The big Bux

Buxton Brewery from Derbyshire were a newcomer to Borefts and I confess I was quite sceptical when I first saw their presence listed. Groundbreaking revolutionaries like Kernel and Thornbridge are one thing, but what is this run-of-t'mill northern micro doing there? How many Dutch beer geeks can you wow with a 1.038 brown bitter? How wrong I was: I don't know if it was their A-game that Buxton brought, but it had the beatings of many others there.

The highlight for me was Tsar Bomba, a 10% ABV imperial stout. Its origins lie in a bottle of 1978 Courage Imperial Russian Stout, sent to the lab for analysis which showed that the only thing still living in it was Courage's hungry and deathless strain of Brettanomyces. Buxton cultured it up and fermented Tsar Bomba with it. My first thought on tasting it was "Oh, Orval has made a stout." The Brett funk is right up at the front but it's not overpowering: there's enough chocolate smoothness to hold it in check, providing a residual dark sweetness that not even this beast of a yeast could chomp through. And just on the end that assertive tang of hops. A strange and challenging beer, but in a quite delicious way.

Beer name of the festival goes to Smokey and the Band-Aid, a dark ale that is apparently quite deliberate in its phenols: the name suggests to me an attempt to deal with customer expectations when something has gone wrong but I'm reliably informed that's it's an adaptation of a homebrew recipe of the head brewer. It's actually quite subtle in its smokiness, though the phenols are clear as a bell: Laphroaig or TCP coming in loud and clear while the underlying sweet 7.5% ABV stout is just about detectable beneath. It's quite a full-on experience, but still balanced and nothing to be afraid of.

Buxton also produce a terribly impressive black IPA in the form of 7.5% ABV Imperial Black.This tastes like it has been hopped every which way, being powerfully greenly bitter and also succulently fruity. Only a tiny, missable hint of roast at the end suggests dark grains, otherwise this just tastes like a really really good IPA. For those who think that the style is simply a kind of hoppy porter, this is the one to change your minds.

Two paler ones to finish off with Buxton: Wild Boar is a hazy gold blonde ale of 5.7% ABV featuring fantastically sharp and zingy hop aromas. It's more rounded on tasting, melding flowery hops with toffee malt to form delicious perfumed caramel. I'd place it broadly in the category of English IPAs which includes White Shield and Bengal Lancer, but it tastes more modern than either. For something a little stronger there's Axe Edge: leaning more heavily on the hop side of the scales, this has a heady spicy funk to it, mixing up the soft fruit and astringent medicinal character of different hop strains but providing enough of a malt base to carry them off without unbalancing the flavour altogether.

Overall a quality performance from Buxton and I'll be looking out for more of theirs.

The last British beer I had was operating covertly at the Emelisse stand. The Dutch brewery was a collaborator on Earl Grey IPA but it was brewed at the Marble Brewery in Manchester. It's a fizzy pale gold beer, just under 7% ABV but quite plain tasting. The added flavourings give it a pleasant summery honey and mandarin nose but on tasting it's more scented soap than posh tea, but barely even that.

While we're at the Emelisse bar we may as well see what else they've got. A Red IPA? How jolly! This is a nicely balanced chap, quite heavily textured but neither cloyingly sweet nor particularly hopped up. Taking a bit of a liberty with the IPA designation there, but they're hardly the first brewery to do so.

And just a quick sideways hop over to Belgium to round off this post, and a visit to the mental experimentalists of Alvinne. Some of this brewery's output can be hard to handle but I struck gold with the three I tried at Borefts, all wine-barrel-aged. Undressed is a dark ruby ale in the Flemish red vernacular and has that wonderful mouthwatering tartness that makes the style an ideal thirst-quencher. The barrel adds an even more quenching tannic quality so, despite the acetic tang on the finish, I could happily neck this in indecent quantities. But we move on to Wild West, a headless orange-amber beer with powerful lactic sourness reminding me of the most assertive lambics. Deep underneath this there's a trace of Lucozade sweetness trying to make itself heard. It has just enough of a sparkle to make it refreshing, though I couldn't say what effect the red wine barrels have had on it.

Lastly, Cuvée d'Erpigny was billed as a barley wine, but was a similar ruby-brown to the Undressed and possessed the same sort of sour Flemish red aroma. It's not sour on tasting, though, due in part I'm sure to the Montbazillac barrel it was aged in. This has imparted a distinct botrytised sweetness which, combined with the smooth and heavy texture and 13% ABV, immediately conjures Tokaji or eiswein. This combines effortlessly with the caramel malt and an unequivocal hop bite to make a beer that should be a complete mess but all works together in a fascinating way.

And just when I thought things couldn't get any more strangely delicious, we come to the last two breweries at the festival...

A tale of black and gold

I started my rounds of the Borefts festival bars on the Friday down at Thornbridge, finding them holding the same position as last year at the foot of one of De Molen's giant shiny fermenting tanks. They were one of the few breweries who had taken on this year's festival challenge: to brew something flavoursome under 3% ABV. A tweaked version of their dark mild was the contribution, dubbed Baby Black Harry. Its wonderful smoothness, says Dom, is down to a generous addition of oats. It's light on the roasted flavours but shows some wonderfully subtle dark fruit. I wanted a pint.

But there are no pints at Borefts so I moved down the line to try Thornbridge's Aussie Summer Ale. I would have said this orange-blonde 5%er is brewed with Simcoe if I hadn't been told what's in it: it has that similar funky, almost cheesy, hop pungency. But it's apparently brewed with new Australian variety Victoria Secret. Quite tasty for a hop named after pants.

The only other Thornbridge I got my mitts on was the Heather Honey Stout. A 10% ABV imperial job, this gives off powerful aromas of floral honey and caramel. Both elements become sharper on tasting, adding a tanginess which mixes well with the understated roast. It took me a while to figure out what it reminded me of, and it's Thornbridge's own Bracia. This is a simplified, more balanced, version: what I really hoped the rather messy Bracia was going to be.

Up at the windmill, The Kernel too were unmoved from their pitch last year. Just four taps on the bar but a considerable line-up of beers to get through. On the pale ale side there was Topaz IPA, a pale cloudy gold colour with a serious weedy nose but tasting quite sharp and medicinal. I wasn't a fan. The NZ Pils was better but similarly medicinal and rather grassy. It also didn't taste anything like a pilsner and the cloudy yellow beer could easily be passed off as a pale ale.

Kernel's Stella Pale Ale was more to my liking: another wan yellow one but this time with a big lemony citrus punch. Almost turning harsh with its hoppiness, but nicely balanced by sherbet notes. The daddy of these was Kernel Strong Pale Ale: an IPA without all the hops, said Evin, given a turn in a Scotch barrel. The result is 10.7% ABV and wonderfully boozy, spicy and warming. Apologies for almost finishing it before putting my glass down to take a photo.

It's the dark side where Kernel really excels, in my estimation at least. Their Imperial Brown Stout was a fine example of why. 10% ABV and brewed to a recipe from 1856 it's mostly black, just showing murky brown around the edges. Brown malt a-go-go, with all the coffee and milk chocolate that that brings with it. On top there's a gorgeous layer of sweet lavender and then a bitter hop bite right on the finish. Smooth, complex, and with little sign of all that alcohol. Beautiful.

And yet, it was neither The Kernel nor Thornbridge who had the best British beers of the festival...

Old Europe

High on my hitlist, such as it was, for Borefts 2012 was the Mont Salève brewery in the French alps. I'd encountered one of their beers during the summer on a visit to Lyon (though I haven't written about it yet) and having really enjoyed it was eager for more. What I found was a bit of a mixed bag. Hops are clearly their thing: Admiral Benson is a 6% ABV IPA made with Nelson Sauvin. It's cloudy orange and runs the full gamut of Nelson flavours: flint meets mango on a dank funky background, liberally brushed with tangy high fruit notes. There was also an excellent barrel-aged barley wine called Gamay. It's quite dry and more than a little woody. White grape is in the ascendant but there's a solid base of malt and hops too, the latter coming in nicely grassy. Unusual, for a barley wine.

The dark beers weren't so hot. Tourbée promised a lot: a 5.5% ABV peated dark ale, but the result didn't have enough peat to it, nor anything much else, and was watery and dull as a result. Their "black bitter" Mozaik was more full-on despite being a whole percentage point lighter. But they've got the dark grain balance wrong here and have ended up with a difficult, overly dry, tarry effect drowning the hop notes and too burnt-tasting to be enjoyable.

From the alps, across the Pyrenees, and into Spain. Naparbier Zombreaker was a bit of an erratic: the brewery didn't have a stall and the beer doesn't seem to be a collaboration. I'm sure someone can tell me what it was doing there. Anyway, it was gorgeous: an amber IPA with massive, luscious, lary hop flavours screaming peaches and nectarines and similar succulent juicy loveliness. It's the first Spanish beer I've ever been really impressed with. I knew such a thing had to exist somewhere these days.

Skipping eastwards over the Med we come to Italy, and a modest offering from Del Ducato which I didn't really take the time to explore fully. Verdi was my token contribution to helping empty their kegs, an 8.2% ABV imperial stout brewed with chilli. Not very much chilli, mind, and it has imparted more of the sweet quality of the fruit than its spiciness. This joins some gorgeous rich dark chocolate under a more severe molasses nose. It's not too busy flavourwise nor treacly in the texture. I wish I'd taken the time to try some more, but it was the Saturday evening at this point and queues were starting to form at some of the brewery stands. Can't be having with queues when there's this much to be sampled.

Our virtual journey takes us north next, to Germany. Gänstaller-Bräu had their contribution to the new wave of German IPAs on offer, an imperial version called Green-Gold. It manages to pull off a mature oily hop funkiness while also tasting fresh and zingy: a single-glass lesson in what hops are and do. For more traditionally German hopping they had a Näturtrüb Zoiglbier, an oddly clear gold colour, given the title. It's mostly quite sweet from the lager malt but also shows wonderful herbal perfumey hop notes too. A great sipper but I could see the perfume getting a little overpowering in larger measures. Finally there was a minimalist doppelbock called Quator, a ruby colour that's pale for the style but appropriately sweet. Light, drinkable and fun, which is a great way for a dark lager to be, even at 10.4% ABV.

So far our virtual journey around Europe has taken place in two of the De Molen brewery's sheds. To get back home to the Netherlands we must head back up to the shadow of the windmill where we find the Mommeriete brewery from Gramsbergen, a village just inside the German border on the way to Groningen. I went for their Rookbock, a smoked take on the typical chestnut-coloured Dutch autumn lager. It doesn't have the sticky sweetness some of these do but is instead rather clean and properly lagery, hopped with some quite German-tasting varieties. The smoke just adds an extra layer of interest to this without getting in the way. It's a style that takes rather well to smoking. A very balanced and drinkable 6.7% ABV package.

Time now to hop the virtual North Sea and see what those cheeky Brits are up to.

The jig is up

Sorry, craft beer fans: it's all over. Time to go back to whatever you were drinking before you became obsessed with the minutiae of beer. We have the Swedish brewery Närke to thank for our liberation, following their Penn-and-Tellerish revelation of the secrets of craft beer at the Borefts Beer Festival last month:

The banner doesn't lie. I'll just round up the beers I drank at the festival and we'll leave it there, shall we?

Närke had plenty of other tricks and gimmicks up their sleeves. Not publishing their substantial beer list was one of them; including a beaver musk beer served from a urinal was another. But sadly that sold out too quickly for me to grab a mouthful of it. In fact I left all their beers a bit late and only managed to rush down a few towards the end of the second day.  Black Golding was the first of them, a well balanced strong porter of 7.3% ABV with just the right mix of dry roast and succulent dark fruits. A perfectly constructed beer that really throws the sarcasm of the banner into sharp focus.

Another was Tanngnjost & Tanngrisnir: light on vowels, heavy on smoke. This is a sticky red-amber ale with bags of toffee overlaid with acrid, hot, delicious phenols. The Werther's Originals factory is on fire and I'm loving it. Finally, McPeat Tribbel: as the name suggests a peated tripel. 8% ABV, orange amber and tasting of earthy smoke and almost nothing else except a little bit of jaffa cowering beneath. Very one-dimensional but I loved it.

Keeping it Scandinavian for the moment, Mikkeller were operating nearby but I just gave one of theirs a go while I was passing: SpontanDoubleCherry, a kriek with one whole kilo of cherries per litre. It was available in six-month and one-year versions, and I opted for the younger, hoping for a little more fruit character. But there wasn't a whole lot of fruit going on: in fact it wasn't sweet at all, nor particularly sour. A dry pepperiness was all it had to say for itself, really, and none of the wow factor that used to come with Mikkeller's lambic adventures.

Down at the back of the much-extended festival tent in the brewery yard there was a mobile bar which played host to Haandbryggriet, among others: replacing last year's Nøgne Ø as the Norwegian flag bearers. They've embraced the trend for sourness with the likes of Sur Megge, a lightly puckering pale beer with lots of gentle orange blossom perfume taking the rougher edges off. Krøkkebic turns all of this up a level or two, being a darker amber with full-on aftershave muskyness rather than perfume and a sourness that pierces the corners of the jaw. For the nordic novelty fruit factor they've included crowberries in the recipe. Do they normally taste of aftershave? Dropping the sour but throwing in some smoke, there was Røyk Uten Ild. Dark ruby to be kind; cloudy brown might be a little more honest, it's rather sweet in a pipe smoke kind of way. But there's a substantial hop dimension too: succulent nectarine blending well with the moist tobacco. I've rarely seen this sort of thing done so well.

But where are my manners? I have got this far yet totally blanked our hosts, De Molen. They were operating out of the windmill, in the brewery hall, and down at the mobile bar. The selection was extensive and ever-changing, though I noticed something of a reduction in the number of imperial stouts available: a worrying trend. The first one I tried was an extra-Cascade-dry-hopped version of Nat & Droog. It's a heavy, toffeeish affair providing a warming milky coffee sensation, but is spiced up by the hops, giving what m'colleague Zak Avery described as a nutmeg quality, plus rising citrus reaching a sharp bitter crescendo. A very interesting blend of flavours in there.

Milk stouts were something of a theme to the festival and De Molen had produced Koetjes & Kalfjes: a whey stout. 3.5% ABV and stinking in a very specifically rural way. The flavour offers a pungent blend of cheese and coffee (what's not to like?) and there's a long silage aftertaste. It's heavy and tough going to drink. I'll go with "interesting" rather than "nice". (The Kernel was the other brewery doing this, live-mixing their Export London Stout with whey from a corny to create a mad salty chocolate concoction which didn't quite work.)

Funnily enough, early on day one, Koetjes & Kalfjes was the last De Molen beer I had. Plenty more from other breweries to come tomorrow and beyond.

Race to the bottom

99 Pours has chosen a topic close to my sweet and sticky little heart for this month's Session: novelty beers. So much weird random crap in my stash to choose from. But, with a Session audience watching, I decided to go for a well-known pair: the novelty beers of the moment, if you will.

They are (both) International Arms Race a collaborative/competitive project by BrewDog and Flying Dog. The novelty lies in the specification: a zero-IBU IPA made without hops. Daft, perhaps, but exploring what can be done in beer without the use of hops is one of my hobby-horses so I had to have these. Steve of Beers I've Known very kindly donated the bottles to me and I opened them side by side.

Though both are pale ales at 7.5% ABV, there was an immediate difference on pouring, with the BrewDog coming out a clear amber, shading towards red. The Flying Dog version was a paler orange but clouded by quite large globules suspended in the body of the liquid. Neither beer held a head for very long.

BrewDog also won the battle of the aroma, with some wonderfully enticing herbal smells: I got a big whack of rosemary in particular. It also avoided being any way medicinal, which can sometimes be the downfall of herb-infused beer. Conversely, I could get hardly any vapours from Flying Dog's effort.

But the primary front in this war was always going to be the flavour, and Flying Dog aces it, showing big white pepper notes at the front, given a twist of exotic sophistication with cedar and sandalwood spicing at the finish. Best of all, the flavours are bright, clean and distinct, making the most of the novelty and doing quite a job hiding all the alcohol. BrewDog's beer was a bit of a mess by contrast: much heavier and quite sweet, to the point of sickliness. The best I can do flavourwise is herbal bubblegum dipped in nutmeg, but even that doesn't quite cover it. It's certainly flavourful, but I didn't really enjoy it.

Despite the failings of the beers, I still think International Arms Race was a worthwhile experiment and I applaud the efforts of all brewers to do once-offs and oddities. It's a big part of what keeps beer interesting for me. Besides, every beer style started out as a novelty at some point.

Black and blue

Please excuse the labelless bottle: this is how it came to me. The graphic design on the new White Gypsy bottles are pretty minimalist anyway: white on black, with a subtle colour coding denoting the style. The blue cap is the Imperial Stout and Cuilán very kindly gifted me this bottle at the Irish Craft Beer Festival last month.

I get lots of fizz as I pour, a deep layer of off-white foam forming over the opaque black body, though subsiding quite quickly. The aroma isn't as aggresive as one normally finds in this style, a nose-tingling jet of sharp carbon dioxide with the promise of liquorice and treacle beneath.

The flavour profile is quite Irish: much dryer than other imperial stouts with lots of burnt toast roasted barley at the front. It gets chewier deeper in as the sweeter liquorice and dark chocolate finish things off, with a tangy hit of vegetal hops giving this valediction an extra dimension.

It's not a massively complex or challenging beer and presents very little that the seasoned drinker of unimperial stouts hasn't met before. At a mere 7% ABV it's quite light in the alcohol department too, not that I complained as I took care of the whole 75cl by myself. But it's an absolutely rock-solid beer and I'm looking forward to seeing it and its brethern out in the wild. White Gypsy have also produced a Doppelbock, Dubbel and American-style IPA in this series: look out for them wherever decent Irish beer is sold.

From the sublime to the ridiculous

Two European oddities were brought my way a few months ago (thanks Richard!) and it's about time they made the leap from my notebook and camera onto this here blog.

First up a smoked stout from Birrificio Lambrate in Milan. It's called Ghisa and is a mere 4.6%. However, that figure hides some very low attentuation and the brewery warns us that the wort started out at a relatively hefty 12.5° Plato. By my calculations that means it must have finished out at a gravity around 1.016. So what do all these figures mean for the drinker? Well, it means you get a beer that's much more full-bodied than, say, an Irish stout of 4.6% ABV would normally be. And this is apparent right from the aroma stage -- smoke and sticky phenolic notes twist provocatively out of the glass. The texture and indeed taste are all treacle or molasses with quite a tangy bitterness, finishing on a coffee-like dryness with lingering beery-ashtray smoke. Unsurprisingly it got a bit sickly before long, even when sharing the bottle.

From Lombardy to the Baltic and the Saku brewery, Carlsberg-owned and largest in Estonia. But it's not all yellow fizz, they also have a red ale called The Taste of Manchester "following the finest traditions of English brewmasters". Mmm-hmm?
 
The aroma here is pure Irn Bru: sugary and artificial fruit sweetness. Tastewise it's quite clean, however: only lightly fruity. It's easy to scoff, but in lagerland this is the sort of thing one might very well be glad of, for a change. The website blurb really is worth a look for teh lolz, though: "In England this beer is called ale and every respectable traditional English pub has this type of mild red beer at the top of their beer menu." I was laughing until I read this.