Dispatch from Denmark

I spent the long weekend in Copenhagen and managed to pack quite a range of beers into it. The brewery scene is unsurprisingly dominated by Carlsberg and its subsidiary Tuborg, and another big brewery, Royal Unibrew. They each produce a number of lagers and red ales. Bog-standard Carlsberg pilsner, I found, is largely the same product as is brewed under licence abroad. I was expecting it to be different the way Heineken is different in the Netherlands, but I guess Carlsberg take better care of their global identity. On the ale side, Carlsberg make Carl's Special which I found quite vapid and flavourless, much like the American Killian's Red. Slightly better is Carlsberg Dark, which has a sweeter, more caramelly flavour. Both of these suffered from being served very very cold. I had to let them stand several minutes before I could taste anything.

Another surprise was that Tuborg, the lesser brand in the Carlsberg stable, is more prevalent in restaurants and bars than the flagship product. The basic Tuborg Green is very dull and tasteless, reminding me of Budweiser. Tuborg Classic is a fuller pilsner, reminiscent of Carlsberg in taste, though somewhat darker coloured. Finally, Tuborg Gold is a deliciously sweet lager and very easy to drink. Probably the best lager in Denmark, in fact.

Royal Pilsner brings us back down to the Tuborg-Green-level: nothing to write home about. Royal Export is a lager with a bit more oomph. It weighs in at 5.6% and feels every bit of it. Stella is probably the closest approximation. Finally, Royal Classic is a red ale and the best of the genre in Denmark. Even though it is also served too cold, the sweet, rich taste comes through it. Royal Classic is one of the best mass-produced draught red ales I've tasted.

On then to the microbreweries, and I managed to squeeze in visits to three in Copenhagen. BrewPub is one of the newest and seems to be still finding its feet. I didn't see any signs of any brewing apparatus, for instance. I tried the William Wallace 80/- and rather enjoyed it. It's much less fizzy than any of the mass-produced 80/- I've had in Scotland from the likes of Tennant's or McEwan's. I also had BrewPub's IPA which turned out to be really light and I reckon rather good as an accompaniment for curry.

The Apollo microbrewery is next to the main entrance to the Tivoli gardens. There is a distinct Austrian character to both the pub and the beers. Only two were available on Saturday night: a dark and cloudy pilsner with a quite sharp taste, and another IPA: cloudier and tastier than BrewPub's, but still lighter than any of the IPAs I know from England.

The best microbrewery of the three, in my opinion, is Nørrebro Bryghus. It's a bit further out of the city centre than the other two but well worth the journey. It is in a cellar which is divided between the bar and the brewery, giving the clearest insight into the brewer at work of any brewpub I've been to. There's even a small but select library on beers and brewing. Like the other two microbreweries, it only sells its own produce, and there is a substantial variety. Of course, not everything on the menu was available at the time. What was on tap had a Belgian theme running through it. The Abbey-style golden beer did a very good impression of Westmalle tripel: very full-flavoured. The S:t Hans Dubbel was also a worthy imitation: dark and sweet and sticky as a dubbel should be. They also, uniquely for a microbrewery of my experience, did a framboise beer. Belgian brewers add fruit (raspberries in this case) to gueze beer to take away the worst of the sudden dryness that some find unpalatable. However, this version doesn't seem to be based on gueze, and instead there is just the raspberry flavour and not much beyond it. An interesting novelty, but not something I'd make a habit of drinking, and I don't think it's part of the regular house beer selection. Nørrebro Bryghus is somewhere I look forward to going back to when I next happen to be in Copenhagen.

But there are plenty of other places to go without covering my tracks. I took advantage of Copenhagen's rail link to Sweden and scooted across to Malmö to try out the beers of another country for an afternoon. Åbro Original is another one of the plain, bog-standard lagers, though better than Tuborg's effort described above. Åbro also make a premium lager called Bryggmästarens which is deliciously sweet and fruity, similar to Tuborg Gold and to another Swedish lager called Spendrups. The Spendrups brewery also makes Mariestads lager. I found this to have an unpleasant dryness that hits the back of the throat, a bit like Red Stripe.

Just one more beer completes the Scandanavian experience, although it's German. No trip to Copenhagen would have been complete without a visit to Christiania. In the Nemoland bar I discovered a German hemp beer called Turn. It certainly has the green vegetable taste I'd expect, and was quite enjoyable, but having already tried the hemp beer they make in 7 Stern in Vienna I know it can be done better.

So there we have 21 new beers, which is not bad for a trip that lasted less than three days. They say that Copenhagen is an up-and-coming destination for beer tourism, and it certainly seems to be heading that way. I suppose if you're bored with the usual places (how anyone could get bored of beer in Brussels is beyond me) it's worth a quick look, though beware of the prices: in this the cheapest Scandanvian capital you'd be lucky to get a pint for less than €6, and for the microbrewed stuff it's possible to sail towards €8-9 for 40cl. Priced for the connoisseur, I suppose...

Round 'em up

Operation DBC Rescue.
Day 4.
Bottles: 109.

Black day

Talking to an off licence proprieter yesterday I discovered that the Dublin Brewing Company has ceased production. This, of course, explains the difficulty in finding their beers in shops, the recent drop in the price where they are still sold, and what yer man in the Stag's Head was talking about. It is a crying shame that Dublin Brewing is gone (and not just because my first date with the woman I later married was to their North King Street premises). The man I spoke to yesterday said their marketing and distribution operation was extremely poor and they've paid the price for it. I guess all they wanted to do was make beer. Hopefully this means we haven't seen the last of them.

So my immediate plan is to buy every last bottle of Maeve's and Beckett's I can get my hands on. I wonder is there a market for beers from defunct breweries the way there is for Scotch whisky from "silent distilleries". Probably not. Not that it matters, since I'm going to drink every bottle myself.

Here's to DBC and to better times for craft beer in Ireland.

What did you drink during Live8, Daddy?

Banana Bread Beer. Fascinating stuff it is too: it's basically a pale ale, and quite a light one, despite the label's claim to be beer in the "liquid bread" style of brewing (the guy who wrote that needs a good dose of Westvleteren to show him what liquid bread really tastes like). What makes this stuff really special (and the name kinda gives it away) is the kick of real, fairly-traded (kudos for that) bananas. It has to be tried to be appreciated properly. This isn't a subtle hint of banana tones, nor is it a big overpowering banana-in-your-face. It's a very gentle incline towards bananas, gradually accumulating on the palate until you finish your pint and say "Mmm. Bananas". And it is a pint too: a full 568ml, which is a very nice touch.

It does suffer a bit from the trouble with Bateman's, but that's more to do with my ineptitude than anything else. Practice, dear boy.

You really won't know if you like this stuff or not until you try it. And you should try it.

I say I want a Revolution

The current unavailability of Revolution red ale by the Dublin Brewing Company has gone on too long. It disappeared around the end of last year and hasn't been seen since. When it went, there was the sudden reappearance of Maeve's Crystal, which had similarly been off the shelves for ages. And now, horror of horrors, that batch of Maeve's seems to be selling out and there's no sign of the red stuff back. It all makes my life very difficult indeed.

Anyway, another new beer to report on is Schöfferhofer which, despite the name, is not a joke. It's a German weissbier, of a rich orange cloudy hue. The label suggests that it's brewed mainly for export to the Czech and Slovak republics, and there's certainly a hint of that Czech-pilsner-crispness at the back of the taste, behind the typical weissbier banana flavour. I found this stuff to be a pleasant change from my usual Erdinger, but it ultimately lacked the full-on fruitiness that this sort of beer typically should have.

Weiss of the North

I never thought I'd see the day when Hoegaarden was easier to get on draught in Belfast than in Dublin, but there you go. Things have certainly changed in the city where beer was recently limited to Guinness and Harp/Smithwick's or Tennent's/Bass depending on who controlled the supply to that bar.

Amazingly, in the Duke of York, where one can get Hoegaarden, Stella, and Carlsberg (among others) on tap, people were still drinking Harp. What's that about? Still, people were also drinking alcopops so I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised it's a low-taste zone.

On the higher-taste front, while in Belfast I discovered an English beer called Curious Brew. It's a strange little dark lager, with distinct yeasty-aley overtones. One to be savoured (and not chugged down in the hotel bar at the end of a ten-hour session and after everywhere else has closed, ahem).

And just for the sake of completeness (which is what this blog is about), I also added Eisbrau Czech pilsner to my list of beers tried (something I will actually add to the side panel one of these months). It's passable, in the mould of Budvar. And, er, that's all I have to say about it.

Straw Pole

On the J.D. Wetherspoon's web site I found a description of the Polish beer Zywiec. It has, it said, "a hoppy bitterness and a hint of malt" and "a sweet lemony aftertaste". Intrigued, I bought a bottle yesterday. I don't get it, however. Zywiec is pretty bland - straw colored with no trace of all that alcohol (5.7%) in the taste. It reminds me a little bit of Spaten or the other classic Bavarian lagers, but it lacks their flavour. Maybe in Poland where this stuff costs half nothing I'll go back to it, but when it shares a shelf with much cheaper and tastier beers I'll be giving it a miss.