Latin lessons

The Borefts Beer Festival tends to be a good place to get a cross section of brewing in Spain and Italy, and many of the leading lights from both countries have featured over the years. Two breweries from each were present at the 2022 edition.

We'll start in Italy, with Canediguerra in the north-west. Canediguerra Vienna Lager seems like a good opener, being one of those Vienna lagers which does nothing fancy with the style specs and is wonderful as a result. Not that it's plain: there's a fantastic complexity, perhaps aided by the slightly high 5.4% ABV. That seems to give it a nougat richness, with nuts and caramel on a slightly roasted and extremely crisp base. It's very impressive how they managed to balance the malt sweetness with clean dryness, and an extra surprise was the golden colour, which those in the know reckon to be the style's appropriate shade.

Sitting next to it in the photo, looking like everyone else's Vienna lager, is Objekt 007. This is described as a "fruity oud bruin" and is an almost unreasonable 8.6% ABV. It's not a style I particularly enjoy and this is a good example of why, from the solventy acetone aroma to the flavour of sticky throat lozenges. It tries to be sour but the sugar overpowers that. Some pleasant cherry notes are the only aspect I liked; otherwise it's just not for me.

Down closer to Rome there's Ritual Lab, selling beer since 2014 but not previously to me. As is my wont, I took the measure of them with their pilsner, Ritual Pils. It was a genuine surprise to find that this is in the Italian Pilsner style, modelled after Birrificio Italiano's Tipopils. As such, aroma hops feature strongly and from the innocent golden 4.9%-er comes a powerful waft of spicy perfume -- jasmine and bergamot. That follows straight through into the flavour and is so concentrated as to be a little bit shocking and difficult at first. I got used to it, however, and by the end of my small sample was thoroughly enjoying it. Sadly I neglected to go back for anything else, but I'll be keeping an eye out for any other Ritual Lab wares to come my way.

To Spain, then. Or, more accurately, the Basque country. Another new brewer to me was the poorly-named Drunken Bros from Bilbao. They too were at the pils game, claiming to have a German Pils Remastered. Big talk. It's another very pale one, this time 5% ABV. I didn't like the plasticky aroma but it probably shows that they're using proper German hops in the proper way. The mouthfeel is beautifully soft while the flavour offers a total contrast to the smell, being lightly perfumed, the floral notes turning to a gentle herbal bitterness in the finish. The confrontational name is unnecessary, but it really is an excellent example of pilsner in the German fashion.

Four beers and no kerr-azy imperial stout yet? The Bros have us covered. Kthulhu is 11.3% ABV and brewed with hazelnuts. It's very black and, presumably thanks to the nut oils, mostly headless. The aroma is a happy blend of cherries and espresso while hazelnut is at the centre of the flavour, balanced by drier roast and boosted by a warming liqueur effect. It's dangerously easy drinking and very nicely done overall, with lots of character but no silliness.

Laugar has been at Borefts before, and is familiar enough to have been allowed a collaboration with De Molen. Named after the stereotypical clothing of both breweries' homes, it's called Klompen & Txapela, and is a "smoked saison wine" infused with bourbon and chilli peppers. It's 13.6% ABV and a murky ochre colour. As expected the flavour is a riot of competing tastes, showing kippers, brown sugar and sweet sherry, most prominently: a combination nobody would, or should, willingly throw together. I've no idea if it works or not, it's just weird. This one is definitely built to be a festival special, served in small measures to the brave or foolish, and then never seen again.

Laugur has a side project called Wild Nation, producing fancy 75cl bottles of funky stuff. It proved popular, though I only tried one of them: Zubiete. This is a wild ale fermented in Bordeaux wine barrels, clear yellow with a little vinegar and a lot of farmyard in the aroma. There's a certain white wine aspect to the taste but it lacks fruit, being thin and sharp. At 5.9% ABV, it should be richer. As is, this tasted like an experiment. Not to judge the whole project on one glass of one beer, but Wild Nation seems like it needs more practice before it's in the upper echelons of European wild beer brewing.

One more Borefts post to come, wrapping up all the other countries in attendance.

Broadening the horizons

I finished yesterday's post on a bit of a whine about BraufactuM and the whole overpriced corporate "gourmet" beer angle they seem to be pushing. I can't complain too much, though, as there were some very interesting imports on their stand next to their own stuff. For one thing they've acquired import rights to California's Firestone Walker. I took the opportunity to try Pale 31, the standard pale ale. I loved the flawless clear gold colour and the sharp citric aroma which immediately puts the palate on full alert. It's no hop bomb, however, being gently flavoured with hints of peaches and honeydew melon. One of those effortlessly delicious and drinkable beers. Double Jack is the brewery's double IPA and it's a mellow, warming one, again not overdoing things on the bitterness front, but not really on any other front either. A much better strong beer experience came from 14th Anniversary, an extremely boozy 12.5% ABV ale but one where all that heat doesn't matter, especially in a 100ml serve. Up front it wears a big smooth chocolate liqueur flavour: sinful and sumptuous.

A long-time stand-out on my list of must-drink beers is Baladin's Elixir and I was delighted to see it too was in BraufactuM's fridges. I requested a taster and, as no bottle was open already, my server popped a new one and the beer within exploded, foamily and messily, over the concrete floor of the Munich transport museum. Better there than at home or in a hotel room, I guess. Eventually, a sample was poured into a glass for me, at a 50% discount due to the inconvenience. And to be honest it wasn't the beer I'd been waiting for: hot smelling and rather characterless, like a first-attempt homebrewed dubbel. A surprising drop of the ball by the Piedmontese brewery there.

And speaking of hyped-up Italians, there was some Birrificio Italiano Tipopils knocking around and I secured a sip courtesy of Mark. It's quite nice, with a pleasant nettley bite, but to be honest I can't see what all the fuss is about. Maybe I need more than a mouthful to judge it properly.

While we're visiting the neighbours, a quick courtesy call on Austria whose brewers had banded together into a single large bar. Gusswerk were offering that German teenage classic the hemp beer, and theirs is called Synergy. While there's definitely some hempy pepperiness buried in it, it's mostly just a rather disappointing plain pils. At the other end of the bar Gusswerk were offering Horny Betty, a version of their Black Betty with added horny goat weed. I don't recall a style being named but it's dark brown and 9.2% ABV, tasting somewhere along the Belgian-style quadrupel to imperial stout spectrum: lots of dark fruit esters and lots of smooth chocolate too. Far from being a mere puerile novelty, the horny goat weed actually adds a pleasant herbal, medicinal character to the overall flavour.

On tasting Engelszell Gregorius back in February I mentioned I was looking forward to their next beer. Turns out I didn't have to wait too long because here it was: Benno, a tripel. Unfortunately it's not a great example of the style. Appropriately gold, it's missing the lovely fruit and honey and spice one would expect and is instead rather unpleasantly sharp. A shame.

Czech representation at BrauKunst Live! came in two flavours: the big bombastic glitz of Pilsner Urquell and on the other side of the hall, Honza Kočka, single-handedly flying the flag for his Nomád brand of ales. A question about how receptive the German market is to Czech IPA was shrugged off: Honza was mostly there to make contacts, drink beer and have fun. Sounds fair. Easy Rider was the Nomád beer everyone was talking about: a modest 4.8% ABV pale ale hopped with Chinook, Willamette and Cascade and bursting with fresh zingy citrus flavours on top of a fuller, weedier, hop funk. Above all it's sessionable, easy-going and sociable, hitting similar places as the Firestone Walker Pale 31. Its bigger brother is Karel, a 7.6% ABV IPA done entirely with Czech hop varieties. The end result is one of those warming, malt-driven IPAs very much echoing the English style for me. Very enjoyable but not for the hopheads. For them it has to be the novelty 13 Hops, brewed to 13° plato, so somewhere just north of 5% ABV, using wheat, caramalt and guess how many different kinds of hops. To be honest I could only taste nine or ten to begin with, but the citrus kick rises slowly on tasting, building to a sharp acidic finish from the full baker's dozen. It's a surprisingly clean beer, given everything that's gone into it.

We finish our visit to BrauKunst Live! tomorrow with some of the more traditional German beer styles.