Dragon energy

Maybe I'm just not paying sufficient attention, but the beers from Cardiff's Tiny Rebel brewery seem to no more than trickle in to Ireland, showing up in random places without consistency or logic. Today's beer is Dutty, a session New England IPA I found in Redmond's but haven't seen anywhere else.

Though only a piddling 4.2% ABV it packs a lot of positive NEIPA attributes in there. It's a dense-looking opaque orange colour, but there's no yeasty grit in the flavour. The aroma is citric, and the flavour carries enough of that bitterness to make it satisfyingly balanced. The main act, however, is the juiciness: a beautifully quenching mix of mango, mandarin and guava. A remarkably full body really accentuates the fruit, though the sweetness doesn't last long, being finished off by the aforementioned bittering and a smack of herbal resins.

It's a lovely drinking beer for summer (remember that?), and absolutely begs to be followed with another. The little 33cl cans, while I'm sure helping with keeping it cold, don't do it full justice when you only have one to hand. This beer deserves pints.

Melvined

I knew I'd heard of the brewery, but couldn't think where. That's what got me to buy these four, quite spendy, cans of beer from Melvin Brewing in Wyoming. When I got home and looked it up... Oh. Not cool, Melvin. Well, I've got the beers now anyway. Let's see how they shake out.

The weakest of the set is Hubert, a pale ale at 6% ABV. It's a slightly hazy dark golden colour and smells classically American, mixing toffee with grapefruit. The flavour is softer and more integrated: ripe peach and apricot, still sweet but not sugary. There's a pinch of green lime bitterness in the finish, though otherwise it's a very mellow affair with a nicely chewy texture, yet not too heavy. It's a calm and chilled-out sort of strong hoppy beer, one that I could happily relax into a few of.

Melvin IPA is the least-imaginatively named one of the set. It's 7.5% ABV and a deeper orange hue than the pale ale. This is quite effective in unweaving all that was good about Hubert. There's a similar classically American citrus flavour profile but it's heavy, sticky and boozy. I get lots of marmalade in the centre of the flavour, the whisky sort, by the spoonful. There's a pleasant peppery spicing in the finish but it doesn't do enough to balance it. By the end of the glass I was apprehensive about the stronger ones to come.

Drunken Master IPA pushes us to 9% ABV. The colour is heading towards amber now, although this one doesn't smell any stronger. It's more subtle all round, in fact. The carbonation is almost non-existent, giving it a wine-ish feel, while the flavour drops all of the weighty fruit of the previous two and goes instead for a clean bitterness, tasting of marjoram, rosemary and similar oily green herbs. It's a little on the dull side, laid-back to the point of falling over, and definitely doesn't present to the senses as much as the previous two. It's fine, though. The smoothness makes it a very uncomplicated way to get 9% ABV into your bloodstream with the minimum of fuss. Part of me feels this type of beer shouldn't be so bland, but another part is very glad it's not a sticky mess.

The sequence finishes with 2x4, pushing the strength to the two-digit limit of 9.9% ABV. This is another fairly plain one. Yes the alcohol is apparent, all slick and spirituous without being actually hot, while the hops bring a modest juicy citrus to the party. I miss the herbal complexity that the other one showed: this one is just hot orange cordial. Again, it's not offensive. The malt is kept on a tight leash and doesn't spread unwelcome sugar over the palate. But for the price I'd like something a little more interesting.

It turns out that the basic pale ale is the best of the bunch where Melvin is concerned. There are no missteps with the way the beers are designed, but the increase in alcohol comes with a decrease of fun, which is not how it should be. Keep it light, Melvin. Stay in the friendzone.

Running to catch up

The Irish beer backlog has filled up so needs to be emptied now. Open wide...

I've only just caught up with Boyne Brewhouse's summer special, Jigs & Reels, created as a tie-in with the Fleadh Cheoil in Drogheda this year. It's a session IPA, just 4% ABV and a sickly looking hazy pale yellow. The billed hops are Mosaic, Cascade, Chinook and Centennial, and they've got full value out of the bitterness: the waxy, earthy buzz of Cascade stands out in particular for me. From a sharp lemon rind opener, the bittering fades and more subtle citrus notes emerge after; even a mild tropicality. This softens further to a floral perfume which is where I would like it to finish but it turns a little soapy right on the very end. A lasting impression of lime shred marmalade forms the aftertaste. I enjoyed it. It's light and drinkable despite the sharpness, with enough complexity to be actively interesting.

A change of the seasons later and Boyne Brewhouse's new Winter Ale has emerged. It's brewed to 8% ABV and comes in the pure Scandi style, deep red in colour and eschewing any novelty winter spices. It's still spicy, though: a roasty spark of incense and nutmeg. There's a Belgian feel to the base, a dubbel-like mix of toffee, banana and fig. While tasting the full strength it doesn't get hot or cloying and there's a drying shot of espresso right on the end, accompanied by a modest square of dark chocolate. Like the summery quaffer above, this fulfils its role well: properly wintery and warming with no silly gimmicks involved. A half-litre bottle or tall can would have worked as well as the 33cl; just saying.

Also going full winter was St Mel's Brewing, with Slow Burner extra stout. The shadow of Leann Folláin hangs over this, St Mel's's Liam having formulated the iconic stout while head brewer at Carlow. At 6.5% ABV this is slightly stronger and also a lot drier, with a huge bitterly roasted foretaste, all burnt toast and the darkest of chocolate. There's a delicious floral/herbal complexity backing this -- rosewater and liquorice -- with rosewater in the aroma too. The texture is surprisingly light for the strength, which makes for easy drinking though I would have liked a bit more of a finish: it all goes away a little too abruptly for my liking. It's a very decent stout, and a bargain at just €3 a bottle as SuperValu's beer of the month for November, but I think the roast really ought to be dialled back a little, with maybe a smidge more hop. If roast is your bag, though, get stuck in.

With the new brewery in Athlone almost completed, Dead Centre released its fourth beer, still brewed at St Mel's in Longford. It's a coffee porter called Moondust, named after the variety of coffee used in it. The colour was surprisingly pale: mahogany brown rather than black. That coffee ain't subtle. There's a raw and dry coffee roast as an aroma, to begin with. The flavour starts out dry too, then a hazelnut sweetness rises up, finishing on a creamy real-latte note. The beery side of the equation is a little lost, but there is a hop tang in here, and some complementary porterish chocolate. Though 5% ABV it's a little on the thin side and I think that overemphasises the coffee roast a little, but there's a decent complexity if you allow yourself time to explore it properly.

One step ahead of Dead Centre, Rascals open their doors to the public for the first time at 4pm today. I went along for a sneak peek last Thursday and it's an impressive set up: the first of its kind in Dublin but hopefully far from the last. Their newest release is an Irish Coffee Stout, aged in Irish whiskey barrels though only 4.8% ABV. It's a charming little chap, smooth and sweet with lots of salty milk chocolate and a touch of honeycomb. The coffee side is quite muted, emerging only at the end as a different kind of sweetness, and I didn't really notice any heat or flavour from the whiskey. I got an overall impression of chocolate milkshake more than Irish coffee, which is pleasant in its own way.

Just under the wire for this post's deadline comes West Coast Speedball from Galway Bay. This is another big and wintery job, 6.5% ABV with espresso and oatmeal and served on nitro. It is therefore gloriously thick -- a real knife-and-fork job. The booze is infused with the coffee which wafts up the back of the palate and there's a long chocolate cake aftertaste, properly dark and bitter chocolate cake at that. This still possesses all the faculties of the powerful stout it's based on but uses the coffee well to enhance this without drowning it out. I'm even ready to forgive the nitro: I don't think the flavour suffers under it, for a change.

It has been a while since we had a new one from Brehon Brewhouse. The latest is interesting: Mechanical Turk. It was billed solely as a coffee milk stout on the boards at UnderDog and I was a few mouthfuls in before I copped the Turkish connection, the cinnamon spicing being actually more apparent than any coffee flavouring. Honey and cardamom follow but the body struggles to push all the sweet spiciness to the drinker's palate -- it's just too thin. There's precious little excuse for that with the ABV at 5.7%. Its high fizz and quick finish are disappointing and it doesn't help that Carlow Brewing made something much better along similar lines with their 2018 Lublin to Dublin. More body is definitely required here.

Four coffee stouts in a row. 'Tis the season, I guess.

Turning back to the hoppy side of the house, Trouble Brewing has taken on the cutting-edge brut IPA style with cans of Brut Almighty, a 6.2% ABV offering, employing Bravo, Hallertau Blanc and Mosaic hops. It pours a sunny yellow shade with a fine pillow of foam on top. The aroma is candysweet rather than dry: Refresher chews and grape soda. While that fruit lingers in the flavour, the juicy white grape in particular, there's a distinct dryness too: I could feel the moisture being lifted from my cheeks and tongue. There's a certain heat as well, a little like with very strong spirits, and there's a spiciness too: the peppery sparks you get in a saison. This is probably the clearest interpretation of brut IPA I've had. It does taste like a good pale 'n' hoppy IPA that has been artificially attenuated lower than usual. Whether this is something worth doing is another question. I think I'd like a bit more malt substance for these hops to bounce around on.

The Social Hops project produced two beers from the 2018 harvest. As well as the Rascals one (reviewed here), Hopfully turned out a Social Hops Rye ale which I caught up with on its launch night in The Square Ball. I wasn't a big fan of it. While there's a pleasant peppery effect from the rye and a wholesome bread-like malt flavour, it's quite dreggy, with a rough burr of yeast dominating the taste. There's a raw alcoholic heat as well. The bottom line may well be that it doesn't have enough hops. Break out the tomato feed next year, growers.

DOT broke out the hopsack too recently, with a new session IPA called Total Gridlock. 4.1% ABV, hazy and pale with a strongly resinous aroma. Expecting an oily bitter flavour, I was wrong footed completely by the first mouthful: a blast of juicy fruit, all peach, satsuma and apricot, buiding to zesty lime before finishing up on the grassy dank I thought I would be getting at the start. All of that happens on a soft and very chuggable base and there are zero technical flaws, that I could detect at least. I don't know how long this one will stay fresh so snap it up if and when you see it.

At the opposite end of the scale, the new Whiplash oat-laden double IPA is called Cream on Chrome, utilising Lemondrop and Citra, and the usual 8% ABV. It pours an unpleasant looking pale beige with a loose cask-like head which doesn't hang around long. There's a fun tropical pineapple flavour from the first sip but it's gone by the second, leaving gritty yeast and hard alcohol behind. That old reliable double act of garlic and vanilla emerges as it warms, that latter particularly strong in the aroma. I'm deeming this a bust. While it has all the makings of a jolly modern DIPA, the accents are in the wrong places and the bright fresh hop character, which ought to be the centrepiece, is all but missing. Still, lots of people seem to like this sort of thing these days and you'll know already whether this is for you or not.

The first joker in this pack of IPAs is Mangoes Barefoot from Lacada, kindly shared by Simon, of course. Lactose and oats make it a thick affair, the appearance a hazy yellow with 5.5% ABV. I got a lightly soapy aroma, a little like shower gel, perhaps, though the flavour is perfectly clean and untainted. There's a pleasant mix of citric bitterness and real tropical fruit, and while it's missing a vibrant juicy side it works instead as a smooth and sweet dessert. I don't know that it's an improvement on non-fruited IPA, but it does its own thing quite well.

Finally, the run-up to Halloween brought Trouble's now-iconic pumpkin beer out of the woodwork, but also a "pumpkin IPA" from Boghopper: Attempted Murder. There's the usual rough and homebrewish Boghopper feel to this, including a touch of the rubbery smoke twang I complained about previously, though at a lower intensity than before. It pours a muddy ochre colour, with lots of fizz resulting in a thick head. I don't get any pumpkin spice, or much by way of hops, just sweet summery berries, like you might find in a red ale. There's a bitter tang on the finish which I guess provides its IPA credentials, but other than that it's more like an amber ale. As usual with this brewery the yeast grit does get in the way of the flavour; cleaned up it would probably be quite tasty, if not exactly seasonal.

I think Boyne comes out of this as the overall winner, with DOT's Total Gridlock the single best beer. Good hustle everyone. Until next round up...

Ticking casks and taking names

On a determinedly damp Saturday morning last month I set off for Dún Laoghaire and the Wetherspoon 2018 Autumn Festival, hoping desperately that the beers available would be worth the drenching. There were no high-profile international collaborations this year, which took a little bit of the fun away. Is it wrong to see something a bit Brexity in the purely-GB line-up?

I started with a trilogy including Inveralmond's Ossian, which isn't on the festival list but howanever. It's an attractive medium gold colour with a honey and lemon sweetness, turning to a waxy bitterness in the finish. It's extremely refreshing, the dryness in each mouthful cleaning the sugar away and setting up the next. In one sense it was the perfect kick-off but also suited to drinking in much larger quantities than thirds.

Mauldon's Blackberry Porter is next. It could be my imagination but there appeared to be a purpleish tint to the black beer. The fruit is unsubtle to say the least: a sweet and sticky forest-fruit syrup with as much raspberry and raisin in it as blackberry. The base contributes a milk chocolate flavour and some burnt toast, and all-in it's not an unpleasant combination. I bet it tastes far better without the "enhancement" though.

My guess was that Salopian's Hop Twister would be the pick of the bunch. The Shropshire brewery rarely puts a foot wrong. It looked much like the Ossian: clear and blonde. The aroma offers a promising citrus buzz, suggesting lemon and grapefruit. No surprises on tasting: a powerful lemon-rind bitterness, but also lots of malt sugar which balances it and makes it taste of a lemon-flavoured boiled sweet. A tannic dry finish prevents that from getting cloying. While neither subtle nor especially complex it is rather jolly.

The final tick for this visit was Autumn Leaves by Upham Brewery. It's the appropriate shade of russet and mostly quite dry, roasty even, presenting a toffee flavour without the sweetness. It manages to taste sufficiently autumnal, which I guess is the point, but there's little else interesting about it. This time a third was plenty, as tends to be the case with the medium-dark beers at the Wetherspoon festival.

To Blackrock, then, and two more that aren't on the festival list, beginning with Elgood's Greyhound. It looks like an average brown bitter and tastes terrible, redolent with disinfectant phenols suggesting it's been on here for a while. Mercifully they're just at the front of the flavour, fading quickly to leave a strong-tea dryness and some grain husk. Even perfectly kept I doubt this would be any good.

I wasn't familiar with Swansea's Boss Brewery, nor their US IPA Brave. At 5.5% ABV it's a bit low-strength for the style but it tastes big and chewy, leaning heavily on the caramelised malt at the expense of fresh hopping. There's a definite old-world feel to it, all metal and jaffa, making me suspect that this too has been on tap too long and is far from freshness. Or maybe it was just another dull brown bitter to begin with. I got to give it a second chance in a different branch subsequently, finding it pretty much the same so I can't pin this one on the pub.

Coach House Blueberry calls itself a Classic Bitter though there's nothing very classic about chucking fruit in, is there? Though clean-looking and pale it smells like a compôte and tastes of real blueberries in a way that blueberry beers rarely do. The base bitter seems to be a rather dull affair, not pushing any malt or hop notes forward. Frankly, this could be a blueberry lager. There's not a damn thing wrong with it, however: if you like blueberries fill your boots, but don't expect anything else to happen.

The next day was much more clement and I bimbled up through Phoenix Park to The Great Wood in Blanchardstown. There was quite a bit of overlap in the selection here, but hello Adnams! I was a little disappointed that the festival offering from the Suffolk brewery was a brown one -- Nut Brown Ale, in fact -- rather than something pale and hoppy. It was lovely though, light on the caramel with a spicy aftershave perfume leading to a harder bitter liquorice. The signature Adnams tannins get a look-in too. Very nicely balanced and complex, all-in-all.

Looking almost identical was Brentwood's Hope & Glory, a bitter rather than a brown ale. It's quite plain, and sweeter than the brown ale, all twigs and caramel, finishing swiftly with a departing metal twang. This was the gluten-free option in the 30-beer line-up and I suspect its thinness is related.

There I cut my losses for this round. I declare Ossian the outright winner, with honorable mentions to Salopian and Adnams. For all the rest of the rubbish, at least there was a drinkable beer in each of the three branches. I'm calling the whole thing a victory while that remains the case.

American macro

A postscript to my Canadian wanderings of the last fortnight: indulging my curiosity about mainstream US beer brands, and recording my impressions here, conclusively.

Miller Lite comes in a white can that bears a striking resemblance to the Miller Pilsner which was a mainstay of my early drinking years in the UK of the 1990s. I've often wondered if they're the same beer. Anyway, I made a point of trying it when I saw it. It's 4% ABV and the pale gold you'd expect from an American light lager. The texture is smooth and I detect a certain greasy esteriness. "Lite" it ain't. A fruity sweet flavour follows, showing surprising levels of red apple and apricot. In another sort of beer that might be a pleasant complexity; here it's just a flaw. The lack of crispness is what bothers me most about this: it's not properly clean and harder work to drink than it should be.

To follow, The Champagne of Beers, no less: Miller High Life. It proved blander than the foregoing, smooth and flavourless, with vague hints of vanilla and tin. This is one designed to be pounded without thought: it slips back easily and merrily like... well... like champagne. There's a certain thickness to the texture but I'll bet that vanishes when it's served properly ice cold. This isn't unpleasant the way macro lagers often are but it's still not... a beer anyone should... buy.

I expected a veritable feast for the senses from Coors Banquet. I got something half way between the previous two. And you didn't think a crappier version of Miller Lite was possible. There's a certain amount of crispness here, but it's part of an overall green apple kick, with the same greasy thickness as found in the others. Spongecake and golden syrup say proper lager; a nail varnish buzz gives it all away immediately after. When it warms up at all it starts tasting of headaches. This wasn't too bad to drink but I suspect it's the one I'd most likely regret if I'd bought another.

AB InBev's answer to Blue Moon, Shock Top Belgian White, is one of those beers I've long harboured a curiosity about. So when I saw tall cans in the beer fridge of a Montréal supermarket I snapped one up immediately. Then I sneaked it onto a train. Don't tell the guard.

It's 5.2% ABV and a pale hazy yellow colour. A very fine white mousse forms cheerily on top. It smells broadly like a witbier, with maybe less citrus and more esters than one might expect. A jolt of coriander opens the flavour, and by and large closes it too. This makes the beer taste unpleasantly soapy, and there's nothing to counter it: no cleansing lemon zest or hop bitterness. Shock Top is very nearly acceptably bland but doesn't even manage that, leaning far too much on that coriander. I guess you're meant to put an orange in it, but I won't be making a return visit to try that.

Diageo's grand project to install a new brewery on the site of the old Seagram's plant in Baltimore is one that makes regular appearances in my Twitter timeline, via the likes of Oliver Gray and Jon Urch. When fully commissioned, the flagship here will be Guinness Blonde Lager, currently brewed by AB InBev elsewhere in the South, and not available in Europe. When I spotted it on sale in Quebec's fabulously named government off licence, SAQ, I picked up a can to give it a try.

"Made with American hops" it proudly declares on the can, and while I didn't get a rush of pine or grapefruit there is a subtle and pleasant lemon tang. This is set on a lightly tannic base, creating a super-quenching lemon tea effect, one accentuated by the deep golden colour. The aroma is a little estery, in a way that lager shouldn't be, while the finish brings a sweet raw grain note which is a little porridgey. I expected a clean and bland lager but this has character: greater than, but not dissimilar to, its Irish cousin Hop House 13. On the one hand I think it would benefit from drying out, but on the other it is a full 5% ABV and doesn't claim to be any particular lager style. I would probably drink this again.

No conclusions, just a plea to accept my morbid beery fascinations for what they are.

The last blast

Last Friday I mentioned the horror that comes with discovering you can't drink your own beer on a Canadian train. The disaster is partially offset by the fact that trains do serve beer, and in first class you can have as much as you like at no extra cost. As a result I became well acquainted with the limited selection on our way around.

For the most part, for me, that meant Mill St. Organic Lager, a fairly ubiquitous beer, coming from an undercover AB InBev brewery in Ontario. Despite the high-end presentation, it tastes exactly like a macro lager, watery mainly, with just a faint corn-syrup sweetness and a tinny tang of hops. It's pleasingly unfizzy so at least works well as a thirst quencher, but that's about all it has going for it.

On our way back from Québec City I chanced a Molson Coors stalking horse, Rickard's Red. I found this mind-blowingly sweet, rich like a hunk of expensive fudge. There's a buzz of ripe summer fruit -- raspberry and strawberry -- finishing on a stale and sweaty sort of bitterness. These sorts of beers are usually thin and fizzy, but this one isn't. Which isn't to say it's any good: the weighty calorific quality gets difficult to drink very quickly.

I scored better on the Ottawa-Toronto leg with Chipie amber ale from Archibald, another clandestine AB InBev brand. It's a deep copper shade, despite which it leans more heavily on the hops than the malt. The flavour opens on a zesty burst of fresh lemon, settling to a more floral buzz which lasts long into the finish. A smooth texture helps it along and there's just enough malt to balance it without making it sweet per se. Very nicely put together overall.

Mill St. has a large brewpub in the Distillery District of Toronto, a Victorian factory that has been repurposed as a shopping and entertainment zone. We dropped in late in the holiday, since we were passing.

Always up for some historical drinking, I had a Stock Ale. This wasn't the super-strong proto-IPA I was expecting, but a hazy dark yellow beer, heavy and sweet with an overtone of floral honey. Its simple and tasty stylings reminded me a little of strong eastern European lager, though the ABV was a very modest 5%. I'm not quite sure what the brewers meant it to be, but I liked it.

Brown Brick is Mill St.'s brown ale, brewed there at the pub. Though 5.5% ABV it looked a bit wan and watery in the glass, more red than brown. The flavour is nicely complex, however, showing mocha, rosewater, cinnamon and raisin at various points, finishing on a roasty spice. My only criticism was that it's a little flat, but otherwise an excellent interpretation of brown ale.

Back in Montréal, one of the beers I tried was the house pale ale at Reuben's Deli. In my review here I speculated that it was a rebadge of something dull by Molson Coors, and I think I found the same beer again in Toronto, in the humongous Real Sports bar in the Scotiabank Arena complex, where we happened to be staying. Real Sports House Ale, then: golden, sticky, with a sickly headachey perfume. None of the good things about ale or lager feature here.

This place also had a Granville Island beer on tap: a pale ale called Old English. This is a pale copper colour with a sweet and smoky aroma. Burnt caramel and candyfloss form the flavour; an autumnal mix of toffee apples and popcorn. I guess this is a Canadian take on English brown bitter. If so, they've nailed the essential boring sugary quality of most of them.

On the last full day we took the ferry across to Centre Island to wander around by the abandoned funpark and beach. There's a bar by the ferry terminal where I had a can of Creemore Springs Lager while we waited for the return boat. This is a hazy amber colour with a vaguely bready flavour and a mild aromatic hop kick in the finish. I quite liked the fullness of it, giving it an almost Bavarian or Czech feel, even though it's brewed in Canada by Molson Coors. You could probably pass this off as a kellerbier and no one would be any the wiser.

And then the trip was over and we were at the airport. Toronto Pearson has a swish ordering system for the catering in departures: you tap out what you want on an iPad tethered to where you're sitting. There was one acceptable beer on sale, at an eye-watering price: canned Mad Tom IPA by Muskoka. I had one of them. It's 6.4% ABV and a hazy deep orange colour. I got light tannins and jaffa orange as the flavour, pleasantly refreshing when cold but without any real standout elements. While mostly sweet, it possesses sufficient pithy bitterness to balance it and make it worth drinking, though possibly not for $10 a can.

With that crushed, we were off home again. Until next time, Canada.

The high end

In Tuesday's post I covered one of the few Toronto beer bars I'd heard of before I began the research for this trip: C'est What? Another was Bar Volo, which closed in its original location in 2016 but has now returned as Birreria Volo with a new premises. Well, I say premises; it's barely that, looking more like a roofed-over alley with a long straight bar and rickety furniture scattered inside. Yes, it's craft as craft can be but there was a friendly neighbourhood vibe about it when we dropped in late one afternoon.

From the selection I picked Vim & Vigor, a pilsner from Ottawa's Tooth & Nail brewery and the only one of theirs I encountered on the trip. It's a gently floral take on the style, eschewing the hard grassy edges. A rich malt aroma introduces it while the flavour is all hay and meadows, wildflowers swaying in the breeze. There's just enough of a sharp pinch in the finish to end it satisfactorily. I wouldn't normally laud a pilsner that's as soft as this but it's unarguably delicious.

My next one was Ci-Tron, a dry-hopped and barrel-aged Berliner weisse by Small Pony Barrel Works. This had a spritzy lemon-zest foretaste, like a squeeze of Jif Lemon, but not a whole lot else afterwards. The sourness is simplistic and inoffensive, resulting in a net effect of something like lemonade: tasty, refreshing, but not really built to be savoured.

The final round here gave me a brut IPA called Groupthink from Toronto's own Halo Brewery. It's a big 'un at 7.5% ABV, and uses a promising combination of Galaxy, Citra and Azacca hops. Promising, until the substance got sucked out of them by that brut-alising enzyme, I suspect. There's a plain and dry lemon cookie foretaste and then a straw-like middle, reminiscent of a saison, and no finish or aftertaste to speak of, really. At the same time there's a certain sweet sickliness too; the sort of vanilla tang one might expect in a New England IPA. However you look at it, I did not enjoy what this beer was offering and frankly felt a little cheated.

An actual saison is next to it: Series 3 by Redline Brewhouse. This is a barrel-aged and Brettanomyces-fermented saison with added apricots: 6.6% ABV and all murky orange. I was expecting lots of succulent stonefruit here, but really the barrel seems to be in charge of the flavour. Funk and pepper forms the aroma, with just a little apricot sweetness. The taste is fantastically spicy, full of pink peppercorns, incense and juicy pomegranate. These are all smoothly integrated into a cohesive overall taste, building in intesity as they go, with a sour pinch near the end followed by a long barnyard finish. Really beautiful stuff. I don't think I've ever had as many wins from a single style as I've had with barrel-aged saisons.

On every must-visit pub list for Toronto is Bellwoods. The production brewery is on a busy commercial street, with a roomy taproom out front, extending to an even roomier front terrace. Service was attentive and the beer list looked interesting. Time to get stuck in.

White Picket Fence was where I started, batch 7 of the foeder-fermented saison. It's a very pale yellow colour with a very funky aroma, all farmyards and apricots. The flavour delivers a surprise punch of sharp lime at the front, smoothing out into gentler white plum after. Another surprise was the alcohol burn: much more than I'd have expected for 6.4% ABV. A sprinkling of briney salt is the only other noteworthy feature. It's a little busy overall, lacking the integration of flavours I got with the previous beer. This tastes like an experiment that needs one or two more goes to be right.

In the more prosaic glass next to it is Runes, an IPA, this version using Loral and Motueka hops. While it looks like orange juice it smells like garlic and tastes gunky and yeasty with a hot garlic finish. You could call the texture "creamy" if you were feeling charitable, but this was definitely not my sort of thing at all.

Bellwoods likes big bottles but conveniently offers single servings from them at the taproom. I took advantage of this smart policy to try Donkey Venom, a blend of imperial stout, porter and a sour culture: old school. The aroma was probably its best feature: a rich waft of cherry and chocolate. Dark chocolate opens the flavour, followed quickly by a quite harsh sour pinch and then some mushroom-like umami. While interesting, it doesn't really make the best use of its constituent parts. Possibly it just needs some time in the bottle to gel together better.

I went for Jelly King next, a mixed fermentation sour beer with Citra and Amarillo. It arrived a bright opaque orange colour, smelling powerfully tart, of minerals and citrus juice. The smooth texture was a bit of a surprise, and the sourness is dialled back in the flavour, felt more than tasted, via the tooth-stripping acidity. I got hints of fresh orange juice and then lots of dank resinous hops long into the finish. Despite everything going in in here, it's well balanced and very accessible.

Finally, Bellwoods's single-hop IPA series is called Monogamy and I tried the Citra one. Here's that surprising smooth texture again, and a herbal aroma of basil and oregano. It was going well until the flavour decided to take us on a trip to New England, via the garlic patch and vanilla plantation. Doubtless this sort of hazy low-bitterness IPA has a market, but I've tasted plenty like it before and it doesn't work for me. Bring the fruit, please.

We made just one daytrip out of Toronto, the inevitable trip to see Niagara Falls. The excursion also involved a short stop in the picturesque town of Niagara on the Lake. Among the beautifully preserved 19th century buildings, mostly now giftshops and cafés, is one housing a brewery: The Exchange. I didn't have long so secured a large flight to get a feel for the beers here.

1³ was where I started: a 4% ABV Berliner weisse. It's a bit dull, with a grainy lager aroma and a vaguely chalky flavour, like antacid tablets.

The session IPA in the range is called 5, and has a bright and fresh lemon aroma. There's a real kick to the flavour: sharp herbs and pine, with a touch of urinal cake about it. It's a little extreme for a 4.6% ABV beer, but the finish is quick and clean and I liked the assertive way that it presents itself.

3 is a porter, though a very pale one; chestnut red in colour. It has a pleasant espresso aroma, and tastes similarly roasty at first, opening out into strawberry and raspberry, before finishing abruptly on a watery metallic note. It's 5.3% ABV which should have been enough to give it more substance than it has. I'd probably be happy enough with this on its own, but it was thrown into serious shade by being presented beside...

... 8 Foreign Exchange Stout. This export stout is 7.2% ABV, with a proper cream head and a proper roasty nose. Like all the best stouts it goes for hoppy bitterness in a big way, its caramelised malt matched perfectly with heavy smoke and hot tar. This is an absolutely textbook example of how to brew stout: rich, complex, balanced, bold, and immensely satisfying to drink.

The final two are special editions so get symbols rather than numbers as names. & is a Flemish-style oud bruin, a big 7.4% ABV and dark red. These often taste like HP Sauce to me, and none more so than this one, beginning with the intense tamarind aroma. The flavour is a simple mix of tartness and spices, leaning heavily on the balsamic vinegar with some added summer fruit complexity. The texture is very thick for a sour beer and the weight was just too intense for my comfort. It is authentically Belgian tasting, however: a convincing clone of the Liefmans original.

The foliage was just beginning to change colour at this point in mid-September, which of course means it was time for the pumpkin beers to appear. The Exchange's is called ∞, perhaps implying that we'll never be rid of them. They claim a Belgian influence on this, and it certainly has a larger quotient of fruity esters than most. It's a bright orange colour and the aroma is like real pumpkin pie filling. Clove and cinnamon dominate the flavour, sharp at first, but then fading to a soft and luscious fruit character that could well be actual pumkins. The spices reassert, turning it to aftershave in the finish, but other than that it's a jolly decent seasonal effort: the spices making a real contribution to the overall character instead of just masking it.

We'll go back to Toronto to wrap up the trip tomorrow, and maybe not be so precious about the fancy beers this time.