Sauntering straggler

Galway Bay Brewery's Saunter festival, in its first iteration last September, was one of the hits of the year. Or so I'm told; I wasn't there. A few ex-Saunter kegs found their way to the brewery's Dublin pubs and were still on sale well into the winter, so I didn't completely miss out.

I mean, Kernel Baltic Porter on draught in Ireland is not to be passed over. This is a relatively modest 7.1% ABV though is very full bodied and my first impression was of the creamy body of a powerful imperial stout rather than a dark lager. There is a dry crispness in the finish, however, which tells me it's kosher. Before that, a whirlwind of coffee'd dark malt and the signature floral complexity that Kernel always seems to build into its dark beers: your rosewater and your lavender. All that means it's quite low on bitterness for the style, but since that's the aspect of Baltic porter which I struggle with most often, I don't really miss it.

Unless you like a Baltic porter to fill your gob with liquorice, this is an excellent example. Consider it a gateway to the style for all the pastry stout aficionados. I was very glad to make its acquaintance.

The murk of war

Here's hoping Ukraine won't be spending another year plastered all over the news for terrible reasons. Today I have six beers from two brewing companies based there.

First up, Kyiv's Underwood brewery, beginning on a Helles. The plain packaging and plain name of Kyiv Lager suggests that this will be a very sober beer. It's an even 5% ABV and the proper shade of clear medium gold in the glass. There's something a tiny bit off about the aroma and flavour, an intrusive fruitiness, ripe and gooey, like peaches or strawberries left too long in the sun. I had hoped I could ignore it, and concentrate on the refreshing dry breadiness, but the fruit thing grows as the beer goes along, resulting in an overall experience of Not Quite Right. I can't say whether this is deliberate or not: it doesn't fit any off-flavour I recognise, but it doesn't fit any lager style either. I opened this in need of refreshment but finished it glad it was only a small can. 

On to the IPAs, and the lightest is called Amnesia Haze, a 5% ABV job brewed with Citra, Amarillo and El Dorado and branded as New England IPA. They haven't quite nailed the appearance of the style proper, with this being orange coloured and only slightly translucent. The aroma, too, is rather west-coast: hard orange candy and grapefruit. There was still a chance to pull it back in the flavour, but sadly it fails there as well. It's not juicy, as one would expect from the style; nor is it dank, as the name might imply. What you get instead is a weak-bodied pale ale which tastes of satsumas and tea. As such it's nicely drinkable and does a great job of quenching a thirst, but it's not what's promised, indeed not very much of anything is delivered. Despite the American hops I would be more inclined to nod this through as an English-style bitter than anything new world.

That doesn't bode well for the next one being a milkshake IPA, but maybe they'll miss the style parameters again and it'll be good, I thought. They've called it Milky Mango, a name to strike fear into any reasonable grown-up drinker of grown-up beers. It's 5.5% ABV and includes mango and lactose in with the grains and Citra and Galaxy hops. This one really is as expected, the mouthfeel soft and creamy; the flavour sweet. There's a slight clash where the unfermented milk sugar hits against a citric bitterness, but fortunately neither side is so strong that this becomes a problem. In fact, this is rather bland for such an involved recipe. The basics are present but no more than that. I'm not sure that there are better milkshake IPAs out there, but there are certainly more milkshakey ones and more IPA-ish ones too.

More haze comes in the form of Tropicana Punch, this one a double New England IPA at 7.5% ABV. This is an even deeper orange colour than the Amnesia Haze, and clearer too. Sigh. There's a mild savoury breadcrust aroma, which is not at all what the name is offering. That had me expecting something dry on tasting, but thankfully it isn't. There's a lovely oily richness to the mouthfeel, carrying orange sherbet and candied peel flavours: sweet, but not juicy. Being prepared to be wrongfooted by the brewery's description meant I could get into enjoying this quicker. There's a lot of classic west coast about it, and Avery Maharaja is the beer that popped into my head even though I haven't tasted that in well over a decade. The flavour is brighter, fresher and spicier than Amnesia; the complexity helped I'm sure by the extra alcohol. This is tasty and enjoyable, as long as you have your expectations calibrated appropriately.

One ought to be charitable in these times, but Underwood didn't hit the spot for me with any of these beers. Luckily I have a back-up Ukrainian brewery to hand: Ten Men.

"Sour fruited ale" is the innocent designation on their 5% ABV Calm in Paradise:PM. Well, Rosé de Gambrinus is a 5% ABV sour fruited ale so maybe it's like that? It is not. This is one of those beers that pours like a can of carrot soup, devoid of head but saturated in pulpy gunk. It's mango and passionfruit, so at least it's going to be nice pulpy gunk, theoretically. This turned out to be not as sweet as I expected. It's not particularly sour, so points off for that, but there's a strange, unexpected, though not unwelcome, musky spice, like sandalwood and nutmeg. It's like somebody sprayed your grandad's aftershave on a mango. The texture is as thick as it appears, yet the flavour is nicely clean: fruit pulp, spices and nothing else. I'm quite charmed by this sludgy number; at worst it's inoffensive and there's a cheeky character which has nothing to do with sourness but has a complexity all its own. 

Along similar lines is Not For Breakfast, this one being 5.8% ABV and made with raspberry, blackberry and blackcurrant. The purple matte emulsion and lack of head makes it look like finger paint. There's loads of tart forest fruit in the aroma, smelling like a dessert, or indeed a healthy breakfast, rather than beer. Naturally that's up front in the flavour, but there's a different sort of tartness too, much more serious and, like the above, a little spicy. The thick yoghurty texture helps carry it all along, though it still finishes cleanly. I've had many a beer of this sort in recent years, but something about how they've combined the ingredients and balanced the flavours make this a standout. The full half litre presented no challenge to get through.

Helles aside, these are all very contemporary craftonese styles. I think Ten Men has the better handle on how to do them well, however. For Underwood, I wish for some mediocre reviews to be the worst thing that happens to them in 2023.

Flashing the lights and sweeping up

And so we bring down the curtain on 2022 with the year's final post. It wasn't a bad one for me, all things considered, and I was able to get out and about more than in previous recent ones. This was the year beer festivals returned, and I was lucky enough to get to attend them in three different countries. While I tot up the particular highlights, I'm aided by something suitably strong and wintery.

Kinnegar has substantially re-jigged its sweet stout Winterland for its second outing. Now it's gone imperial, with the ABV up at 9% and coconut as the added ingredient. Is that Christmassy? Christmassy enough, I guess. It's thick in the glass, shimmering black under a tan coloured head. The aroma is sweetly floral, suggesting rosewater or cherry liqueur to me. They haven't gone overboard with the coconut, and before that arrives it's a roasty and bitter old-fashioned stout, perhaps more in the Foreign Extra genre than imperial. There's a slightly unctuous quality, giving an early impression of super-strong filter coffee and leaving that as residue in the finish. The coconut makes an appearance in the middle where it's very much dry and toasted rather than fresh and moist. This tones down the novelty factor and complements the dark grain well. Despite the slight severity of the bitterness this fulfils its role as a cuddly winter beer very nicely.

So I am positively aglow as I face into...

The Golden Pint Awards 2022

Best Irish Cask Beer: Brehon Black Hills
Options around Irish cask beer have been severely limited this year and it didn't feature at any of the Irish festivals I went to. On the plus side, JD Wetherspoon has a new commitment to Irish cask, making arrangements with Brehon and Dungarvan to have at least one of theirs on the handpumps at any given time. I've not yet seen Dungarvan's Black Rock stout in the wild, but have had the pleasure of Brehon's excellent Black Hills (aka Ulster Black) oatmeal stout and it really sings in this format. Do not pass it up if you see it.

Best Irish Keg Beer: Third Barrel Funk's Old Brother
This aged Brettanomyces-fermented red ale showed up at the Fidelty festival over the summer where it wowed me with its endlessly unfolding complexity.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Land & Labour Bière de Rhubarbe
Ireland's spontaneous-fermentation guru would be claiming a few spots if this were a top ten instead of single winners. However, this was the one I thought most accomplished of the offerings so far, and was a highlight of the Mullingar Wild Beer Festival where there was plenty of competition.

Best Irish Canned Beer: O Brother Opus One
We have not been short of big stouts this year, with Lough Gill, Larkin's and Wicklow Wolf all releasing multiple versions. Opus One, a 12.5% ABV job given a gentle whiskey barrel treatment, was my favourite of the lot. Everything to enjoy about the style was ably demonstrated.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Eik & Tid Barbar
When I'm compiling these, I try as much as possible not to refer to notes. I'm looking for the memorable ones. This Norwegian sour ale I found on tap at BXLBeerfest was one of the year's showstoppers for me. I don't remember exactly how it tasted, but I remember how it made me feel. A close second place goes to the mighty Keesmann Herren Pils, and drinking it at source in Bamberg was one of my year's beery achievements.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: HORAL Oude Geuze Mega Blend (2021)
I've had a few vintages of this and they haven't all been brilliant. This one, however, was utterly magnificent, even by the standards of high-end oude geuze. A  nine-way collaboration seems like a recipe for watered-down mediocrity but instead they've made something better than I've had from any individual producer.

Best Overseas Canned Beer: Hoppin' Frog T.O.R.I.S. the Tyrant
It was fun going through all the B.O.R.I.S. variants back in February, and it isn't often that such a variant would outshine a classic original. T.O.R.I.S. did, though, simply by bigging up what was already there. Fair play.

Best Collaboration Brew: Otterbank/Third Barrel Time Will Tell
Like our Irish Keg winner, this was another heavy red ale given the Brett 'n' bugs treatment with spectacular results. It arrived in April as the first in a collaboration series which then went no further. Was the brew day that bad?

Best Overall Beer: HORAL Oude Geuze Mega Blend (2021)
The fact that I drank this in early January and I'm still thinking about it means it's the obvious candidate for the top prize. I have another bottle too, so you may be seeing it here again.

Best Branding: Larkin's
Brightly coloured cartoons of anthropomorphic animals aren't just a sound financial investment, they also look good on beer cans. I've been enjoying the most recent Larkin's rebrand, especially the action foxes on the imperial stouts.

Best Pump Clip: Ca' del Brado Cerbero
I went through my photos for the year and found very few pumpclip images. It seems cool bars and festivals don't use them much any more. I liked the shaggy purple doggo on this old ale from Emilia-Romagna's finest, however.

Best Bottle/Can Label: Whiplash Chimes
Second year in a row for Whiplash, which I doubt anyone familar with the brewery's can art will be surprised at. Chimes is a pale ale produced for the Bunsen chain of burger restaurants. "Let's put a burger on it, which is also a bunsen burner". Simple, a bit daft, but it amused me and that's what counts.




Best Irish Brewery: Galway Bay Brewery
I'd be prepared to give them this on foot of the return of Märzen To The Fire alone, but we also got new Two Hundred Fathoms, a West Coast IPA that actually means it, a bunch of stouts and some fun tinkering in the broad Belgian farmhouse genre.

Best Overseas Brewery: Moersleutel
The Dutch brewery graduated from one whose beers I enjoy when I find them to one I actively seek out. It was all imperial stouts until this year's Borefts Beer Festival where I tried a double IPA they'd made and it was at exactly the same high standard. They're occasionally available in Ireland, if you want to find out what the fuss is about.

Best New Brewery Opening 2022: Original 7
This was a tough one. 2022 has been much more about breweries closing than opening. We said goodbye to Metalman and St Mel's, and are watching with concern as Eight Degrees slips into a zombie half-life while the stupid multinational that acquired it tries to find a buyer. There have been rays of light, however, especially up north, but nothing that I've actually been able to drink. I haven't had any beers from Cork's Original 7 either, but I'm giving them the award for what they represent: the spirit of independent brewing after Molson Coors has come in and absolutely trashed the brand you built previously. Let's hope for something similar for Eight Degrees.

Pub/Bar of the Year: Foeders
It has taken me far too long to find my way to this geeky heaven in Amsterdam, very much one of those for-people-like-me bars. An excellent beer line-up and lovely service. If they gave the floor an occasional sweep it would be nearly perfect.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2022: UnderDog @ The Legal Eagle
"Will it / won't it" was the talk of Dublin's beer scene since version one shut up shop during the throes of the pandemic. Consequently there was proper elation when Dublin's only beer-first pub found a new home, where the winning formula of constantly rotating high end beers and first rate service has been reinstated with more legroom and actual windows. Most pleasing of all is that fact that the regulars are back and once again we have place to pull up a barstool and set the beer industry to rights with whomever is there to listen. There was a late contender for the title with the arrival of Fidelity on Queen Street just last week. More about what's going on there early in the new year.

Beer Festival of the Year: BXLBeerFest
So many great candidates but I'm picking this one because it was the most me of them. The range of beers and breweries wasn't the biggest, but there was a theme of wild and funky running through it which I wasn't expecting but valued hugely. The atmosphere was upbeat, the seating was plentiful and at the end you got to go drinking in Brussels. If all that seems like the kind of thing you might enjoy, stick it in your calendar for late August.

Supermarket of the Year: Polonez
There wasn't a whole lot of special interest beer at my usuals, but I did enjoy the occasional foray into the eastern European supermarket chain for exotic items, mostly of the lager variety.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Mace SCR
I usually go in for something specific and come out with a bag bursting at the seams. Serendipity, thy name is the Mace on the South Circular Road, at the back gate of James's Hospital.

Online Retailer of the Year: Craft Central
Can't argue with the numbers here: I bought more beer from Craft Central than anywhere else in 2022. The system is simply too easy: new beers arrive, they go up on the website, I order them and pick them up next time I'm passing. There's a slight premium to be paid for the convenience but it's very much worth it to me.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: none
I usually award this one by default for the single book I read during the year, but I don't even have that for 2022. A symptom of wider malaise in the beer publishing industry? Nope, just me being bad at reading.

Best Beer Blog or Website: BeerFoodTravel
April was the only month that Liam didn't have a new post for us, which counts as prolific in beer blogging these days. It's all great stuff too, meticulously researched and entertainingly written. This Golden Pint is very much a personal token of appreciation for the effort that goes in.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: @alldoomandgloom
In-jokes are the best jokes; the more specific and audience-tailored the better. Ross gets to them faster and better than I do. I don't know how much longer I'll still have a Johnson to give, but for now it's his.

Best Brewery Website/Social media: @PilotBeerUK
They last collected this one from me in 2016 but they're still at it and it never gets old. I don't get to drink their beer and daft tweets is the second-best thing a brewery can produce.

There. That'll do for 2022. I have a generalised bad feeling about what 2023 will bring to the small and independent brewing sector in Ireland and abroad so I'll sign off with a wish of good luck to all who may be affected.

Lagerland land lager

The Veltins prestige brand, Grevensteiner, has been available in these parts for a while. I've had the Helles and the Radler, but never Grevensteiner Original. How remiss of me.

Expecting a crystal-clear serving of gold I picked an elegant stemmed glass for it, so was surprised when it poured out murky and brown, more suited to a clay mug. It was then that I noticed "Landbier" on the label's smallprint. I have limited experience of Landbier, but I'm reasonably sure that murky and brown is par for the course.

Not that this is a bad thing. The aroma, for a start, is lovely and smells of fresh brown bread with a topping of crisp celery. The hop side is quieter in the flavour, letting all that wholesome wholemeal do the talking. Although it's 5.2% ABV and describes itself as "süffig", it's not really what I'd associate with the word, being light of body with a very quick finish. That does at least mean it's clean and easy drinking, but then if I wanted that I could have stuck with the Helles.

All said, this is bang average, not really delivering on the promise of the appearance or aroma. There's a certain amount of rough and rustic charm but not really enough to make it properly interesting.

The epic of Gill

Blimey. Lough Gill is no friend to the slow-paced beer reviewer. While my attention has been elsewhere, their new releases have flourished, eventually claiming a whole wing of my beer fridge to themselves. Nevertheless I knuckled down and have, heroically and at great personal cost, written a review of them all. Here we go then.

We start very normally with Breakers, a pale ale of 4.2% ABV and gluten free. Interestingly, for something that presumably uses a clearing agent to strip out gluten, it's somewhat hazy. Mosaic is among the hops and it's very apparent in the aroma with its bright tropical melon and passionfruit. Strata and Chinook are the others, and I think the juicy mandarin foretaste is a result of the former. From Chinook I normally expect bitterness but there's precious little of that on show here, only a tiny piquancy in the finish. I don't mind, however. Fresh and juicy is how it wants to play things, and it's very successful at it. This doesn't taste in any way compromised and I would quite happily drink a few in a row.

"Keep it pale and slightly hazy but load it with gluten" said someone, presumably. That resulted in Sligo Bay, slightly stronger at 4.6% ABV but looking identical. We're not told the hops, only that they're American. The aroma is similar to the above, though a little more citrus than tropical, and tangerine or satsuma in particular. Very good, though. So it was a surprise to find a flavour that goes nowhere. There's a vague tang of orange peel, fading quickly to leave a mildly unpleasant rubbery residue. It's not badly flawed, but it's not quite right and overall very basic. Hop it like Breakers, please.

Sour ales with fruit in are inevitable. We just have to accept that, and especially with Lough Gill. First up is a mere 4%-er called Pain & Perfection, brewed with mango, passionfruit and guava, alongside lactose. Not too much lactose, mind: for a "pastry sour" this is nicely tart and sharply refreshing. The billed fruits are all discernible, though pushy passionfruit is loudest, as always. There is a smooth pulpy thickness to the texture, but more like you'd get from pure smushed fruit than a milkshake, which is good. Above all, though, that cleansing lightly sour tang absolutely makes this beer. If the aim was to be bright and sunny, complex yet low-strength, then it has achieved it perfectly.

"Gose IPA" is a new designation on me, but that's what Gose Again is: 5% ABV and containing coriander, salt and lemon zest. It does, in fairness, smell like an IPA with a blast of piney American hops -- El Dorado and Idaho 7 says the can, helpfully. The texture is slick and saline, more like a gose, and the salty tang rides right up front in the foretaste. So it's strange that everything is muted thereafter: no coriander and little by way of hopping. There's only a faint sourness too. Instead, it's dry and crisp, like a water biscuit, but similarly lacking in character. All told, this didn't really give me what I want from an IPA or a gose.

The sour ones finish with a hardcore 7.3% ABV offer called Speaks For Itself. I wasn't expecting much actual sourness, given that it includes raspberry, coconut and marshmallow. Marshmallow! Still, it doesn't look thick and gloopy, being pale orange and quickly headless. It smells like a Mikado biscuit, a mix of  jam and and coconut, so the special ingredients are pulling their weight. That's how the flavour goes too: raspberry jam, pink marshmallow and a brush of coconut oil to finish. No sourness, but a clean and neutral base on which the daftness dances without impediment, boosted by a high gravity that makes it extra syrupy as it warms. Props, then, for it being every bit the novelty beer that the description suggests. I found the jangling sweetness quite tough going, however.

On to the IPA section, beginning with a Wrong Turn. The label specifies that it's a "decoction west coast IPA", which is interesting on a very nerdy level. What difference would decoction mashing make to a presumably hop-forward beer? In the glass it's pretty hazy, which is frankly unacceptable when the "west coast" designation is trotted out. The aroma goes very big on west coast pine, with touches of lighter lemon candy around the edges. Simcoe is one of the four hops named, and I suspect it's the busiest of them. The body is surprisingly light for 6.5% ABV, though the hops aren't unbalanced as a result. More citrus and pine is on offer, the lemon turning to grapefruit and the pine to Amsterdam alleyway. But there's a sweet side too, which I'm guessing is the decoction at work, intensifying the malt lending the beer extra balance. It works rather well. Big hops on big malt was the defining feature of the original American IPAs, whose profile now gets called "west coast" so perhaps I'll forgive the haziness this one time.

They were at it again with the subjunctive-dodging If I Was In LA, described as "California IPA" but  distinctly clouded. It smells juicy and tropical too, with a delicious but inappropriate waft of tinned pineapple. On tasting there's a bit more of a resinous bitterness, but not much, and the peachy-mangoey tropical side is still in charge. Citra and Mosaic are the hops, and I get a slight buzz of onion as it warms, for which I blame the latter. Otherwise it's all enjoyable in its own way, even if it's a long long way from Sculpin or Torpedo. It is a little on the thin side, despite the murk, and definitely doesn't taste the full 6.8% ABV.  

Last year the brewery brought out a quartet of imperial oatmeal stouts, of which I could only track down three. I was delighted to see them back for 2022, meaning I could finally get my hands on Shield, the one I missed. It's a whopping 12% ABV and brewed with coffee, so I was expecting an Irish coffee effect but doesn't really have that. The texture is quite light, not creamy, and the spirit/barrel side is understated, arriving as a late waft of vapour but without any real contribution to the taste. That does leave plenty of coffee, so maybe an espresso martini is a better cocktail analogy. Whether it's the grains or the coffee that's providing the roast dryness I can't say -- perhaps it's both -- but there's plenty of it. This is nice; easy going; nothing to scare the horses. Let it be noted without comment that it was 14% ABV last year. Regardless, I'm hoping for something louder from the next ones.

There are three new Celtic-themed barrel-aged stouts in the series for 2022, and I immediately detect further signs of cold feet around ABV as two are a trifling 10% ABV. We'll begin with one such: Ogham, a bourbon barrel milk stout with cocoa nibs. The barrel absolutely plays the advantage here, piling sticky vanilla into the flavour, leveraging the milky chocolate to produce something sickly sweet beyond the bounds of decency. The stout loses out in this, with no roast and negative quantities of bitterness. A cola dryness is the only faint saving grace, but I could still feel it curdling in my stomach. This is too big and too sweet. Perhaps a point or three more on the ABV might have rescued it.

As they say at Lough Gill: Onward! The other 10%-er is Life, again a bourbon barrel milk stout and again with cocoa nibs. But here they've added actual vanilla as well. After the last one I am apprehensive to say the least. It doesn't smell horrifically sweet, so that's a plus, the chocolate coming across as quite dark. It's milkier to taste, for sure, but nowhere near as sickly as the previous. The flavour is all rather well balanced and integrated, and I think the key is in the bourbon -- it's much less loud and pervasive here, allowing the stout to stay a stout despite the add-ons. There's maybe a little too much milkshake for serious stout drinkers, but they should lighten up anyway. Life is fun.

My third of the new ones, perhaps appropriately, is Trinity. I didn't even look at what it's made with before taking the first sip. I couldn't detect any novelty here, just the basic good imperial stout formula of fresh black coffee, dark chocolate and a shot of plain whiskey. In fact there's no addition, it's a straight oatmeal stout at 12% ABV aged in bourbon barrels. They're well-behaved bourbon barrels again too, giving up their warmth but not the yucky cloying vanillins. There's even a faint fruit complexity, in the finish -- damson or raisin. Overall, it's a classy sipper and tough to fault.

Unless there's been a late add, and I wouldn't put it past them, that's all from Lough Gill from this year. There's some impressive stuff in the above, showing a brewery that's good at what it does in several different ways at once.

Holiday beers

Halloween beer and it nearly Christmas? My beer backlog is a shame and a disgrace, so I beg your pardon for my tardiness during this season of goodwill.

The White Hag's Samhain series got another makeover this year, transforming under the full moon into a Blood Orange Pils. I wasn't expecting it to be actually red, but it is: a vibrant scarlet, thanks to the inclusion of that established craft ingredient, anthocyanin. It still smells like a pilsner, though: lightly crisp with a hint of herbal hops. There's a faint suggestion of orange too, but nothing overdone. In the flavour the orange (zest, puree and whole fruit) adds an extra dimension of bitterness, rather than tacked-on fruit taste. It's a very dry beer and quite highly carbonated, but refreshing for all that. The hops still deliver a grassy punch and there's been no attempt to sweeten it. I haven't been a big fan of the brewery's lagers in the past, but this one is charming and not at all the novelty it presents as.

Manannán, a mango IPA, was a summer release. And I did drink it on a sunny day, albeit one where the sun was setting by 4pm. It's a lightly hazy yellow colour and smells brightly fruity and quite sweet, plainly designed for summer. Though 6.5% ABV, it's quite light bodied and worryingly easy to drink as a result. The flavour isn't a big one: I was expecting something a bit sticky but instead there's a gentle fruit-chew sweetness and a twist of orange peel but that's about your lot. I'm also pleased that they haven't attempted to hop it up. While it may be an IPA in name only, there's no clash between the hopping and the mango. So this is quite plain fare, and I think it would work best on a very hot day, albeit in moderation.

Finally something a little more seasonally appropriate: a new version of the brewery's (in)famous oatmeal imperial stout: Black Boar Rum Barrel. Rum ageing often leaves me cold; even more than busy bourbon, the cask can dominate a flavour unpleasantly, in both beer and whiskey. I'm happy to say this isn't one of those. There's lots of real dark rum flavour for sure, but none of the excess heat and sweetness that often blights these. Instead, the taste is more akin to rum and raisin ice cream, at a remove from raw spirit, and with an invigorating shot of espresso on the side to add bitterness. That's about as complex as it gets but it will absolutely do. More iterations are promised and I sincerely hope they change nothing.

Thus concludes my last post before the big day, so I'd like to finish by wishing all my readers a very merry and joyful Halloween.

Just a bit of fun

Today's beers have very little in common with each other, other than they're in broadly wild-fermented styles and have fruit added. Both intrigued me enough to buy one each and drink back to back.

The first is from Funky Fluid, a Polish brewer I last encountered at the Wrocław festival in 2019. It's called Sangria Sour, being a sour beer brewed with pomegranate, orange and red grape: not a mix I'd seen before. It's hazy ochre in the glass and what little head formed didn't last long. The aroma is zingy, with the zesty orange and rich grape doing a good job of suggesting sangria. It's only 3.5% ABV and that makes it quite thin. You wouldn't want a heavy texture on something like this but I still think more body would improve it. A regular complaint of mine about fruited sour beer is that they're not sour enough. This one is, however, with a sharp and stimulating tartness. The downside is that the fruit itself doesn't really come through, and again I'm blaming the low gravity for that. There's a vague orangeyness but none of the rest that's promised. It's a failure as a sangria simulacrum but is nicely refreshing, which I guess is its principal task. While it's fine and quite enjoyable, it didn't live up to everything promised on the can.

Full Circle is a completely new brewery to me and the beer that caught my eye from their range was Asleep in the Orchard, a cherry saison. It's a delightful scarlet colour, topped with a thick layer of pink-tinted froth. The aroma is sweet but it doesn't smell like cherry, rather lemonade or sherbet. It tastes much more saison-like, a mix of dry farmyard earthiness with pear and lychee esters. So this is no silly novelty, but I think the cherry has got lost, other than in the appearance. At 6.5% ABV it's quite thick and there's a syrupy feel that may have something to do with the added fruit. It's hard to be too cross with it as it's a rock solid saison, but as above, I was hoping for something a bit daft and didn't get it.

So there you have it. Two breweries making decent beer, though claiming they're being more -- for want of a better word -- creative than it turns out they are.