Popernicus rises

My beer bucket list is, was, a short one. Bamberg came off it in 2014; Portland last year; and the Toer de Gueze back in May. The only other item is one that had been on the list since the very beginning, so long that I regularly forgot about it for long spells, though never quite lost interest in it completely. The Poperinge Hop Festival happens once every three years, in the heart of the West Flanders hop-growing region. It's a celebration of the harvest on which the area's fortune was traditionally made and which, judging from the fields surrounding the town, is still part of the economy. The 2014 iteration was covered excellently on Belgian Smaak in this post, and it seems that the festival doesn't change; everything was pretty much the same when I arrived for 2017's outing.

It's not a beer festival as such. Various events are spread over the weekend including the marching band tattoo, the election of the Hop Queen and all culminating in a three-hour parade on the Sunday, describing every aspect of hop growing culture in flamboyant, and often quite confusing detail. The friends and enemies of the hop plant was a highlight, with its children dressed as weevils and a lady in grey lycra interpretively pole-dancing wind burn. It's not the sort of thing you see every day. All festivities are overseen by Popernicus, the spaced out ladybird mascot and ambassador.

At the top of the town is the feesttent, a vast Oktoberfest-style marquee where the only beer on sale is Jupiler. One of those Grampa-Simpson-in-the-burlesque-house turnabout moments. Down in the main square of Poperinge, however, the open space is occupied with Lekker Westhoeks, a celebration of local food and drink with stalls selling cheese, sausage, chocolate, ice cream, and of course beer. The beer stall is the biggest, listing 32 Flemish beers, with generous samples from the bottle going at €2.50 a throw. That's a reasonable price for the Westvleteren 12 that topped the list, but what else did they have?

I opened my account with Hop Hanker, from client brewer Homo Beerectus. It's a single-hop IPA made with locally grown Sorachi Ace. And it turns out that Belgian Sorachi is just as effective as Sorachi from anywhere else: this is massively pithy, the citrus peel effect buoyed up on a chunky Belgian texture. It's hard to believe that something this substantial is just 5.5% ABV, but it is. There's not a whole else going on beyond the orangey hops, but it does its one thing well and when it's only a sample that's not a problem.

Beside it stands another IPA: All Inclusive by De Plukker. This one has a bit more Belgian welly at 8% ABV and piles on the sugar and yeast resulting in big floaty bits and a sweet aroma that turns to a saccharine bitter tang on tasting. What's missing is any discernible hop flavour, making for a very disappointing overall picture, especially given the name. And at a hop festival too!

I couldn't resist giving Troubadour Magma Hop Twist a go, the basic Magma double IPA being an all-time favourite of mine. "Hop Twist" is an annual series of variations, and in 2017 they seem to have just scaled everything back. The ABV is down to 7% and the bright colourful hops that are Magma's calling card are very muted too. The aroma is a slightly soapy citrus and herb thing, while the flavour is clean but a little dull: a dash of mint being the most distinctive feature. It's fine, but really doesn't deserve that association with Magma.

The other beer in the picture was chosen solely for the alphabet soup of a name: Gemeldorp Verpleegster. It means "nurse", apparently. It's a golden ale of 6.5% ABV with added honey and herbs. There's not much else to say about it, however. It's cleanly flavoured to the point where I'd be prepared to believe it's a lager, and has a decent refreshing waxy bitterness. But that's as exciting as it gets.

Something strong and sippable was required for parade-watching on Sunday afternoon, and that was Den Twaalfth by 't Gaverhopke, whose name is also its ABV and recommended serving temperature. This is jet black and completely flat, tasting sweetly and boozily of rum and raisin. It still manages to stay light of body, however, which does wonders for its drinkability. It's one I would have liked to have taken a closer look at, but needs must.

Back at the stalls, De Ranke Simplex was next, the brewery's sort-of pils. It's a pale hazy yellow colour and opens on a zesty note, the bitterness growing to eventually become waxy and a little harsh. A lighter jasmine spice is present in the background, but the dominant feature is a big honking gritty yeast flavour that it would be much better off without. There's a decent beer under there somewhere.

The other beer this time is Gloriaan Tripel, a strangely dark amber version of the style. At 8.9% ABV it's not a total alcohol bomb, but it seems like one, with pear on the nose and a stronger acetone flavour, coupled with bitter aniseed. Too hot and heavy for my liking, with no spices or herbal finesse. Is it me or are decent clean tripels becoming rarer in Belgium?

One for the road was Stoute Pitte, a weighty 8%-er by Pater Pitte. In the Belgian style it's sweet, but there's a lot going on with that: caramel and liquorice to begin, turning to prune and warm Christmas pudding at the end. There's enough bitterness to keep it from cloying as well. A great one to end the festival on.

I'm told Lekker Westhoeks happens annually, so there's no need to wait until 2020 if this bit takes your fancy. I expect you won't get to see Popernicus, though. The Hop Museum is well worth a visit, if hop information isn't available in parade form.

We were staying in Ypres for the weekend, which should  have been a ten minute jaunt on the train. Unfortunately, Belgian Rail chose this weekend to close the line for engineering works so it was a less-reliable bus replacement service instead. On the plus side, Poperinge station has a nice little bar attached, Flou's, and we awaited our bus there. The area seems to have resisted the domination of national lager brands and most pubs bore the livery of older local marques such as SAS and Bavik which I've never seen elsewhere. Flou's is a Bavik house. Unsurprisingly, Bavik Super Pils is not great. There's the standard cooked corn flavour of eurolager though with more of a hop kick than might be expected. I found it a bit severe overall, something its brewers probably regard as character.

From the bottled selection, herself went with another by De Plukker, mentioned above. I had heard that Tripel Plukker is their best, but it really didn't taste it to me. It pours with lots of unattractive suspended bits through it. The aroma is a headache-inducing mix of phenols and higher alcohols while the taste is savoury: caraway and diesel, all set on a greasy, sickly body. There is some peach fruit buried deep within it, almost completely out of reach. Maybe I got a bad bottle, but either way this was not a good beer.

There is one brewery in the town of Ypres: Kazematten, established in 2014. I had the first of theirs at the festival: Tremist,  a saison. It's quite a plain one with banana laid on thick and just a little pepper in the dry finish. I felt there should be more going on at 6.7% ABV.

The flagship brand at Kazematten is The Wipers Times and I got hold of a bottle of 12 in a local shop. It's a 6.2% ABV blonde ale, smelling enticingly of honey and peach nectar while tasting principally of vanilla custard. A stimulating fizz keeps it clean and overall it's a cut above your standard Belgian blonde.

Grotten Santé gave me pause when I saw it. The branding is very similar to St. Bernardus's Grottenbier, the dark ale designed for them by Pierre Celis when he was on the payroll. St. Bernardus is only around the corner in Watou as well, so it's not like they won't see it. Only when I sat down to write about it did I discover that Kazematten is a subsidiary of St. Bernardus, and that this beer is actually a slightly tweaked version of it. The casements of Ypres provide a cave-ageing facility that Bernardus don't have at headquarters.

For all that, the beer is another plain and simple one: dark red-brown, 6.5% ABV and quite dry with just a dusting of cinnamon across it. It's nice to have a dark beer that doesn't try to burn you with booze or smother you with banana so it's probably quite a welcome addition to the scene. Not really one to write home about, however.

On Monday morning, with the trains back online, we packed up and headed on our way. Ypres and Poperinge were just one stage of a week long jaunt across the Low Countries. Next stop: Bruges!

Thar she blows!

The Session this month includes one of my hobby-horse subjects within its remit. Mr. David J is our host and "Don't Believe The Hype" is the topic he has chosen: does a beer's reputation affect how we perceive it?

Following on from this issue is the whole matter of high profile "white whale" beers: the limited editions and hard-to-finds that plague the beer world. Not that they're bad beers, normally. My experiences with the likes of Westvleteren 12 and Dark Lord have been very positive indeed, but there are plenty of beers out there in the same league that don't have so much of a fuss made about them. The drive that some beer drinkers have to capture the white whales unsettles me a little. The make-it-anywhere-from-anything nature of beer means that the notion of special rare beers is a bit ridiculous, and label-chasing makes beer culture a little less of a pleasant place to be. I find more than an echo of the wine snob about some of the Captain Ahabs I've encountered.

All this makes me a little wary when a new, rare, special, limited edition beer comes my way. Yes I want to drink it -- it's what I do -- but I end up trying not to make a big deal of it, unless it warrants it, of course. The hype ahead of the Franciscan Well's new one was substantial. Like last year's Shandon Century it's a strong-ish stout presented in a numbered 1 litre bottle. The big change this year is barrel-aging. At first the brewery gave no more detail than it was maturing in a cask acquired from the Irish Distillers plant in Midleton. The lack of whiskey specifics left me wondering if Irish Distillers simply don't distinguish between the casks used for their many whiskey brands, or whether the brewery didn't want their beer associated with Jackeen labels such as Jameson and Power's, produced in Cork though they may be. They came clean eventually and Franciscan Well Stout Aged in Jameson Irish Whiskey Casks is the full title: 7.8% ABV in a run of 900 bottles.

It pours out jet black but not thick or gloopy and the mouthfeel has a little creaminess yet remains light and easy-going. The carbonation level is set only little above token, of which I heartily approve. There's not much of an aroma either, but it seems to be mostly a sweet and slightly burnt treacle thing, with just a brief hit of the whiskey vapours if you inhale deeply enough.

Charmingly for a strong barrel-aged stout, it's not a smack in the face on the first sip. A host of flavours line up politely to be appreciated, starting with the dark dry roast, overlaid with more of that treacle and accompanied by subtle honey and vanilla from the Jameson. There's a surprise in store at the end when a fairly generous hop character asserts itself: the big vegetal, almost metallic, flavours I associate with bitter powerhouse stouts like Wrassler's XXXX. The hop tang is the takeaway from this feast of a stout. I wasn't expecting that.

No, it's not Dark Lord, true; and nor is it trying to be. But while it's a wonderful example of what you can do with barrel aging a stout it's not worth obsessing over either. It's barely possible to justify the €12 price tag it came with so it would be foolhardy, in my opinion, to pay multiples of this on the grey market. When it's gone, it's gone: accept it and wait for the next beer.

And by all accounts it may not be around much longer. Bottles have been selling fast in what's already a busy season for this sort of beer. And today offers a rare opportunity to try it from the cask at the source. Only two have been filled and one will be tapped tonight and given away free, and exclusively, to Beoir members. Drop along to North Mall from 8.30 and bring your membership card.

Or you can wait for the second cask, scheduled for public consumption at the Cask and Winter Ales Festival in the 'Well in a couple of months' time (edit: confirmed for 15-17 February 2013). I can't make it along this evening so am planning to be there early for that.

Everybody will be talking about it, after all.

Blind, or STFU

It started innocently enough nearly two years ago when I returned from Belgium full of the joys of Rochefort. I promised myself that at some point I'd sit down with the dubbel I believe to be my favourite -- Westmalle -- and the top two Rocheforts, and figure out which I liked best. Since then, largely due to Dave's infectious sense of sciencey fun, I've become massively enamoured of blind tasting as the only way one can really find out one's own opinion of a beer. So the taste-off, when it happened, would be done blind.

Then a little bit of project drift crept in: so much is written about Westvleteren 12 being supposedly the world's best beer, and I can't help thinking that its rarity value and resultant high price might have more to do with this than how it actually tastes. It would make sense that any blind tasting of strong dark Belgian ales should have one of these thrown in to see if its supposed brilliance shines through. And then I read that St Bernardus Abt 12 is made from basically the same recipe as Westvleteren 12, so obviously that should be included too. It's perhaps merciful that my own homemade dubbel was less than a week in the bottle or there would have been another.

As it was, last Saturday evening, Mrs Beer Nut and I lined up five bottles and five tasting glasses. With such complex beers I'm sure it's very difficult (and no fun) to do this properly scientifically, with all beers being the same age and kept in the same conditions for the same length of time. But these were of roughly similar vintages and had mostly been kept together over the 8-10 months they've been in the house. All were chilled in the same fridge to 10°C before serving.

While I was fetching the bottles, I reached over to tweet:

Preparing a blind tasting of Belgian ales: Rochefort 8, Rochefort 10, Bernardus Abt 12, Westvleteren 12 and Westmalle Dubbel. Which is best?

which garnered quite a bit of a response:

robsterowski@thebeernut Westvleteren is the best beer in the galaxy, everyone knows that. I've never had it but I know it is. ;)

StanHieronymus@thebeernut Curious to read differences perceived between R8 and R10. W12 could be the best on the table . . . or the worst.

Garthicus@thebeernut had my first Westy 12 a few weeks back & loved it.

maeib@thebeernut Rochefort 10 for me, although Berny 12 is very very close. The results of the tasting will make interesting reading

larsga@thebeernut Cool idea! I hope you'll blog the results? (Dumb question, I suppose. :)

thebeergeek@thebeernut r8

taleofale@thebeernut all good beers so the best is less relevent than the fun tasting.

And of course, Reuben is quite right: the fun bit is the most important.

The aim was to pick a favourite, but while I was at it, I decided I may as well have a go at trying to guess which was which. And I did get Westmalle Dubbel right, though I also had it ranked as my third favourite after what I had guessed were Rocheforts 10 and 8. Wrong!

The beer I picked as my favourite, the one with the most beautiful fluffy head, the one I wrote copious notes about, extolling its figgy nutty fruit flavours, on a big boozy base perfectly balanced by the spices, turned out to be Westvleteren 12. I will add, however, that it's still not worth upwards of €7 a bottle when you can go to the shop next door and buy any of the others for under a euro. Buy it to try it, but hunting after it and paying over the odds is just stupid.

In second place was a beer that tasted quite different -- with more of a gentle plummy roundness and nowhere near as much booze power, though quite dry and gassy with lots of stirred up sediment. Anyone familiar with Ron's anti-fizz stick should have no problem recognising the Abt 12. Definitely not a close relative of the Westvleteren.

As I said, I identified the third-place Westmalle correctly. I have it marked as sweet and quite strong-tasting which doesn't sound at all like Westmalle to me, and especially since, at 7% ABV it's quite a bit weaker than the others.

Finally, I couldn't pick between the last two so awarded them both joint fourth place. Both had quite a nasty cough-mixture heat to them that I found overpowering. I should really have known from the colour (third from the left) which one was Rochefort 8: it's supposed to be lighter than the others. Darker Rochefort 10 was no worse on the cough mixture front but lacked any extra complexities either.
(L to R: Westmalle Dubbel, Abt 12, Rochefort 8, Westvleteren 12, Rochefort 10.)

Or at least that's what I thought. Mrs Beer Nut found a caramel flavour in it which made Rochefort 10 her favourite. She actually put Abt 12 ahead of Westvleteren 12 in second and third place, finding the latter rather worty. The Westmalle she deemed rather light, and finally the Rochefort 8 got the wooden spoon from her for being too sweet.

I guess Abt 12 is our compromise beer, though I'm pleased to have a definitive answer that Westmalle Dubbel is still my general everyday drinking dubbel.

Lars Marius tweeted an interesting point on the poorly performing Rocheforts:

Were the Rocheforts new or old? They tend to have sharp higher alcohols when younger than 6-8 months. Much better when older.

Though I wouldn't describe what I found in the Rocheforts as "sharp", there's probably something to be said for leaving the remaining ones in the house to mature a while. To be continued...

And with the bottles recapped to keep the flies out, it was curry time. I went for Munsterbräu, a stubby-bottled lager that's been on super-special offer (10 for €5) in Superquinn for a while now. It's made in St Omer, France's beer capital, and somewhere with some cracking brews under its belt. And a lot of budget dreck.

Being in green glass, Munsterbräu is of course skunked, and the whiff hits the nostrils as soon as the cap comes off. The pour produces a fizzy lager on the pale side of pale. And yet... it's not awful. It's not in the least bit thin or watery, for instance, and there's no nasty sugariness, even when it warms. There's a slight thinness at the end, but it doesn't detract from it. Rather, it makes it less demanding and quite wonderfully refreshing when washing away vindaloo sauce: the main demand I place on my cooking lagers.

With the curry polished off it was back to the remains of the Belgians. One of the better ways to spend Saturday night in, I reckon.

Norse code

Of course, Knut did not arrive in Dublin with (as we say) one arm as long as the other. It's not in his nature, as evidenced at the bottom of this post from last year.

The bulk of the goodies he brought me this time were from a spectacular new brewpub in Flåm in western Norway. Ægir is named after the brewer to the gods of Norse mythology and was constructed in the style of Norway's iconic stave churches (the one from Oslo's folk museum is pictured right). Inside it's designed to resemble a Viking banqueting hall. The proprietor is an American, but the beers are as conscientiously produced as any I've tried from Norway's other craft breweries. In keeping with the theme, the labels feature a cheery Norseman and Celtic scrollwork doubtless plundered from the nearest Irish monastery.

I'll start with the blonde ale Bøyla. This pours rose gold with a lovely thick head. It's quite full-bodied if a bit fizzy, and tartness is the dominant feature of the flavour. It's definitely not bland in the way so many golden ales are, wearing its bitter fruitiness up front and then rebalancing at the end with some soothing smoothing malt notes. Definitely a cut above the standards of the style, but that's what I've come to expect from Norwegian craft beer. The alcoholic strength of all the Ægir beers is individually printed on the label with the best before date. My bottle of Bøyla features neither, so I'm just guessing that it's probably a relatively light beer, ideal for those clear sunny summer afternoons Norway does so well.

"Amber ale" is the stylistic subtitle on Rallar, and I'd say a lot of unwary drinkers will be surprised by what pours forth. Expecting something vaguely orange-coloured and quite malty, I instead got a dark brown fizzy affair with a mildly sour coffee-like aroma. There's lots of fizz again, making drinking this slow work. The malt is present in the heavy caramel foretaste but it's swiftly followed by a lactic sourness and a slightly metallic astringency. Sounds a bit unpleasant but the two do work together to create an enjoyable but very serious beer.

The brownness and coffee character of Rallar had me thinking of porter before I even opened Sumbel, Ægir's porter. Once more we have that lactic sourness present from the moment of uncapping and the pour is again very opaque: a muddy brown topped with a creamy off-white head which subsides before long, leaving a tan skim. Porter's trademark brown malt is here in spades, in the colour and in the definite but not overpowering dry coffee notes. The acidic sourness kicks in as well, but it's not allowed dominate the dark malt. The end result is something, to my mind, as porter as porter can be: brimming with flavour and eminently suppable.

And so we leave the lofty halls of Valhalla and finish up with a beer made by the hands of mere mortals. Apparently there was quite a fuss last year over Haandbryggeriet Romjul: each branch of one supermarket chain was initially assigned only a single case of this Christmas beer, which put the country's ølhunder on full alert. Knut has the full story here, though he tells me that the beer later became more readily available. Hence I was lucky enough to be given one.

It's another opaque brown affair, though much more smoothly textured than the Ægirs. Downright creamy, in fact. Dark sour fruit is the main character here: damsons and plums, mainly, with just a tang of tobacco on the end. Despite a mere 4.5% ABV, this reminds me a lot of the heavier, darker Trappists. A session-strength Westvleteren 12? Yes please.

I was saddened to read of the passing of Atna, Norway's third-biggest craft brewery. I do hope Ægir succeeds in carving a niche for itself either nationally, by export, or just by attracting visitors to its amazing home on the Sognerfjord. Why not all three?

The outsiders

The foreign beer selection at Pig's Ear was astounding, but I wasn't there to drink non-British beer. Nevertheless, when one of my tablemates offered round something particularly worthy to taste, who am I resist? Two Danes first, both from Ølfabrikken. Their Brown is a very tasty drop: bittersweet, round and rich but, like lots of Scandanavian craft beer, a smidge too much carbonation. The same brewery's Porter is an even more delicious proposition. It packs a mighty, uncompromising bitterness which is brimming with coffee and chocolate flavours -- I defy anyone not to enjoy this.

Still in parts northern, I was offered a taste of Nøgne Ø Imperial Stout, a smooth and easy-drinking black beer which offers a wonderful warming sensation. Yet another classic from the Grimstad crew.

Last of all, some Westvleteren 12 came my way. Sure, this is as rich and fruity as everyone says, but the flavours are kind of muted and more subtle than I like in this style. I think I'd take one of the higher-digit Rocheforts first, frankly.

And no sooner was I home than it was time to head off again. Beer fun in Amsterdam: next on The Beer Nut.