We will we will Wrocław

On the Saturday evening of my weekend in Wrocław I left the festival to give the city proper a token once over. I was accompanied by Martyn Cornell who had joined an earlier pub crawl late on the Thursday and was keen to catch up on what he'd missed.

Our first stop was Pinta's local outlet, in a smart modern building on the periphery of the old town. Pinta has grown to become the establishment of Polish independent brewing, moving Boston-Beer-like from having no breweries to having two now. Their Atak Chiemlu IPA, which I'll admit to not being a fan of, is something of a national icon.

I didn't go hoppy on my visit; I went sour. Well, it's Poland: you know yourself. Kwas XY is flavoured with passionfruit and delivers loads of it: a big burst of tangy tropicality which still delights me about passionfruit beers, even though I've had dozens. I got an echo of Irish classic Castaway though it is sweeter, but it's just as bright and summery. I can forgive Poland's aversion to real sourness on this occasion.

Our next call was to 4Hops, a bicycle themepub not far away. From the crowd inside and outside, that's not just a fashion statement, it's where the two-wheel gang actually gathers to drink. What's on the menu? Nothing I recognise so, randomly, a Minister Na Targu by Browar Minister. I must have been in the mood for tropical fruit (it was sunny) because this is a mango and kiwifruit flavoured pale ale. It's a deep hazy orange colour and heavy and resinous, in the vernacular created by Atak Chiemlu back in the day. The fruit does throw a positive spin on this, balancing the bitterness with a sprinkling of Starburst chews. The sweetness never takes over and, at 4.9% ABV, it's quite relaxed drinking. Not a double-thumbs-up, but definitely a could-have-been-worse.

We arrived in the pretty main square next, on one corner of which is the rambling Złoty Pies ("Golden Dog") brewpub. They've gone all-in on the dog theme, with large-format dog prints on the wall, flat screens carouselling more doggy action pics, and a succession of dog puns in the beer names. I had a Bockser. I doubt it qualifies as a bock at just 4.5% ABV. It's more like a normal central European brewpub lager, yellow with a slight haze; tasting of wax and honey. Pleasant and easy going, it's a great conversation beer. I'd have stayed for more but Martyn had another place on his to-do list.

Which was closed. Rather than backtrack, we opted for the branch of the Bierhalle chain which occupies a large footprint on the square, including a beer garden where we set up camp. I'd been to a Bierhalle before, in Łódź: they go for a generic yet charming Germanic vibe. This one didn't have its A-game running though, being slow on service and missing all the seasonal beers. There's no sign of a working brewkit either so I'm not sure if my Marcowe (Märzen) was brewed on-site. It was the right colour of darkish amber anyway, but rather bland beyond that, despite a substantial 5.8% ABV. There's a vague noble hop greenness but nothing I'd call character. Still, I shouldn't have come to Bierhalle expecting to be wowed.

Not far from the dead centre of town is Kontynuacja, a definite outpost of Craftonia with its high ceilings, whitewashed walls, cooler-than-you barstaff and an ever changing blackboard of local and international beers. A New England-style IPA seems only appropriate.

Mine was Juicilicious from Piwne Podziemie. It certainly looked like juice, all headless and opaque. And it tasted exactly like orange juice too: one of those situations where I'm momentarily entertained by the special effect and then disappointed because what I wanted was a beer. A few modern beery elements creep in after a few sips: a concentrated buzz of garlic and a gritty yeast bite. With a little cleaning up this would be an archetype for the style, and I confess I did enjoy my glass of it. I wanted a beer next, though.

Not that I had a choice. Martyn had spotted Maryensztadt's Brytyjskie on the board and two glasses of that were required. There was a beer engine on the bar but I think this came from the regular tap. Still it was headless and rather flat, so may as well have been a Polish take on cask bitter. A tangy orange flavour goes in the good column; a dusty staleness in the bad one. Overall it was convincing as a bitter but not convincing as a beer anyone would like to drink. Someone from the brewery must have had terrible luck drinking in England if they came away thinking British beer tastes like this.

And with that we headed back to the festival for a nightcap I described in Wednesday's post.

Just one more beer before we finish: I couldn't leave without a swift pint of the local macro lager Piast, once brewed in a handsome 19th century building across the way from Stu Mostów but since moved out of town by owners Carlsberg. It's a rich gold colour and has a significant noble hop character touching celery and spinach. 5.5% ABV gives it more depth and heft than most industrial lagers, and although there's a slight syrupy quality, it's smooth enough to be easy drinking. Definitely one for the Better Than It Needs To Be file.

Thanks for Tomasz and the Wrocław Cultural Centre for putting me up and allowing me to take an intensive tutorial in the Polish beer scene in 2019. I do need to explore this country further, though perhaps at a more relaxed pace next time. Meanwhile, the Wrocław festival is well worth your time next year if you haven't been.

Still dobry after all these beers

The third and final day of Wrocławski Festiwal Dobrego Piwa was a scorcher. It's just as well that an international-grade football stadium provides plenty of shaded areas. On arriving at noon the Browar Grodzisk stall caught my eye immediately. Turns out it's not just a style. A cold half-litre bottle of authentic Piwo z Grosziska cost me 5zł, a smidge over €1. For those wondering about the specs of the real thing, it's 3.1% ABV and 27 IBUs courtesy of Magnum and Lubelsky hops. Sadly I don't have a PPM number for the smokiness. It's pretty damn smoky, mind, though not fishy and only slightly hammy: more like real wood fire smoke. A dry wheat crispness precedes this, the smoke rising quickly behind it before fading respectfully away. There are no jarring, clanging features: it's elegant and the simple flavours perfectly integrated. It is just a little bit too fizzy for proper refreshment, however, but that's easily fixed.

I assume that having a local boy as outgoing head of the European Council is a matter of national pride, hence Kaszubski naming its smoked imperial stout Donald T. I only had a taster of this and was glad I didn't go for more as it's far too sweet, all concentrated chocolate on a thick and sticky body. A full glass would have been too much hard work as the thermometer headed for 30°C.

The same brewery's Bytów Pils was much more like it, or should have been. I wasn't put off by the hazy orange colour. I was put off by a flavour offering parallel streams of mandarin juice and sick. From this distance I don't actually remember the experience, but my notes also mention metal and eucalyptus plus a hard pithy bitterness. The whole thing was just too busy to be refreshing. Best just move on.

The last time I had one of those fake-out pale stouts (Open Gate's Ghost Roast) I said they never work. I was tempted to give another one a go by Martyn Cornell who had enjoyed Hopium's Michaił Jakson, an imperial example at 8.5% ABV. Another hazy orange beer, this one smelled of stale coffee. It tasted of fresher coffee, but still just coffee, not stout. There's a seam of sweet syrup: vanilla, hazelnut and strawberry jam, finishing on an oily coffee bitterness. Served on cask it was a little lifeless and warm, but while it wasn't at all like an imperial stout, it was actually OK to drink.

Who wants beer without hops? I did next, apparently. Disco Ursus from Solipiwko is a 3.9% ABV wheat beer. Via, presumably, some herbal magic, it still manages to produce some light perfumey fruit flavours. There's a charming soft texture, low carbonation and ice-tea tannins which together make for easy-going, unfussy refreshment. I was charmed.

The qualifier "forest bomb" on Roch's Balios black IPA intrigued me enough to buy a glass. How piney can one make these, I wondered. Pretty piney, it turns out. There's a very pure and very real blast of pine needle in the aroma. It's there in the foretaste too -- slightly artificial and unsettling. It does blend well with the thick dark malt, though, and when it fades after the initial jolt there's a grassy marijuana buzz more in keeping with good black IPA. An odd take on the style this, but an enjoyable one. I'm glad I took the risk.

Rather than the usual midnight finish, the festival closed at 8pm on Sunday. At this stage in the early evening I felt it was OK to hit some hard stuff. Obviously I got distracted by other things almost immediately afterwards, but my next one was a 10.7% ABV mead-barrel-aged version of an imperial stout called Srogi Niedźwiedź from Łąkomin. This was a deep brown colour with a loose head of bubbles. It was my first ever mead-barrel beer and I wasn't at all surprised to find it smelled of honey, as well as honeycomb candy. Again, no surprise at the intensely sweet flavour, with lots of chocolate syrup and banana. A marker pen off-note may have been from fermentation, but it's a flavour I often get from mead too, so maybe it's legit. Either way, this was just too jarringly sugary for me. You need to really like your imperial stouts sweet.

Almost every stall had some sort of take on American-style IPA and I realised at this point that apart from the sage-flavoured gluten-free NEIPA I mentioned yesterday, I hadn't tried any. Chosen, at random, as the champion for Polish USIPA was Hopsbant from Birbant. It's 6.7% ABV and a bright orange shade. The aroma is pleasingly zingy, like orange sherbet. There's a certain pithy bitterness in the flavour: jaffa spritz at first building to a waxy and weedy crescendo before fading out as candy or orangeade. It's decent, but I was in the mood for more of a palate-scrubber.

And while I was searching for one of those I got distracted by the Warsztat bar and their Summaczne sour pale ale with sumac. It sounded interesting; it looked like coconut water and it tasted of... just water. There's a sugary lemon-barley-water effect but very little other character, and certainly not sour or hoppy enough. Only when walking away did I notice that it's only 1% ABV. That does explain the flavour, but doesn't make it forgivable.

8pm struck as I was buying another big dark beer to make up for that: Echo - Wild Barrel by Nepomucen. This is a Baltic porter of 9.3% ABV with a punchy balsamic aroma and lots of warming umami in its flavour, alongside a hint of high-cocoa dark chocolate. This exists somewhere on the spectrum between Flemish red and imperial stout, and it's a balanced profile from which other sour stouts would do well to learn.

I had paused to consider this on a bench by the Probus brewery bar. From the dramatic chalkings on their blackboard it looked like they had saved something very special for the end of the festival: "Curari Lambiczi". Could this be the sour saviour I'd been looking for all weekend? I had to get one. And of course, in the interests of science, I had to take a sample of ordinary Curari as a control.

Curari is a blackcurrant Berliner weisse -- electric pink in colour, 3.4% ABV and with an enticingly tart aroma. We were off to a good start. It's plainer to taste: grainy and almost lager-like. After this dry breadcrust the fruit swings in late but not strongly. I felt a bit gypped by that but enjoyed the proper sourness.

So what happens when a lambic culture (courtesy of The Yeast Bay) is added to this, with some wine barrel-ageing too? Curari Lambiczi is altogether more serious-looking: a dark red rather than pink, with the ABV increased to 4.9%. The serious funky aroma tells you Brettanomyces has been at work, though the berries are here too, if anything accentuated compared to the base beer. The flavour is a gorgeous gummy funky riot of Brett, with a savoury tang of salt and long-lasting macerated grapeskin and raisin. Wild yeast enthusiasts may not be astounded by how much of a difference there is between these two beers, and how much extra complexity the change brought, but I definitely was. Amazing stuff.

By now I was definitely being herded towards the exit so just time to grab a strong nightcap before all the shutters went down. In fact, I did this all three nights.

Friday's finisher was Dimi3ri from Łańcut, a popular brewery left until near midnight when their queue had died down. It's an imperial stout of 11% ABV and sweet without being sugary, showing lots of coconut up front and an old-school heartwarming cocoa richness behind. I found it both sippable and slurpable: a real all-rounder, with enough of a spirituous kick to make it complex, yet without any serious alcohol burn. Very well put together.

Saturday night it was the turn of Świdnica's Likedellers barrel-aged Baltic porter, a 9.5%-er. It's quite plain for the strength, or maybe subtle is the correct term. There's a light cherry fruitiness and a mild savoury quality, touching on soy sauce. I didn't really get any identifiable barrel effect, though it is perhaps a little sweeter and smoother than typical Baltic porter. While fine to drink -- unchallenging and decent -- it didn't excite me, and lacked the bitter invigorating punch that makes the style so wonderful.

My last beer of the festival was an arbitrarily picked Baltic porter: Porter Bałucki from Piwoteka. This 8%-er is quite dry and crisp, hiding the big dark malt well. In its place you get intensely roasted coffee, drifting into burnt toast and wood fire embers. It's a little thicker than I'd like, ideally, but it's an excellent sipper, devoid of off flavours or any unbalancing features. A little more herbal bitterness might improve it, but I'm just trying to find fault now.

I think I did OK on my vow to go to Poland and drink lots of Baltic porter. Yesterday I mentioned a pub crawl around the city of Wrocław itself. That's coming next. In the meantime, a hearty congratulations to the organisers, exhibitors and universally well-behaved clientele at this superb festival. It's a very efficient and fun way of taking the pulse of Polish beer.

A zero-three of...

Wrocławski Festiwal Dobrego Piwa -- The Wrocław Festival of Good Beer -- has solved all those things you don't like about beer festivals. Admission: free. Receptacles: glass. Beer tokens: nope. Food options: excellent. Drinking and rinsing water: plentiful. And because it's held at a football stadium, the seating and toilet capacity is far in excess of what's required.

Not that it's a small gig. There are 77 stands arranged on the concourse around two sides of the 40,000 seater, with some brewers doubling up, and most with a lengthy list of beers on offer. The choice was dizzying, and represented a significant chunk of Poland's booming beer scene. From three days of flitting randomly around the bars I did, however, get a certain sense of generic Craftonia about the offer. It seemed like everyone had the traditional styles -- their pils, their weizen and their Baltic porter -- and then a plethora of trend-chasers: New England IPA, fruited sour ales, barrel-aged imperial stouts, much of it indistinguishable or unremarkable from one brewer to the next. Next to none of them seemed to specialise in particular styles or processes. I did make an effort to pick unusual-looking beers when I saw them, so hopefully the reviews which follow won't be too generic in turn.

I liked the glass arrangement: three official designs were available to buy at the festival shops, but most of the brewers had their own branded glasses for sale and you could use those if any took your fancy. Presumably you could also have brought your own from home, or there was the default option of the plain plastic tumbler. Servings for most beers were offered in 0.2cl and 0.3cl (plus plenty of 0.5cl offerings, Ron), and since I was in no rush I opted for the middle measure. "A zero-three" was how the brewers all phrased it to this bewildered monoglot, so "a zero-three" was the order.

I mentioned yesterday a dry visit to the Widawa brewery, and so that's where we started upon arriving at the festival just after opening on Friday afternoon. Our guide Tomasz had created a beer with them, a pale ale which claimed to be Poland's hoppiest. Beware of Shark is only 4.7% ABV. It's a hazy orange colour and has a thick New England texture. The flavour is an odd mix of savoury and sweet: blending strawberry and sesame. There's not very much going on beyond that. I waited for a bitter flourish to arrive in the aftertaste but it never came. I think I expected something more spectacular from this.

Widawa also created a Baltic porter for it's 7th Anniversary, an 11.5% ABV monster with a luxuriously rich blend of coffee, chocolate and whiskey. Silky smooth yet incredibly powerful, it's up with the best of Europe's barrel-aged imperial stouts. You'd never guess it's a lager, that's for sure.

Next up is Dwóch Braci and the first fruited sour beer of the gig: Juicy Rider. It follows the frustrating pattern I mentioned yesterday in that it's not at all sour. Mango is the fruit they've used, to 15% of the total ingredients, and it produces something at 4.3% ABV which looks like egg yolk and tastes like a smoothie. It's bitty, it's gritty and it doesn't taste like beer. Not my bag at all.

The daft name and branding of Funky Fluid meant I almost gave them a swerve, but that would have been a terrible mistake. It doesn't look like the sort of operation than can turn out a superb pils but its Pils Please is exactly that. Clear gold with a herbal aroma, it simply exudes freshness. There's a clean and crunchy green cabbage bitterness as well as a soft honey-and-syrup sweetness. I'd call it more Czech style than German, but it's absolutely classical in how it's put together.

That made me brave enough to chance one of their fruity sour numbers, rejoicing in the name of Funk You #4. They've piled everything into the juicer here: passionfruit, mango, apricot and lime. The last of these adds a lovely tang which almost makes up for the fact that, once again, there's pretty much zero sourness. Fruit pulp is what it tastes of, but at least there's an interesting blend of flavours this time. It wouldn't work at all without the lime bitterness.

Back to the pils, then, and Długi Weekend from Za Miastem, just outside Poznań. It's clear, of course, and quite a dark gold; the ABV a middle-of-the-road 5%. Immediate plus points are awarded for the creamy texture, and a follow-up bonus for the fresh and grassy Saaz flavour. This gets intense very quickly, leaning a little too close to plastic for comfort but I got used to it and by the end of the glass was having a wonderful time. This can be sipped to enjoy the hop kick slowly, or slurped for a satifyingly filling sort of refreshment. Bang on.

Hajer had a dinky little scam running at their stall. Buy one beer, get a złoty off your next. I'd only gone over for their RIS imperial stout. It's a moderate 8.3% ABV but came on very thick and hot from the first sip. Fortunately the strong bitterness helps temper this, as does a roasted burnt caramel effect. All the classic features of the style, then, in good proportion. Maybe I've been drinking too many barrel aged or weirdly-enhanced variants, but I found it a little boring too: missing any real distinguishing features. I'm probably just spoilt; there's nothing at all wrong with this.

What could follow that but another stout: Farorz, claiming to be American style, and just 5% ABV. From the description I should have expected the massive rush of citrus which almost drowns out the sweet coffee roast. That calms down after a moment to become a kind of urinal-cake, herbs-and-flowers effect. It's difficult to argue with the concept, though: you want a hoppy stout? That's what you get. The different elements are still just distinct enough for it to be considered balanced, albeit in a slightly extreme way. All of which is to say I'm not sure if I enjoyed it or not.

Time for another one of those sweet so-called sour beers? I hadn't totally given up on finding one that was actually sour, and pinned my latest hope on Rozgwiazda from Gorzka Prawda, a purported gose with cherries. It's only 3.7% ABV, light and soft with effervecent sherbet fruitiness and some novelty bathsalts thrown in for good measure. Tangy is as close as it gets to tart, but it's very much in a candy sort of way -- cherry sweets more than the real thing. It's hard to be angry with a silly fluffy number like this, but it wasn't what I was looking for. I called it a night there.

Next day, with the gates open at 12, I stopped first by the Dobry Browar stand for their Czarna ("black") IPA z Gniezna (Gniezno is the brewery's home town and they seem inordinately proud to represent it). This is pleasantly heavy and thick, though also manages an intense dryness on the finish. Before that there's a flower bomb of hops: violet and lavender, plus a powerful burst of spritzy citrus. There's a slightly harsh edge which makes it more serious than is ideal, but I enjoyed it.

The brewer was very keen to show off his other wares, including a Martell-aged Baltic porter, Porter z Gniezna. This is still a Baltic porter to its core, 8.3% ABV, clean and bitter, with a mix of liquorice and dark chocolate in the ascendant. The spirit adds a superb extra dimension: a warmth and a smoothness, rounding off the harder edges beautifully. A real luxury sipping beer, this.

The next two he wanted me to taste were both gluten-free, seemingly a new direction for the brewery and they're desperate for feedback. Owsiane z Gniezna is brewed from a 100% oat grist and is a milky yellow colour. Despite Simcoe, Rakau and Fuggles hops it's rather sweet, offering a summery hit of strawberry jam. I found it a little sickly, though I'd never have believed there's no gluten.

NEIPA z Gniezna employs an unorthodox mix of sage and chamomile, and as a result has a massive herbal sage aroma. A soft texture is the only nod to New England IPA that I could find; no hop fruit or vanilla. I like sage in a beer, but I still wasn't sure what to make of this. I'm sure the gluten-dodgers will find it as interesting as I did. Onwards.

My favourite branding of the festival -- and there were lots of superb examples -- was the modernist style of Cztery Ściany. I paid tribute to that with a zero-three of Squat, described as an apple sour saison. It's a bright and clear gold colour and smells like appleade, all apple concentrate and fizz. There's a floral honey foretaste followed by an inrush of booze which made me check the ABV. 7.6%! The syrupiness is the dominant feature all the way through here, which is a bit of a shame. Only a slight saison earthiness in the background provides any balance, and it not really enough. Unacceptable sweetness strikes again!

That set me on a quest for the most convoluted sour beer I could find, which led me to the Maryensztadt stand, and a glass of their Joyride, which came with a whopping 17zł (€4) price tag. It's brewed with ariona (black chokeberry) and aged in Rioja wine barrels, finishing up at 8% ABV. It's a pinky-purple colour with a strong oak aroma and tastes like a good, if slightly clumsy, take on a Flemish red ale -- cherry is the main flavour, actual real sour cherry, for once. The relief of finding something properly tart allowed me to overlook the overdone barrelling.

I sat with that a while, during which time I was joined by Martyn Cornell. He was bearing an even more expensive beer: Swidnica's Jopejskie, an authentically-brewed Danzig jopenbier, starting with a Baltic porter wort of 50° Plato, boiled for 24 hours with spruce, cool fermented, wild fermented and then barrel-aged. You can read what he thought of it in his account of the trip here. I was less impressed. It tasted like hot autolytic gravy to me, like paradoxically savoury caramel, and the sort of thing that cannot be doing the drinker any good. Bleurgh. We agreed to disagree. And then we went to the pub.

What we found in the pub will follow later in the week; the rest of the fest continues tomorrow.

Around Silesia

I had the good fortune of being invited out to Wrocław in western Poland last month, to explore the area's booming microbrewing scene and attend its humungous beer festival. The city's cultural bureau runs the show, and the task of organising a crack team of international influencers fell to local YouTube celebrity Tomasz Kopyra. Said team consisted of Martyn Cornell and Simon Martin from the UK, Martin Voigt from Austria, and myself. On the first morning, ahead of the festival opening, Tomasz collected us in a car for a tour of some of the breweries in the greater Wrocław area.

Our first call was to Browar Cześć Brat in Jelcz-Laskowice, 24km from the city. It's a small one-room operation run by brothers Grzegorz and Michał Malcherek.

We began with a taste of Małe Czy Duże? ("Big or Small?"), their weizen which had been in the tanks for just two weeks. It's pale-coloured and creamy-textured with a touch of butane about the aroma and a more unorthodox vanilla essence in the flavour. It pulls off that clever weissbier trick of being refreshing despite the thickness, helped no doubt by the modest 4.7% ABV. There's nothing spectacular about it but it's absolutely rock solid.

Just finished and ready for release later that day was Jest Kwas ("It's Sour"), a kettle-soured beer with matcha tea, Sorachi Ace and Hüll Melon hops. It's a kind of greenish colour, and cloudy. Perhaps that was the matcha's doing, but if so it was the matcha's only contribution. The hops loom large over the flavour: pith from the Hüll Melon and a harsh burnt-plastic note from too much Sorachi. And despite the name it's not even very sour. Festivals are great for putting out your experimental recipes and I think this particular one needs further fine tuning.

Coś Na Wieczór? ("Something for the Evening?") was next, being a milk stout with added tonka beans. It's only 4% ABV which gives it a charming lightness despite the dessertish flavour profile. I got mild coffee notes and a sprinkling of brown sugar, but also lots of sweet vanilla. The smooth texture is absolutely textbook for the style and I was overjoyed they resisted the temptation to ramp up the strength as many a brewery would. The end result is balanced and satisfying; retro with just enough of a minor twist.

One bottled beer got opened before we left: Dobre Owocowe ("Good Fruit"), a passionfruit pale ale and even lower in strength at 3.7% ABV. It looks like juice and tastes incredibly juicy, I scribbled in my notebook as we headed back to the car. Passionfruit has that tendency to shout over all the other ingredients, and that almost happens here, but the hops get just enough of a look-in and bring sufficient citric bitterness for it to pass as a pale ale. I have plenty of time for summery session beers like this.

And then we were off, but not without some takeaway bottles to drink later. These included Jedno I Do Domu! ("One and Home!"), the Cześć Brat helles, an especially light affair at 4.4% ABV. It's properly full-bodied, however, and meets all the requirements of the style: a bready texture with crusts in the flavour; plenty of spinach and asparagus noble hops; and a quick, clean and, above all, polite, exit from the palate. Even consumed far warmer than it should be, the class here really shines through.

Their pale ale is called Pożycz Stówę ("Lend Me A Yard" -- it's a song) and is 5% ABV. It's a middle-of-the-road job but very decent: a mid-orange colour with a very slight haze. Bitterness is there: a clean grapefruit sharpness that seems to be missing from most Polish takes on American-style hop-forward beers. But the inevitable sweetness is present too, an orange jelly or marmalade sugar kick. The brewery's lager expertise rescues it, bringing a swift finish, preventing that sweetness from building. You get fresh citrus in every mouthful making it very quaffable, and maybe a little old-fashioned as the American C-hop palette goes, but still delicious.

It was back on the road again then. Our next stop was the Widawa brewery-restaurant in the tiny village of Chrząstawa Mała, but they weren't set up for the day yet. You'll have to wait until tomorrow's post to find out about their beer. It looked like a nice place, though.

Returning to Wrocław, we arrived at probably its most famous brewery, Stu Mostów. This is a very impressive set-up in an old industrial quarter of the city. The brewing floor is overlooked by the bar on a balcony above. Their beers are divided into three categories: WRCLW for the traditional and classic styles; Salamander for your modern craft takes; and ART for more experimental stuff.

Brand new on the day was Salamander Gose: Raspberry & Peach. It's purple coloured and has a strong raspberry aroma. The flavour is all sweet fruit with a mild salt tang but basically no sourness. For all that Poland has embraced microbrewing's current love for sourness, the examples I tasted mostly shied away from turning out beers that are properly tart, preferring to pile in the syrup instead. This was an example of that. It's thick and wholesome, and possibly even nutritious, but it barely tastes like beer and is certainly a long way from gose.

I switched to hops next, picking Salamander AIPA. I didn't notice the "I" in the initials so thought this a bit of a monster for the style, but 6.8% ABV is of course normal for American IPA. It looks thin though, arriving pale and clear, but the high gravity was very apparent from the first sip. It's thick and slick, redolent with vanilla and butterscotch. A tiny bitter tang on the very end is the only nod to what it's supposed to be. It's so sweet that it doesn't taste the strength, but that doesn't make it easy to drink. I was glad of the short pour.

Another new one before leaving: Salamander Micro IPA, which couldn't have been more different. For one thing, it's green: a pale and cloudy shade of mint. 2.7% ABV is normal for the style and yet it's beautifully full-bodied and soft with not a trace of wateriness -- and I was looking. The flavour opens with a zing of fresh lemon zest, an assertive bitter bite and lots of herbal and spicy complexity in the aftermath. This is a deliciously satisfying IPA, and its micro strength is almost by-the-by.

Stu Mostów beers aren't hard to find around Wrocław and there was a handful in the fridge at the airport bar on my way home later. From them I picked WRCLW Schöps, unable to make any sense of what it was. Turns out it's a recreation of an historic local style. It poured an unhealthy bronze colour, with no head from virtually no carbonation. It tasted great, though: wholesome brown bread with a sprinking of grapefruit, apple and banana. There's an ice-tea balance of sweet and dry which makes it very refreshing, and there's a kind of savoury cola-nut effect that stops the fruit getting cloying. One for drinking great hearty clay mugs of.

Back to the roadtrip and our next brewery was rather less showy. Profesja is tucked away at the rear of industrial units in what was once the city's parachute factory. There's no taproom: all is very functional and the drinking of samples was done standing up. The branding makes use of Wrocław's gnomes, scattered throughout the city streets, engaged in activities suited to their location.

The first of these was Smakosz, billed as an American-style pale ale with added guava. This one is at the more reasonable strength of 4.8% ABV and is a hazy orange colour. It's mostly about the fruit. Like the Cześć Brat one with passionfruit, there's enough hop bite in the finish for it to pass inspection as a pale ale, while the front is all ripe and squidgy tropicals. It's enjoyable and fun, verging on silly, but hasn't completely ruined or hidden the solid base beer. Not everyone gets the balance this right in such recipes.

Pilot was next: a bit of an experiment at just 1% ABV. The signature flavour of ultra-low alcohol pale ales is here: aspirin -- a hard and metallic sharpness. The aroma offers that too, in spades, and a sugary wort element as well. On the plus side there's a soft and fresh peach juiciness which helps offset the severity and the whole thing just about holds together into an acceptable drink; one which is probably a lifesaver for the designated drivers.

Profesja sent us away with two of their offerings. The first was Pirat, an imperial Baltic porter. This is 11.5% ABV and tastes like eating an entire box of Milk Tray in a single sitting. It's densely chocolatey, and sweet too, plus an edge of bourbon or sherry, despite no mention of barrel ageing. Several barrel versions of Pirat do exist and I can only imagine how boozy they taste, compared to this ball of combustibles. I liked it. I opened the bottle very late at night and it offered the perfect chillout combination of rich dark malt and lullaby alcohol.

The second is Bartnik, a cognac-barrel braggot. It's a deep garnet or ruby colour and the ABV is a very wineish 14%, so this is probably best thought of as a wine despite the 33cl bottle. The complete lack of carbonation is certainly wine-like, as is the ruby-port grape-and-oak warmth. I think I'd be hard pressed to find malt or hops or even honey in this. It's absolutely delicious, though: smooth and warming, full of rich raisin and plum flavours, a little like a fine matured dark trappist ale, minus the malty bread element.

The last brewery of the day was Prost, looking from the outside like the tasting room of a Californian winery and inside another grand traditional-style restaurant with the showpiece brewkit occupying pride of place at the entrance.

We only had time for a small quick one, and as is my wont when trialling an unfamiliar brewery, I picked the Prost Pils. It turned out to be very much in the tradition of Mitteleuropa brewpub lager: hazy and quite rough, piling in too much noble hop for my liking resulting in quite a harsh and sharp green flavour, all celery and spinach.

I would have liked to stay and explore more from the Prost line-up but we had a festival to get to.