Beyond Tigers

Off on my travels again, and I paid a flying visit to Singapore, calling in at two of its microbreweries. Brewerkz is a monument to the faux industrial school of brewpub architecture: a huge converted riverfront warehouse. It does a sizeable range of beers across several genres.

On the lighter side, their Golden Ale is a typical grainy microbrewed lager, slightly cloudy and quite light. Unusually, also, they do a Fruit Brew which was made of strawberries on my visit but which apparently changes. I found it quite bland: too warm and with a touch of ale hops neither of which should feature in this kind of beer. The strawberries were barely identifiable.

Moving on, they do two IPAs: the plain one being very similar to the mainstream English IPA and the Xtra IPA having a subtle malty foretaste followed by a serious hops afterburn. It's 7.2% and tastes it.

Other dark beers include a bock lager, which is cloudy rather than properly dark and carries a delicious smoke and burnt caramel flavour which reaches parts of the nose other beers don't reach. They also do Hopback, which claims to be in the real ale style, and is indeed complex and bitter like the best of them, but is a tad too fizzy to be counted with proper real ales, in my opinion. There's also the inevitable stout, this one being made with oatmeal. It has a strong roasted grain flavour and is very heavy and satisfying.

All in all, the range and style of Brewerkz makes it one of my favourite brewpubs and definitely worth a visit should you need something other than Tiger or a gin sling.

Less worth the effort is the Singapore branch of the Paulaner brewhouse chain. I had to cross a ring of steel put up for the World Bank conference to get to it and I don't think it was worth it. They produce a helles and a dunkel, both rather insipid and neither as good as the mass-produced mainstream Paulaner. This is the first of this chain I've been to and I suspect it is just pointless big-brewery gimmickry of the highest order. You don't have to be independent to make great beer on the premises, but it helps.

Too damn subtle

At the back of my cupboard since I got back from France has been a bottle of Doreleï, an amber ale from Fischer of Alsace. Part of the reason I haven't opened it is the stunning art nouveau bottle. This evening I succumbed.

The beer advertises itself as being spiced with vegetable extracts, but really there was very little sign of that. In the absence of instructions I drank it at a little below room temperature and found it so lacking in taste I wondered if it's meant to be served cold where flavour is less of an issue. True, it has a faint hint of gingerbread in the foretaste and the characteristic Fischer dryness at the very end, but it's too little too late.

Probably the only beer in the world better in the bottle than out.

Maltsville USA

Raiding a friend's fridge recently, I happened across some Samuel Adams Boston Lager. Americans of my acquaintance rave about this beer as one of the world's greats. I have to say I'm not wholly convinced of that. It's good, certainly, and leagues ahead of most American mass-market beers. What I like most is the distinctive maltiness on the palate: a soft, velvety smoothness - quite unlike any other lager I know. A world-beater, no. But classy stuff nonetheless.

The Specialest Brew

Samichlaus Bier, from Austria, proclaims itself "The strongest lager beer in the world". At 14% I'm not going to argue. The gimmick continues with the statement that it is brewed but once a year, on December 6th, then aged a further ten months before bottling. So what does all this effort produce? Samichlaus fizzes violently out of the bottle, then settles immediately to a flat brown-red colour with a faint sparkle. On the nose it has a rich sugary character, somewhere between a fine Belgian dubbel and a nasty special brew. It tastes like a heavier version of the heaviest barley wine, heading into the dodgy liqueur or cough medicine end of the spectrum. The first sip is a shock, for sure. After a while, however, it does round out and become almost warming rather than creating the sickening overload I expected. It's a hard one to call. If you know your way around your Trappists and your barley wines then this as another one to add to the collection. If you didn't read further than the words "lager beer" on the label you can't say you weren't warned...

Sour times

A La Bécasse in Brussels is one of my favourite bars in the world. Their Lambic Doux is a very fine beer, being a sweet version of Brussels's bitter local speciality. I happened across a kriek being sold under their brand recently and decided to give it a go. I'm a big fan of kriek, in its sweet to medium-sweet incarnations. Liefmans is the benchmark, with honourable mentions for Bellevue and Timmerman's. I was expecting something similar from La Bécasse. I was wrong. While there is no doubt that Bécasse kriek wears its ripe cherries up front, at heart it is an unreconstructed, down home sour Brussels gueuze. The contrast in the flavour is remarkable and is unique as far as I know. Despite being made by monster brewer InBev, this stuff couldn't be more Brussels if it tried and is well worth sampling if you can find it.

The Foggy Brew

Terre de Brume is a bière de garde, one of the characteristic strong amber ales of north-east France. Like most of its peers, it comes in a tall 75cl bottle. It has a light reddish-brown hue and a gentle fizz. At first, I found the taste quite sweet and syrupy, with lots of the caramel notes one expects from much darker beers. However, when I poured the end of the bottle I discovered the yeasty sediment adds a sharp bitterness to the flavour that balances it quite beautifully. They don't come much more complex than this: magnificent stuff.

Foodie beer

English brewer Greene King have come up with a light ale especially designed as an accompaniment to food, with the unfortunate name of The Beer To Dine For. It's a very pleasant brew: dry and subtly fruity; complex without being busy. However, as with the Frometon I reviewed recently, I think the food association is something of a gimmick. As a beer this stands by itself, and in my opinion is no better suited to food than any other tipple of one's choice. This is a beer I'd definitely buy again, but I think its flavour would be done better justice by being allowed stand by itself.