A proper gander

Leiden is my usual base for the Borefts beer festival at De Molen in nearby Bodegraven. I usually stay by the station for ease of departure and haven't really done a proper beer tour of the city. Or hadn't, until I arrived a day early for the 2022 festival so had some time to explore.

One of the local breweries is the delightfully named Pronck. I found a couple of their wares at the Stadscafé van der Werff. I picked the Citra Rye Ale to begin, a hazy orange 5%-er. From the name I expected bitterness in spades but it's actually light and fruity, with fresh mandarin and mango instead of grapefruit and grass. The rye's contribution is a kind of aftershave-like spice, but nothing more severe than that. Overall, this is a delightfully juicy fellow, very much in the modern New England style and done very well.

For herself, Pronck Imperial Porter, a whopper at 11% ABV. It poured deep brown with lots of unpleasant-looking floaty bits and no head after the initial crackle of fizz. Despite the strength it's not hot, though has a thick and satisfying mouthfeel. Chocolate and cinnamon in the aroma becomes spiced Nutella in the flavour. Again, the bitterness is lower than expected, but again that's not really a problem. It's a little rough around the edges but still a delight to sip.

Stadsbrowhuis is a poky little brewpub by a canal with a very good selection of guest beers but I thought it only proper to have one of their own. That was Batch #3, which sounds a bit ephemeral but they've been making it for several years. It's a pale ale of 5% ABV and a hazy dark yellow. There's not much by way of aroma and a sadly low-key flavour, offering a little lemon and biscuit but not much else. It's drinkable; there are no off flavours, but it's thoroughly unexciting and I'm actually a little surprised that they keep making it. I guess there's an audience who want something safe and unfussy.

Next stop was the bustling sports bar Vi-Kings, a place which has a fun, down-at-heel lived-in character while also well maintained and perfectly clean. I spotted a barley wine of interest on the menu, from another local operation, IF. It's called Moscatel Mania, and indeed there are grapes in it, well, raisins. It's 9.1% ABV and a murky brown colour. It certainly smells vinous and has a certain tangy sourness in the flavour. Aside from that it's a well-made barley wine, dark and rich with lots of warming fruitcake. The gimmick didn't quite work as I expected it, but I have no complaints.

And across the table, a porter from De Molen I hadn't tried before: Hamer & Sikkel. At 8.2% ABV it's a strong one and goes all in on the roast, with an aroma of severely burnt toast. The flavour is softer and smoother, offering hazelnuts and creamy latte or mocha. The usual De Molen finesse when it comes to strong and dark beers is very apparent.

Lemmy's Beer and Whiskycafé was next, an unpretentious corner bar with plenty of interest on the taps. My eye was immediately caught by the 2017 vintage of Gulpener Winter IJsbock which was pouring. This freeze-distilled beer is dark brown and 10.5% ABV with a smooth texture and a surprisingly light body. There's a big dose of diacetyl in the aroma, the caramelised butterscotch mixing with star anise and cardamom. I got a sense of fortified wine from the flavour: nothing jarring or dramatic, but a mellow dark fruit character. It's perhaps not as characterful as the aroma suggested it would be, but was still very enjoyable, and impressive for a large brewery like Gulpener.

The Sisters Brewery in Utrecht makes an imperial stout called Pchela, and Lemmy's was pouring Pchela Special, a slightly stronger version with vanilla. Even at 11.5% ABV it's a dense beastie, apprent immediately from the huge caramel, chocolate and honeycomb aroma. The opening flavour is pure caramelised sugar, tasting exactly like one of those lattices that were fashionable on desserts some years back. There's a sprinkle of cinnamon, some floral topnotes, then a vegetable bitterness leading to a hard ristretto finish. Quite a workout, but fascinating and invigorating. They weren't lying when they called it Special.

In 2020 Heineken moved its corporate headquarters from the big brewery in Zoeterwoude to a new purpose-built office beside Leiden station. In one corner of the ground floor they've installed a chic restaurant and cocktail bar called, of course, Freddy*s (why the asterisk?) and have added a small brewkit to produce beers in-house. They don't seem to pay much attention to it: information about the beers is sparse and the staff weren't at all knowledgeable about what was available. I still managed to coax two out of them.

First up, Freddy*s West Coast IPA. This is 6.5% ABV and a strangely dark amber colour. It turns out it's one of the spicy and savoury sort of IPAs, straight out of the 1990s craft beer playbook. In place of grapefruit I got black pepper and basil, on top of a lot of crystal malt. It works, and the result has more than a passing resemblance to Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and its contemporaries: beers which straddle the old and new worlds, taking elements from both.

Just tapped was Freddy*s Antwerp Pale Ale, described as an answer to De Koninck's. This is 7% ABV and the appropriate shade of red with an aroma of fresh peach and apricot. The flavour is all tea and strawberries with a little dry farmyard funk but none of the horrific buttery diacetyl of the beer it's trying to copy. As such, I thought it was rather an improvement.

It seems they're capable of making good beer at Freddy*s; it's a shame that the beer doesn't seem to be valued by the venue's management.

I enjoyed getting a look at what Leiden has to offer beerwise, and several of these are places I'll make the time to return to when I'm next in town.

Year-end pints

This month makes it ten years since Mark Dredge and Andy Mogg suggested categories that beer bloggers might like to use for an annual run-down of the best in beer. I've stuck with it steadfastly since, even if I do change my criteria for the winners each year, and sometimes during the process of writing that year's entry. It's not meant to be taken seriously or considered meaningful, is what I'm saying.

2019 has been a dramatic year in beer, in Ireland and abroad. To mull it all over I've chosen something with a bit of wintery heft: Abbaye de Vauclair Biere Ambrée, a large bottle I picked up for loose change in Lidl. They're not lying about the "ambrée", it's a very ambrée hombre indeed: a beautiful clear polished-copper colour with a generous head which expertly laces the glass. I wasn't prepared for how sweet it is; it is extremely sweet, suggesting treacle, muscovado sugar and similar cake-baking ingredients you're not meant to eat raw. I was a few sips in before I noticed the balancing factor: a dry and slightly bitter tannic twang, which I'm guessing has both a hop and malt component. It doesn't stop the sugary onslaught but it does make it manageable, rendering the beer drinkable as a result. The sum total is a beer that's quite light-bodied for 6.1% ABV and tastes like a cup of very sweet cold tea. I quite liked it, but it's not one you can rush, which suited my needs perfectly. And so...

The Golden Pint Awards 2019

Best Irish Cask Beer: Porterhouse Yippy IPA
The decision to replace heavy, resinous Hop Head with pale dry Yippy was not without controversy. For the record I still miss HH's clean punchiness. To begin with, I treated Yippy like a newborn younger sibling, resenting its usurpation. It was some months later that I first encountered it on cask at Porterhouse Temple Bar and finally got it. I suspect the brewery has sneaked a Yorkshire bitter onto the Irish market dressed as an American. On cask it has that same blend of honeyed pale malt and waxy hop bitterness. It's clean, elegant, moreish and generally a fiver a pint. 5% ABV is a bit too high for a proper guzzlable session beer (bring back TSB!) so you have to pace yourself, but the result is very rewarding.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Land & Labour Coolship (2018)
The sour and the funk may become a bit of a theme in this year's edition as some Irish brewers are getting extremely good at this sort of thing. This one, sampled at this year's Hagstravaganza, was damn near lambic-grade and a very clear indication that local brewers are approaching that standard. There was also a blueberry version showing just how easy it is to mess up something this delicate. Steer your Coolship straight and true, and everything will be OK.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Wide Street Saison Sunday
It's their only bottle, but still the best beer they've released so far. I reviewed it here only a couple of weeks ago, but I hope I can avoid accusations of late-year bias by pointing out that I drank relatively few bottled Irish beers this year now that the can is king. I can see this category becoming the purvue of barrel aged beers. That said...

Best Irish Canned Beer: Wicklow Wolf Pointy Shoes
The canned Golden Pint has to go to a dark beer as we have had a slew of worthy examples from various local breweries in recent months. Larkin's Morrigan, White Hag Festa Nuda, Lineman's Astral Grains and Wicklow Wolf's own Apex and Locavore all deserve a share in this prize. But Pointy Shoes, brewed to mark Wicklow Wolf's fifth anniversary, and as the valedictory beer from the Bray premises, went beyond what any Irish stout barrel-ager has managed to create thus far.

Best Overseas Draught: Ca' del Brado Û baccabianca
Chasing the grape ales has become a travel pastime for me, one which doesn't always land great beer. I hit the jackpot in Billies in Antwerp, however, with this one from Emilia-Romagna. Ca' del Brado is a brewery now firmly on my drink-on-sight list.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: 3 Fonteinen Cuvée Armand & Gaston 2018
Every year should involve ticking a few things off the list, and I was happy to realise an ambition I'd had since the 2017 Toer de Geuze to go to 3 Fonteinen's tap room on an ordinary day and drink some beer there. And I did, and it was this, and it was very impressive. How much of that was down to the occasion? Who cares.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Crooked Stave Sour Rosé
I had to go all the way back to the start of the year to dig this one out. It's another super-complex mixed fermentation job, this time from the US. And it's permanently available in, among other places, the 4-for-€12 fridge at Stephen Street News. You're in a much better position to argue with me about this one than the previous two, but you have to buy it first.

Best Collaboration Brew: Jackie O's/Cycle Anything And Everything And Nothing At All
The runaway standout beer at the Fidelty beer festival during the summer. You think you've tasted everything that's possible to achieve with barrel-aged imperial stouts, and then along comes this. Fascinating and delicious in equal measure.

Best Overall Beer: Û baccabianca
I know. I'd love to have given this to something local, or to something readily available, but I look back on the finalists and think of my reaction to first tasting each of them, and this was the one that induced the cartoon-character-in-love effect. A-wooo-ga!

Best Branding: O Brother
The brewery's Off The Wall series of collaborations with graffiti artists began last year and has now clocked up two dozen beautifully designed cans.

Best Pump Clip: Five Lamps Tilted Drum
I liked the badge Five Lamps came up with for the Convention Centre's house beer, blending the building's distinctive shape with a beer keg.

Best Bottle/Can Label: YellowBelly Bushido
Well of course it was going to be a YellowBelly one. In picking a pastiche style for this black IPA, artist Paul really excelled himself. The beer was pretty damn good too.



Best Irish Brewery: Third Barrel
This was a tougher call than usual, with quite a few breweries doing amazing work. I'll save a special mention for Larkin's who've had some real stunners coming out especially in the latter half of 2019. But Third Barrel has really been putting the graft in. This year was the first time I found beers to impress me released under their Stone Barrel brand: Slammer and Awesome Sauce in particular. Third Circle's Needs More Cowbell and fruited Brett IPA were highlights, and then all the hyperactive hop activity under the Third Barrel label itself, as well as launching The Format, Pleasuredome and other client brewers. I'm exhausted just writing it down. I hope the pace is sustainable.

Best Overseas Brewery: Tilquin
Our dalliance was brief, but I had a lovely couple of sessions at the Tilquin blendery during this year's Toer de Geuze trying all their various experiments. They've never struck me as a particularly playful producer and perhaps it's the market that's pushing them into doing new things. Regardless, they're generally very good at it, that maple syrup lambic notwithstanding.

Best New Brewery Opening 2019: Wide Street
The promise of this all-wild-fermentation brewery in Co. Longford is enormous and the beers, in general, have been great so far.

Pub/Bar of the Year: La Venencia
Since I first visted this Madrid pub in 2009 it's been a firm favourite. I was actually apprehensive on going back last October, for fear it would disappoint. It didn't; it's still amazing. The best feature is that it doesn't serve beer, only sherry, so I get to put my notebook away.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2019: BrewDog Outpost Dublin
I've only been once and I haven't written about it yet, but I respect the sheer commitment of BrewDog in taking on 1,100 square metres of bar and restaurant space in the Dublin docklands and adding an in-house brewery to it. It's a big place and big things are expected.

Beer Festival of the Year: Fidelity
As usual I feared the worst: big queues and braying edgelords. But Ireland's first all-inclusive beer festival, organised by Whiplash and The Big Romance, was quite chilled in the end. There were lots of amazing beers and, if you didn't spend too long chatting, it was quite easy to get one's money's worth.

Supermarket of the Year: Fresh, Smithfield Square, Dublin 7
It's not what it used to be though I have found myself increasingly coming back to the beer section here, often finding things I couldn't source anywhere else. Supermarkets in general seem to have done away with continuously updated beer ranges -- it mustn't have been sustainable for anyone. Fresh is clinging on, though. Turnover isn't as rapid as you'd find in an independent, though I rarely leave empty-handed.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Redmond's of Ranelagh
I always have to make a special effort to go over, but it's always worth it. The exclusive beers created with DOT are what tipped it into the winners' enclosure for me this year. Shouts-out, of course, to my regular haunts DrinkStore and Stephen Street News.

Online Retailer of the Year: The White Hag
They sent me a free case to test their website, which was nice. It arrived very quickly after I ordered it, which was also nice. And the beer was good. Other than that, I had no cause to buy beer online this year, as usual.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: Pierre Van Klomp Says No: Life, Death and the Meaning of Beer
Another default award this, being the only beer book I read this year, and that was in ten minutes over breakfast on the morning it arrived. It's still a beautifully put together piece with evocative photos as well as earthy Belgian wisdom. Thanks to Pierre's literary agents Boak & Bailey for sending it to me.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Food For Thought
You may have noticed the occasional snarky morning tweet from me about the drinks industry. And the occasional genuinely interesting industry news story. Many of these are fuelled by the daily email from FFT, so this is just by way of thanks to the team there for all the hard work they do collecting and presenting Ireland's hospitality news.

Simon Johnson Award For Best Beer Twitterer: @BeerFoodTravel
Liam has been a bit quiet on the long-form front recently, but his snippets of Irish brewing history throughout the year have been enlightening. He takes a good beer photo too.

Best Brewery Website/Social Media: Galway Bay Brewery
I don't think I've ever given the pub taplists on the Galway Bay website a nod, and they deserve one, even if they're not always up to date (has somebody lost the keys to the Against the Grain page?). The Black Sheep is generally spot on, I get a Twitter notification when something new is tapped, and I find that very useful.


And that's another year over. Thanks for reading, if indeed you still are.

Acid party

My second post on the 2019 Toer de Geuze begins at Lindemans. This brewery, more than any other, brings a carnival atmosphere, with a wheel of fortune, two bouncy castles and beer sampling conducted 50 metres in the air atop a crane. Vertical tasting, wha'? It also has the best shop on the route, where I bought my takeaway bottle of Megablend 2019.

Not without tasting it first, though. I had been disappointed by the 2017 version on the previous Toer, but this year's outing was much better. There's a huge aroma of pepper and gunpowder making it immediately attractive. This comes through in the flavour though in a slightly muted way and there's no deeper complexity, at least not yet. It's still highly enjoyable, however. The spicy side of lambic is my favourite feature and they've done a great job of accentuating it here.

On the right, looking every bit of its name, is Platte ("flat") Lambiek. I'm quite fond of the straight unaged lambic occasionally found on cask around Brussels. This is a good example, being quite sweet and almost juicy, with notes of mandarin and tangerine. It's simple, with no spice or wood, not even very much sourness, but delightfully refreshing and moreish.

I almost bought a bottle of Lindemans GingerGeuze, and I'm glad I tried that one first. There's a strong smell of fresh ginger from this 6% ABV hazy orange blend, and a dose of disinfectant as well. The flavour is exceedingly unsubtle, making it a ginger alcopop by completely losing all sight of the base lambic. The ginger is enjoyable on its own terms, making for something that's OK as a beer but a complete disaster as a geuze.

The clear yellow beer beside it is Goyck, a collaborative blend Lindemans makes with Brouwerij Varenbroek near Antwerp, consisting of lambic (of course) mixed with a blonde ale. It has the stonefruit aroma of many Brettanomyces beers; that slightly gummy apricot effect. This is coupled with urinal-cake herbs and lots of sweet elderflower, the latter continuing through to the flavour. The fruity funk is still there too, giving it a cantaloupe taste. I'm not sure it's an improvement on straight geuze but if the intention was to take the sour edge off while still retaining the basic character then I think it worked.

From one party brewery to another: Boon. The set-up here was largely the same as before with a big Oktoberfest-style tent and two bars, one with the "connoisseur" selection. The monoblends featured heavily and I picked numbers at random.

Vat 91

Vat 92

The first pair are Vat 91 and Vat 92. Both are a powerful 8% ABV. The first doesn't really justify that strength, being quite light and soft. There's a minor smack of saltpetre on the finish, matching a bricky nitre aroma, but no real punch and not a whole lot of sour. The other one offered a great deal more, the mellow spiciness balanced by an assertive bitter kick and a spritzy acidity. Fresh and crunchy green cabbage sits next to a plaster-of-paris alkalinity. Yet none of this, nor the strength, turns it into a monster: the complexities are all very well balanced beside each other.

From geuze to lambic, and next was Lambiek Foeder 82, a rather plain offering with an orange rind flavour bringing tartness without turning full-on sour. Again the ABV, at 6.5%, is rather high for the modest taste.

L: Foeder 14, R: Foeder 82

While that was clear, Lambiek Foeder 14, next to it, is a cloudy shade of orange, so I'm guessing is a younger creation. And once more the second beer is the one with all the complexity. There's a mouth-watering citric zing and lots of lovely peppery spice. Although the strength matches that of 82, it's a touch on the watery side. This does make it very easy-drinking refreshment, and the mere €2 price tag helps as well.

One of the most interesting phenomena of the trip was observing the emergence of Schaarbeekse Kriek. The cherry used in these seems to be a heritage variety, the forerunner of modern cultivars. Boon's example is a very deep red shade and smells quite sickly, like jam. While nowhere near as sugary as regular Kriek Boon it's still quite candyish, showing lots of cherry sherbet and donut filling. The cherry flavour is nicely intense, though, so the potential for ageing into something excellent is very high.

Stop three on the Sunday was De Cam, the simplest set-up of all the venues yet somehow they still managed to make a mess of it. You buy your bottle from the makeshift bar and either take it away or pick up a glass to drink it from. And this is where the system broke down, with the glasswashers on a go-slow. Not in the mood for swigging room-temperature geuze, I waited with my De Cam Oude Geuze.

And because it was room temperature it exploded everywhere once I pulled the cork out, and took ages to pour. I was already in a bad mood before I took my first sip. Despite being three years old, it tasted unfinished: sweet and worty with lots of sickly popcorn butter and sticky candyfloss. There's a brisk spritz but nothing I'd call properly sour. Between this and my recent experience with their bilberry geuze, I think I've fallen out of love with De Cam.

That brings us to our final stop, Hanssens blendery in downtown Dworp. The sun was out and so were the crowds: the tiny courtyard and cramped bar uncomfortably packed with long queues for everything. I still managed to get through a fair few beers so maybe it wasn't as bad as it seemed.

L: Framboos, R: Cassis

I began with Hanssens Framboos, a sickly shade of orange-pink and quite flat looking. There's a pleasant raspberry sweetness -- real and not syrupy -- but its positive influence is undermined by a harsh vinegar burn which makes it difficult to enjoy. There's no subtlety or nuance here: you take what you're given from the first mouthful.

The purple beer there is Hanssens Cassis, a much better offering. There's loads of farmyard funk in this, plus just the right amount of burning sourness. The fruit needs all of this to settle down before emerging, contributing solely to the finish. It's a wonderful contribution, though: juicy blackcurrant bringing balance and complexity. Amazing how two beers with probably quite similar base recipes can taste so different.

This next canary-yellow chap is called Oudbeitje ("oldie"). It certainly didn't taste mellow, having a marmalade character which ramps up in sweetness to become artifical orange-flavoured candy. The vinegar tang is back as well. I couldn't figure out what it was supposed to be (strawberry geuze, apparently), though I do know I didn't enjoy it.

The Schaarbeekse exploration continued at Hanssens, and I was able to taste theirs next to the regular version.

Hanssens Schaerbeekse [sic] Kriek is a dense purple colour, almost blue, in fact. The cherry flavour is huge: all real cherry juice and ripe flesh. This is matched with an invigorating tartness which complements the fruit without overpowering the total picture. What we have here is kriek done big and loud; the kriekiest of krieks I've tasted. 6% ABV helps boost that, as well as giving it a lovely Bakewell-tart cakey warmth.

So Hanssens Oude Kriek was bound to be a let-down after that, though it was far from a disaster. It's thinner looking but still nicely purple. The flavour tilts more towards sour and it offers much less fruit richness though it's still well-balanced. There's an enjoyable balsamic resin quality as well. A very decent effort but I would still recommend trading up to the Schaerbeekse.

I took a variety of bottles home with me, including the special edition beer Hanssens made for the occasion, and I'll get round to drinking them in the not too distant future, I hope. It wasn't all sour fun that weekend, however, and I'll cover the rest of my beering in Friday's post.

How things change

Looking at the list of beers for this post, and at lots of beer lists in Belgium during my last visit, I was struck by the international dimension. It's not that long ago that the only beers I found in Belgium were from Belgium. That has changed not only in the generically international craft joints, but in some of the more traditional venues too.

Take De Ware Jacob and Oud Arsenaal, for instance: brown cafés in Antwerp, as traditional as you'll find. On my visits to both, I drank Dutch beer, albeit in a Belgian vernacular. Both were from the second Trappist brewery to open in the Netherlands, Zundert. Both are named for their ABV. Zundert 8 is a ruby red colour and surprisingly bitter for this sort of thing, leaning heavily on the liquorice. There's an unsubtle crunch of brown sugar next to this and the two sides aren't well integrated, fighting for the drinker's attention. It lacks the mellowness that the Belgian Trappists do best; maybe that will come with time.

Above the 8 there's Zundert 10. This had a lot of the same features, more of them even, but it worked altogether better. I'm still shocked by how dry and bitter it is, having almost as much in common with stout as quadrupel. There's enough quality dark fruit esters to get by: plum, fig and raisin balancing the liquorice, plus a velvety dash of high-cocoa chocolate. I still think the Belgians have the edge on it, but if you're picking a Zundert it's well worth upgrading.

If you want to hit the international stuff in a big way, Billie's Beer Kafeteria is a must. Despite the name it's definitely a pub, all varnished wood and bric-à-brac in the proper Low Countries style. My eye was immediately caught by a beer from one of my emerging favourite breweries, Ca' del Brado from Bologna. Û baccabianca is a grape ale and, unusually, a white one. It presents in the glass like a witbier: the hazy lemon yellow with a thick layer of foam. The peachy aroma is highly inviting while the flavour blends perfectly elements of juicy white grape, acidic sour spritz and mature barrel funk. Despite 7.9% ABV there's no heat here, just clean fruit matching spicy saltpetre. Exactly what a grape ale should be, and exactly my sort of thing in general.

An English double IPA to follow: Wake & Bake by Mondo in London, in collaboration with J. Wakefield of Miami. This delivers what so many of the style only promise: juice. A mandarin aroma leads on to mandarin and jaffa flavours; soft, not acidic and building to a long cordial finish. Here's another strong one (8% ABV) where the alcohol is completely hidden under the fruit flavours. While there's a tiny amount of yeasty grit and pithy bitterness present, they act more as balance than interference. This is a double IPA to restore one's faith in double IPA.

That evening finished up in Gollemke, an outpost of the Amsterdam bar chain. It's another bright and modern craft bar, though the selection is more traditional than most. I went mainstream on the first round: De Koninck's Triple d'Anvers, available all across Antwerp. Unsurprisingly, I guess, it's rather plain: clear gold with a honey sweetness up front, followed by wholesome oat cookie and golden syrup. There's no spices or heat, like all the fun has been filtered out of it. Tripel for people who don't like tripel, perhaps.

There was one beer on the menu I didn't recognise: Blinker, a saison by Siphon. They generally make good stuff so I took it for a spin. Halfway through it I noticed the bottle I got was a few months past date, but I still couldn't say whether that was the cause of this beer's problems. There was no fruit or spice in this; none of the things that make saison fun, and which aren't normally features that fade with age. Instead it was earthy, slightly funky, and with a harsh acidic burn. Though it's only 5.5% ABV I found it tough going and disappointing.

My nightcap was December Flower by White Pony of Padua, though presumably produced by their contractor in Belgium. This is a winter strong ale of 13% ABV, deep amber in colour; almost ruby. There's lots of heady sherry notes, like a super-strength lager, plus warming sugar and treacle. It's not subtle, or particularly complex, but it's clean, tasty and more-ish. Just what I needed at that stage in the evening.

One last beer in Antwerp, which came with a late-night burger in the Jack's fast food chain. It's called, imaginatively, Jack's, and is a bottle-conditioned pils. Hazy yellow and watery looking, it's very dry, tasting mostly of rice crackers. There's no substance, which is fatal for a food beer; no hop character and far too much fizz. Clean but boring, is my conclusion.

We departed Antwerp on Sunday morning, to grab a few finishers in Moeder Lambic in Brussels before the early evening flight home. It was here I discovered that Dieu du Ciel! has a range of variants on its excellent Péché Mortel coffee imperial stout. Pouring was Péché Morte Cerise and I went straight for that. The cherries don't really add much to the picture and the coffee remains dominant. There's maybe an extra Black Forest gateau note, but otherwise it's the same smooth beauty it always was. I like how this beer is becoming more readily available in Europe.

Over three years ago I visited En Stoemlings in their tiny premises near Brussels Chapelle station. They've moved since and the range has expanded beyond a single beer. This was my first time trying a new one: Tanteke, a saison. It's very unusual for the style, being sweet and creamy rather than dry and crisp. There are notes of lemon meringue and a floral perfume. I found it charming and very sinkable, dangerous given the substantial 6% ABV. That it has nothing in common with any other saison I've tasted matters little. I'll need to put more effort into finding more Stoemlings beer, if this is anything to go by.

Beside it is another coffee imperial stout: Whack!, by No Science, who share a building with Stoemlings. Though the texture is creamy, the flavour is quite a severe coffee-grounds bitterness with overtones of cooked green veg. I prefer this sort of thing to be rounded and less harsh. It's only 8% ABV so maybe it just needs a malt boost to smooth the edges off.

I'd not had a Kernel beer in ages so wasn't going to pass by the cask engine serving Imperial Brown Stout. Here we have a lot of the same things as in the previous beer -- big coffee, a vegetal or metallic tang -- but much better balanced and integrated. That it's 9.1% ABV perhaps adds credence to my theory that if you're going to make these, you have to make them big. The most surprising thing is that it smells and tastes more like coffee than the beer with coffee in.

The purple lad in the Cantillon glass is Mourvèdre/Carignan, a grape lambic from the Brussels brewery, utilising the two named varieties. It's come out well: 6.5% ABV with a pink peppercorn spice from the beginning. The fruit element is mild -- this is a classic geuze all the way down, with the bricky nitre and saltpetre I enjoy so much. I don't think it's been bottled so you'll have to seek it out on draught, and you should.

A final pair before we leave. I was intrigued by an offering from Austrian brewery Alefried, their Mikrozircus 12 Old Stock Ale, a 7.1%-er, fermented with Brettanomyces and aged in red wine barrels with cocoa nibs. There's an equally intriguing spicy-sour aroma while the flavour is a mix of lavender and cream sherry, finishing clean with a delicious sour flourish and a waft of leathery funk. There are elements of the geuze flavour profile in here, the waxy bitterness for one thing, and it's just as complex yet easy-drinking. Weird, but brilliant.

John went Brett too, picking Frappadingue Brett IPA by Brasserie des Garrigues in southern France. The non-Brett version of this double IPA is 9.1% ABV, and when the voracious yeast is let at it that climbs to 9.5%. It's a murky orange colour had has the orangey boiled-sweet aroma of many a Belgian IPA. It's thick and heavy but not hot or difficult to drink, just a bit on the sweet side. I didn't get any Brett character, nor much by way of hops, so it's less than the sum of its parts, perhaps, but an enjoyable warmer on a chilly spring afternoon.

That's a lot of beer and a lot of pubs covered this week. But Belgium: I'm ready to do it all again this weekend. Let's go!

Seef and sound

This year's spring meeting of EBCU was hosted by the Antwerpse Brouw Compagnie at its shiny new brewery and restaurant in Antwerp's renovated docklands. The company was founded by a former director of Duvel-Moortgat, Johan Van Dyck, with the intention of recreating Antwerp's indigenous beer style, Seefbier.

I reviewed Seef in 2014 when it was contract-brewed and a clear orange colour. Now it comes from the brewery's own plant and is a hazy yellow. Though it's a supposedly faithful recreation of a unique local speciality, it tastes a lot like a weissbier: big sweet bananas and a heady buzz of butane. The texture is similarly soft, while 6.5% ABV intensifies those weissbier qualities, almost to the point of making it difficult to drink. I'm informed by Johan that this was the beer consumed in quantity by the dockworkers of 19th century Antwerp. Feeling heavy when only half way down a 33cl bottle, I found that difficult to imagine.

It's not the sort of style one would think to barrel-age, but they do that, producing the beer called Xperimental. Still only 6.5% ABV so it somehow avoids picking up extra alcohol. It's a dark rich gold colour and shows a luscious white grape foretaste, followed by a wisp of smoke. The very typical Belgian yeast spices are present also, but they're subtle, hiding behind the fruit. I really don't see the resemblance to Seef but it's a much better beer; subtle, complex and very moreish. Perhaps this is closer to the historic original.

There's a range of other beers produced by the brewery, and we'll begin with Bootjes Bier, a rosy amber ale of 7% ABV. A healthy pillar of foam builds as it pours and stays in place. From the look of it I was expecting sweet toffee as the opener but it was a pleasant surprise to get a peachy buzz up front. The heavy texture and low carbonation give it the feeling of an English strong ale, as do the subtle esters and slightly tannic tea brack flavour. The only fly in this ointment is a slight whiff of chlorophenols right at the back. It's all good up until that point, and the bleachiness doesn't last. Overall quite a fun one.

John next to me was drinking Tournée Antwerpen, a 6.5% ABV blonde. It's spicy and herbal, like a witbier, with a similar lemony note, but heavier and slightly hotter. Bready density and herbs gives it an inescapable feel of sage and onion stuffing. Luckily that's something I enjoy, in real life and as a beer flavour analogy. The flavour is quite intense and busy, which might make it difficult to drink more than one in a sitting. One was fine, though.

Blonde ales are something of a stock in trade here. At the taproom bar they were pouring two more. Mr T is the strongest of them at 8% ABV, infused with grapefruit and tea. It's a clear yellow, presenting like a pils with its big thick head. There's a smooth sweet flavour, like vanilla ice cream with possibly a ripple of raspberries too. A spark of ginger and nutmeg runs alongside this, but neither element is particularly strong and the whole thing is quite plain. Initially I misread the strength as 5% and fully believed it to be that light.

Hussy is a step down further, in strength (7% ABV) and flavour. Here we get just a mild dusting of black pepper and some slight floral perfume. It's inoffensive, with just enough character to be pleasant to drink, but no more than that.

A dry-hopped lager is next: Super Cadix. Crystal clear, a deep yellow colour, and with a decent but not excessive head. The carbonation is quite busy, but at 5.6% ABV there's plenty of heft. That does mean the lager side of the equation is a little lost -- there's no crispness and not much to distinguish it from a standard American-style pale ale. The main flavour comes from the hops: lightly fruity, with notes of kiwifruit and cantaloupe. A mineral dryness finishes it, but -- again unlagerlike -- the hops echo long into the aftertaste. It's quite nice, but more lager character would be my preference.

The big guns are Nonkel Pater, badged, playfully, as a "qua-dubbel". It's 9% ABV and purest black with a thick layer of foam the colour of old ivory. The aroma is a heady mix of toffee, milk chocolate and squashy banana. On tasting the chocolate intensifies and, along with everything just mentioned, there's also a gingerbread spicing which helps put an edge on all the dark sugar and balance the overall picture. I had been warned in advance that it was horribly sweet, but it's not. It's an unapologetic dark and boozy Belgian beer.

Not far from the brewery, in the shadow of the ten-story MAS museum, is a small bar called Dr Beer. Though it's starkly decorated and runs big on long tables and unvarnished wood, it still manages to feel cosy. The beer list is carefully chosen.

It was here I found my second Kromme Haring beer, a saison called Les Perles du Homard. This is a big one, at 8% ABV and is a clear dark gold colour. It smells rich and sticky while it tastes wholesome: of grapefruit on toast. The alcohol doesn't interfere with the crisp and clean flavour, and while it's not what you'd call thirst-quenching, it is well-balanced and very good.

The grand-sounding Ministry of Belgian Beer is a lager specialist, and Pils 13 is their flagship. Microbrewed Belgian lager is a rarity and this lot seem to be making a concerted effort at reclaiming the style from the industrial brewers, eschewing adjuncts and shortcuts. It works too: although the beer is only 4% ABV it's very full-bodied and is flavoured with a strong bitter herbal taste. I had bought it thinking it would be low-effort drinking, but it really makes you pay attention, and is all the better for that.

My nightcap on my first visit to Dr Beer was De Molen's Ali & Baba, a bourbon-aged imperial stout of 12.7% ABV, brewed in collaboration with La Pirata. It's luscious, tasting powerfully of whiskey and truffles. Warming without being hot, it has a strong peaty character which lasts on the palate after everything else has faded. The odd thing is that there's no smoked malt involved; the only outré ingredient is roasted sesame seed, so I guess that's what produced the smokiness. It works quite well, making it taste like it was aged in an Islay cask.

I was back for one more Dutch beer at Dr Beer later in the weekend: Bru(u)t IPA on the Dutch Bargain label of Brouwerij Brouwerslokaal. I think it's time I just started avoiding this style altogether: I can't remember the last one that was any good. This one was very characterless, vaguely grassy, like a basic lager. Doubtless it's exactly what the brewer wanted it to be -- dry and clean -- but all the joy has been fermented out of it too.

On that downer we'll go off and do some further pub exploring.

Not the Toer de Geuze

The 2019 Toer de Geuze is coming up this weekend. I'll be returning to Belgium for it, but before that I need to clear the notes from my last trip a few weeks ago, for the spring meeting of EBCU. Arriving in Brussels on the early flight on a Thursday morning, Dr John and I had an afternoon to kill. I had wanted to return to the 3 Fonteinen Lambik-O-Droom since the last Toer, to see it on a normal day, not packed with Toer-goers, and this seemed like an ideal time to do it.

The train from Brussels arrives at Lot and it's a short walk from the station, over the river Senne, to the boxy taproom. It feels a little like a primary school inside, with the brightly-coloured furniture arranged around large tables made from foudre lids. We opened our account with Cuvée Armand & Gaston 2018. It was fabulous: a bright red-gold colour and with a rich warm oaky flavour contrasting with a sparking flinty sourness. There's a bitterness in there too: hard wax and and an unusual-for-geuze citrus note too. The finish leaves a pleasant acidic woody buzz. This smooth and mellow chap is a beer for relaxing into, not that we had time for that sort of thing.

The cask engines were pouring 3 Fonteinen Faro, so we got a couple of those before leaving. This was much classier than I was expecting: sweetened geuze has a tendency to be harshly sugary but this retained an Orval-like funk next to a sherbet sweetness and a kind of fruity, spicy, brown-sauce tang. A slight soapy note was the only part not to like. Although it's not saying much, this is the best Faro I've tasted.

Our destination for the weekend was Antwerp, and changing trains at Brussel Zuid we had time to nip in to Cantillon where there were a couple of new-to-me beers. One was 50˚N-4˚E, a geuze aged in Armagnac barrels. It's quite sweet, in a funky/fruity way. There's a peppery spice and quite a severe waxy bitterness. Nothing that I could detect suggested the brandy barrels, and overall it's an OK but quite dull lambic. Not Cantillon's best work.

Neither is Magic Lambic, blended from Lou Pepe kriek and a blueberry lambic with added vanilla. Highly unorthodox. It looks wonderful: a clear ruby red. The aroma is sweet, like ripe and squashy raspberries, and there's a fair bit of that in the flavour too. It's not jarringly sweet, however, and the blueberries bring a significant balancing tartness. There's a strange herbal and floral quality too, part Parma Violets, part urinal cakes. Thankfully there's no vanilla taste, but I'm guessing it's working in the background, accentuating the fruit sweetness. Overall it's easy drinking and the quality of the base beer is still discernible, but it's maybe just too much of a nod towards alcopop lambic for me to approve of it.

To Antwerp, then, and at the back of the grand station is a small off licence, Station 1280, with a couple of draught taps and drinking-in space. The selection is very much Craftonian: brightly-coloured cans from the UK and Scandinavia, and even a handful from Ireland. Colourful cans of Belgian IPA are a rarity, but they had one of them: Nonkel Hop from Gistgeest. 6.5% ABV, it's brewed with Citra and Hallertau Blanc. It may not have been the freshest as it tasted a little stale, with a sharp bitterness and sweaty malt. There's a trace of apricot and passionfruit, but nowhere near as much as one would expect from something purporting to be in the New England style. If it was fresh the brewer has bigger problems.

I'd never had a beer from England's DEYA Brewery before, so took the opportunity to try Into the Haze since it was on tap. It's hazy all right: the de rigeur orange-juice yellow. There's a strangely minty aroma and the flavour isn't sweet as these often are, but herbal and quite bitter, with notes of satsuma and melon rind. At 6.2% ABV it's quite a big beast, but it doesn't taste its strength, slipping down indecently easy. It's a good take on the style, though not a terribly exciting one.

In the tall glass next to it is Bizarre Love Triangle by Finnish brewer CoolHead. This sour one looks even juicier, a lurid shade of orange from the inclusion of mango, passionfruit and peaches. There's a massive tropical hit in the aroma and it tastes more like a cocktail than a beer: thin and flat; tart and salty, with lots of passionfruit flavour. I enjoyed it, and was shocked to learn it's a whopping 7% ABV. Handle with care.

Before we move on, just a taster of an imperial stout from Yorkshire. Turning Point's Aggressive Hospitality is brewed with figs, almonds and golden syrup so I guess qualifies as pastrified. It's lightly textured for all that, and does a good job of hiding its 10% ABV. I would have sworn there was coffee in it as that's the dominant flavour, along with some fun and fruity pipe tobacco. I would have liked to become better acquainted with this one.

That's Station 1280, then. Worth a look if you're passing through Antwerp, with plenty of beers you wouldn't normally expect to find in Belgium.

We kept things craft with the next stop: Beer Lovers Bar is a bright corner pub with the IKEA aesthetic common to beer specialists the world over. I opened with an unfamiliar De Ranke beer: Franc Belge. It's 5.2% ABV and a hazy orange colour. A little like the classic XX Bitter, it's dry and pithy. There are subtle floral notes of honeysuckle and jasmine, but the bitterness level builds as it goes, eventually drowning that out. I found it just too acrid to really enjoy, preferring XX's superior balance.

Finally for now, one of several Dutch beers I had over the weekend: La Truite II by De Kromme Haring of Utrecht. It's a Bretted pale ale of 6% ABV and really shows the specialist yeast at its best: the gummy, fruity mango and cedar effect, and a dusting of floral lavender. The base is dry, like a waterbiscuit, so the Brett and hops can work their magic on the palate unhindered. While complex it's very easy going, everything subtle and balanced. Delicious.

We'll have more from De Kromme Haring in the next post.