally, socialise with people.

A popular option among the group was Hanssens Oude Gueuze, a brand I was completely unfamiliar with, so that's what I had next. It's a fun little lambic, cloudy orange and with the full bricks-and-gunpowder aroma but totally smooth on the palate; all its sharp edges have been rounded off with time. I got a shock when I saw Ommegang on the blackboard, but this isn't from Duvel-Moortgat's New York operation, it's by Brouwerij Haacht, one of their Keizer Karel series. There's not much going on in it: it's a middle-of-the-road 8% ABV blonde ale with some nice herbal bitterness but then a nasty contrast of dry fizziness and alcoholic burn. Time to see what's on tap.

Taking a chance on Caulier Special Extra, I found it to be a lovely light sessioner. Just 4.3% ABV, a hazy pale gold and with wonderful jasmine perfume flavours. Very clean and sinkable. The tap next to it intrigued me: Alpaïde, from Nieuwhuys, an independent brewery in the town of Hoegaarden. Well done them. It's a rich and fruity 9% ABV dark ale, brimming with the raisin and fig notes typical of top-notch dubbel.

There's an Alpaïde Blond too, another standard strong one which is decent, unfussy and miles better than the Ommegang. I found it in Metafoor, a relaxed and hip-but-not-too-hip café bar not far from the main city square which my fellow Irish delegate John and I visited on the Friday of the trip. We came there from Wiering, another multilevel bar one street away, where I'd had yet another blond ale, Wolf 7, which has some very nice candy and meadow blossom flavours going on.

Once started, a series has to be continued, so on to Wolf 8: a decent dubbel with a fair whack of prune to it but not a whole lot else going on and far far too fizzy for my liking.

A wrong turn on Friday night brought us into a student dive bar where we sat at the back and pretended to fit in. From the taps under the DJ box there was Hector Tripel, an interesting mix of herbs, sugary sweetness and boozy heat. Quite easy drinking so perfect for when you just need to drink up and get out. Last port of call that evening was De Blauwe Kater, a wonderfully relaxed watering hole hidden up a secluded alley. I took the opportunity to make some notes on the legendary Saison Dupont, though it's hard to say more than: it's straight up what saison is supposed to be -- dry, clean with just a little gunpowder naughtiness. This, combined with the proprietress's complete lack of hurry to close up, made that a late evening.

Saturday was ZBF, after which my palate could do nothing but plonk itself on a stool back at Metafoor and drain glass after glass of Rodenbach. On Sunday we went to Brussels and my prime target here was Moeder Lambic Fontainas. Traffic was slow in the long ultra-modern pub, and the beer list surprisingly short by Belgian standards -- only a few dozen options -- but all obviously hand picked. Several of the draught specials were Italian and I opened with X-Ray by Brewfist. This imperial porter is 8.5% ABV, pouring jet black with a creamy ivory head. It's fantastically smooth, offering all the roasted coffee and dark chocolate you want, plus a cheeky hop nip just at the tail end. The perfect Sunday brunch in a glass.

The house beer is Band of Brothers by De La Senne, with quite wonderful artwork, as usual. This was being served from cask, the first time I've seen something other than lambic served this way in Belgium. It's a pale and hazy yellow-orange, with a touch of yeasty sharpness in the aroma. None of that on tasting however, mixing a beautiful fresh apricot character with some lip-smacking thirst-quenching tannins. Overall, a very pleasant blend of the good parts of Belgian blond and English bitter.

The main event for me was Tilquin Quetsche. I hadn't heard of this until the day before, when it sold out rapidly at ZBF. It's a plum lambic from Belgium's newest blendery and pours a happy shade of blushing pink. The aroma is pure barnyard with perhaps a hint of raisin fruitiness behind it. The first thing I got on tasting it was wood, followed by a dash of plum and then a massive salivatory rush as the sour finish kicks in. The fruit and the funk give the whole sensation of eating plums round the back of a cattle shed, which is noteworthy in itself, but I've never encountered a beer that has made my mouth water like this. I look forward to what they come up with next at Tilquin.

And there's another from them and more Belgian breweries coming up in the next post, covering Belgium's biggest annual festival of beer.

A rare occurrence

Hooray for freebies! This collection arrived courtesy of Molson Coors Ireland who seem to be on a bit of a PR drive at the moment, hot on the heels of their recent acquisition of the Irish microbrewing veteran Franciscan Well down in Cork. No Rebel Red in the bundle, however. Instead there was a bottle of Sharp's Doom Bar: a dull brown bitter which even from the cask I've never been a fan of, and which isn't in any way helped by the clear glass bottle. Also a bottle each of rightly acknowledged classic English IPA Worthington's White Shield and the newer blonde ale Red Shield: a worthy sibling. A bottle of P2 imperial stout would have closed off this set from the William Worthington Brewery in Burton nicely, but moochers can't be choosers.

And then the ones that really interested me: three brand extensions from the company's American faux-craft line, Blue Moon. The styles are varied -- a pale ale, an amber ale and an abbey beer -- yet the strengths are pretty uniform at around 5½% ABV.

I opened the Belgian-Style Pale Ale first, a beer known elsewhere as Pale Moon. I notice the unpleasantness a few years ago with the Confederation of Belgian Breweries hasn't prevented them describing this as a "Belgian Pale Ale" elsewhere on the label, despite it never having been near the low countries in its life. Corporate shenanigans aside, how does it taste? Well, not of very much. It's far more of a dark amber than would be normal for a pale ale, and there's a weight which comes with that: a slightly sugary malt thing, though without any of the caramel or toffee depth that one might expect. On top of this there's a mild fruity tang which I think owes more to the orange peel and hibiscus they've inexplicably thrown in here than the Cascade hops they also claim. The label adds further that wheat has been included, making the whole thing a sort of hybrid of standard Blue Moon and pale ale. Odd that it doesn't have more going on in it then, but it's not unpleasant either. Anyone looking for an American-style pale ale, or something in the Taras Boulba genre, will be sorely disappointed.

I was hoping for something a bit more interesting from Blue Moon Spiced Amber Ale. This is a few grades darker: a beautiful chestnut red and lighter in texture than the Pale Ale. Complex it isn't, but it's certainly interesting. The one flavour that jumps out is the cinnamon, toasted grain and brown sugar of Christmas cookies, not in any way sickly or artificial, but smooth and pleasantly warming. This is one of two Blue Moon winter seasonals and is perfectly, seasonally winterish.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said of Blue Moon Winter Abbey Ale. This poured quite a pale, clear red and completely headless, despite lots of interfering fizz. Unsurprisingly it's sweet and caramelly but this isn't given any fruity depth by any Belgian yeast flavours, which makes it a non-runner as an abbey beer. Overall it's just too thin and one-dimensional to be worth anyone's time, especially since it'll likely be sharing shelf space and price brackets with several world-class Belgian dubbels.

Generally speaking, Molson Coors's attempt to twist their passable orangey wheat beer into different styles is not something that's in the drinker's interest, even when he's getting the bottles for nothing.

Belgian Vogue

The label looks like it was cut from a mid-'80s fashion mag, though the effect is somewhat ruined by the unglamourous title of La Grognarde. It's a "hoppy blonde" from Brasserie Sainte-Hélène in the far south of Wallonia, not far from Orval.

I'm always a little skeptical of anything the Belgians call hoppy, since the strong yeast-derived flavours have a tendency to override the finer points of hop character. Nevertheless, the hops -- Saaz and Brewers Gold -- haven't been skimped on here. The first indication of this was in the skunky whiff when the cap came off: you didn't think the green champagne bottle through, did you?

Poured into a glass and given a more considered sniff there's a stronger, more complex oily pith aroma from the hazy pale orange beer. The carbonation is surprisingly light and the alcohol a mere 5.5% ABV so it's quite sessionable for a Belgian blonde. The central flavour is deliciously juicy with hints of sherbet and only a mild background hum from the earthy Belgian yeast, barely noticeable on the first pour from the large bottle, though louder on the second. Maybe it's the influence of that northern European yeast, but I'd never have guessed there was Saaz in here.

I'm impressed, overall. It's properly citric and refreshing, very drinkable while still having all the depth of character of a small-batch Belgian ale. I would quite happily rank this in the same league as De La Senne's much-loved Taras Boulba, though I award extra points for the bigger bottle and the advantage that gives to the hops.

De La Senne and sensibility

We're still in hop country today, we've just moved a few thousand miles east. It's a big country, OK? The beer is my second from the relatively new Brussels beer company De La Senne, and describes itself as an "Extra Hoppy Ale". Given the iconoclastic nature of their excellent low-strength stout, I was expecting Taras Boulba to be similarly unBelgian. With the sediment settled, it poured the way crappy lagers in TV ads do: beautifully clear and golden and frothy. But the end result was a hazy pale yellow beer, infused with the reawakened yeast.

And that yeast anchors the beer firmly in its home country. Yes, there's a bit of juicy melon in there, and there's a finish full of dry, back-of-the-throat, tobacco-like bitterness, but that sharp tang could only be the result of Belgian ale yeast in all its gritty glory.

Far from a daring, bold new Belgian style, Taras Boulba offers us all the fun of Belgian bottle-conditioned golden ales in a highly sensible 4.5% ABV package. Bigger bottles please.