White goes purple

Witbier is a beer style that's firmly out of fashion at the moment, and yet this is the fourth I've featured this month. How about that? There is at least a twist with To Øl's Berry White: it has blueberries and blackberries in it, though doesn't say if that's alongside or instead of the traditional coriander and orange peel.

It looks fun: a funky purple with a thick layer of pink foam on top, resulting in a fine lacing all the way down. The aroma is crisp and wheaty, suggesting they haven't thrown tradition away completely. A berry tartness infuses it, with the juicy blackberries being most prominent. Blueberries tend to be quite shy when used to flavour beer, and the ones used here are just as reticent. Other than the aroma there aren't really any witbier features: no herbs or citrus, the base beer serving only to provide a neutral base for the fruit.

This isn't a complex beer, and has been designed to do nothing other than taste of berries. It does that successfully, however, without hitting any syrupy obstacles, so it's a thumbs-up from me.

A mountain range

I built up a tidy little collection of Odell beers over the past few weeks from here and there, all of them new to me. Let me take you through what I found.

Oh hey: here's an interesting starting point. A few weeks back I jibed that when American breweries make beer at 4% ABV they make them thin because they regard that as a compromised beer strength to begin with (my beer in point was Lagunitas Daytime, which isn't thin but tastes terrible, but anyway). I got a chance to try and back up my slur when I noticed the tiny print on Odell Good Behavior reveals it too to be the big four-point-oh. It does look a bit thin, being a pale yellow infused with a sickly haze, and while it's not offensively watery, it does lack substance. This is plainly designed to be quaffable and easy, but I think they have undercooked it somewhat in doing that. There is a generous dusting of the Odell magic, however: a flavour which bounces joyfully between succulent mango, tangy tangerine and sticky marijuana buds. It's all a bit muted, however, like they want it to be bigger and bolder but can't possibly manage it at this strength. Loser talk. On balance, I like it. There are echoes here of Little Fawn, which remains world class and objective best of breed. This isn't a bad take, but still streets away from what British breweries can do at 4% and below.

Next we have Witkist White, a "grapefruit white ale". From that I expected an extra-bitter twist on your standard witbier, but this is pretty much a standard witbier. It's a normal 5% ABV and a medium hazy yellow. The aroma shows off its coriander and orange peel well, but where's the headline grapefruit? I couldn't find it in the flavour either. The citrus that's present isn't bitter but instead has the marmalade tang of a wit, while the herbs add a pleasant savoury balance. And that's your lot. I could very much believe I was drinking something Belgian, so full marks for not taking an established European style in a silly direction, but I could have just had a Hoegaarden and saved myself some food miles. Two mouthfuls in I stopped grumbling, sat back, and just enjoyed a well-made beer.

Also on a Belgian kick is the Odell kriek, Friek. It's a fairly powerful one at 6.9% ABV and is a pleasing clear russet colour in the glass. There's quite a funky, Bretty aroma with only a faint trace of sweet and fizzy cherryade behind it. What was I letting myself in for? First sip brought a rush of contrasting complexities. A punchy sourness scorches across the palate at the beginning, bringing cherries in its wake: sour at first but quickly turning riper and rounding and fading out on a sweetish maraschino note. A modest funkiness permeates this, adding a kind of seasoning which I think helps draw the fruit out. A twist of white pepper seasons it further. I should add that this is the 2015 vintage so it's perhaps an extra testament to the brewers that it hasn't turned completely to vinegar. By the time I poured myself a second glass I had become accustomed to the acidity and was enjoying a lovely, and balanced, funky kriek. 

Moving on up, next it's an "imperial mango IPA" and even from reliable Odell that description fills me with apprehension. Tree Shaker is 8% ABV. It smells innocent enough, of fresh and juicy mandarins, and I will note that it's clear -- what a novelty! The flavour is more tropical; still with significant mandarin but I get a fleshy fruit side too which is course the mango but could equally be pineapple or guava. I wouldn't say it's hop forward, exactly, but it's dry rather than sweet and although it's weighty in a proper double IPA way it's not syrupy. Taken as a whole it's very well done: integrated, nuanced and, dare I say, balanced. One wouldn't have thought that wanging mango puree into a big IPA takes a whole lot of skill, but this is experly done. Fruit-IPA sceptics, take note.

We finish on Fernet Aged Porter, which is a half-truth, being formed from 50% barrel-aged beer and the rest being just straight porter. I guessed I was in for an extreme experience if 100% barrel aged didn't work out. It's also no lightweight at 9.4% ABV. Getting a photo with the head in place was a struggle, the tan-coloured foam fading quickly. The rest of it is a dubious swampy dark-brown colour. The aroma offers a mix of herbs and treacle and the texture is surprisingly light. Something about strong dark beers in a prestige bottle makes me expect rich and sumptuous; this isn't thin but has the easy going mouthfeel of a beer half its strength. That in turn means it isn't extreme or difficult, but also not terribly complex. You get a good buzz of liquorice, some mid-strength black coffee and a twang of soy sauce umami, and that's it. It left me wanting to taste both the straight porter and the Fernet-saturated version that made it up. I think both would be more thrilling than their rather sober progeny. I can't fault this, but I expected a bigger bang, given the specs.

The beers put out by Odell are nothing if not diverse and the quality is pretty consistently high. They're very reasonably priced too, by and large. If you're not already on this particular bandwagon now is a great time to jump aboard.

Tom, Dec and barrels

Cork-and-cage vs waxed cap: it's a fancy beer stand-off!

In the green corner, Galway's Land & Labour with their first bottle release: Saison de Coupage. "Wild ale aged in oak barrels" is the general description, the label telling us it's mostly a barrel-fermented saison aged three years and then cut with a smaller volume of fresh beer. It finishes up at 6.3% ABV, a bright hazy yellow, with lots of fizz but no head retention. There's a bricky gueze-like aroma and a pinch of gunpowder spice in the flavour. It's plenty sour too, a jaw-pinching tartness. That said, it's no acid bomb. There's a subtle fruit juice effect in the background: quenching mandarin or satsuma, lasting into the finish. More of that gunpowder bang would make it more to my taste, but it's spot-on as is, being elegantly balanced, complex and moreish. If you told me it came from 3 Fonteinen or Boon I would believe it without question.

And in the yellow corner, So, It Begins. The name is a reference to it being the first beer from Otterbank as a standalone brewery, occupying the premises in Muff that used to be Bog Hopper. It's another wine-barrel-aged saison, but this time at a formidable 8.2% ABV. An amber body is topped with lots of froth and the aroma is dry and toasty, like Champagne. The strength gives it quite a slick texture while the flavour is waxy and bitter. This doesn't have anything like the complexity of the previous one. I found it quite blunt: no saison fruit; no barrel-ish spices or vanilla. A rounded savoury quality and a faint Brett-ish funk are the long and the short of it. While far from unpleasant, it's nothing to get excited about. At least, not yet -- maybe a few years in the bottle will make it more interesting.

Both of these brewers have spent years tantalising us with nothing but rare special releases. I'm hoping this is the kick-off of more regular production for the local market.

Bereft of Borefts

With no jolly excursion to the De Molen brewery last weekend, I'm comforting myself with a bottle of their beer I found locally.

Actung Berry is a Berliner weisse with added hibiscus and blueberry. It's 4.5% ABV and a very deep dark crimson colour. Hibiscus tends to make beers taste to me of raspberry and cherry, while blueberries are rarely perceptible, so it was no surprise to find this smelling like a summer fruit compote, the tart edge commensurate with what you'd get from actual berries. Pleasingly, it does taste of blueberries, fresh and juicy and real. The hibiscus brings the red fruit too, of course, and it's quite fun to explore the flavours. This is helped by the beer being neither too sweet nor too tart, the sourness level just enough to make it invigorating without trying to be a full-on enamel-stripper.

This isn't the sort of thing I associate De Molen with, but I liked it; it's good fun and well put-together. Which is just as well since I won't be visiting for a while.

Sender of darkness

As a nascent beer geek in the early years of the century, one of my regular suppliers was the Celtic Whiskey Shop on Dawson Street. The selection has waxed and waned over time but now they've gone all-in with a new online retailer Craft Beers Delivered. Out of the blue a few weeks ago they wrote and asked if I'd like a complimentary selection, and if there was any particular kind of beer that I wanted. I set them them a challenge by specifying a preference for dark ones. Filling a case without any IPAs must be quite tough these days, but they managed it. Today's post is the ones they sent which I hadn't had before.

First up, a collaboration between Wylan and Mikkeller called Geordie Beer Geek, presumably based on the latter's Beer Geek Breakfast oatmeal and coffee stout. It's 7.5% ABV, as BGB is, though is surprisingly thin, given the gravity and the bulking-out. Rather than coffee I get umami: Worcester sauce and mushroom ketchup. This adds an edge, a tang, that doesn't suit it at all. The coffee does arrive eventually, in the aftertaste, but it's quite harsh: cold coffee grounds instead of a warming roast. This is far from the smooth comforter I was hoping for. I immediately reached for something bigger to take the taste away.

That was an American: Galactic Cowboy from Left Hand, a tall can of nitrogenated imperial stout. It looked well in the glass, the pure blackness topped by a thick pillow of ivory-coloured head. ABV: 9%; silly ingredients: none. The big downside of nitro is how much it deadens aroma, and this doesn't smell of much, just a faint whiff of dark chocolate. So it goes for the flavour: the bitter, high-percentage-cocoa kind of chocolate. Pleasingly they haven't skimped on the hops and there's a significant herbal side to the taste, with mint in particular. Nutmeg, sultana, orange peel and tea add to a pudding effect that's dessertish without being overblown or unsubtle. I think, of course, that this would have been better and more interesting without the nitrogen. It still works, however: a solid, understated bruiser of a stout.

For silly ingredients we have to turn to the Scandis. Lervig's Nitro Hot Chocolate Stout is made with cocoa nibs, lactose and vanilla sugar, and comes with a video they tell you must be watched before opening, the link to which they have printed on a QR code too small to actually work. I took my chances. Maybe it's a warning that the can is likely to gush everywhere, because it did. The nitro head is rather looser on this one, and perhaps that bodes well for the flavour. It smells of milk chocolate, the cheap sort with a kind of sour-milk twang. In the flavour the sweet lactose and vanilla clash with some more generous hopping, though that fades quickly allowing the warming smooth hot chocolate effect to come through. It's 10% ABV so I was expecting a lot of booze heat but it wears it well, using the alcohol to add a roundness and fullness, rather than simple kicks. It took me a while to get into this: the shock of those clashing hops with each mouthful is the main issue, but I began enjoying it later, only to realise subsequently that half a litre is too much for a single serving and a glassful needed to be decanted off to herself. Overall, I think Lervig makes better strong stouts than this one, but this one will do.

The selection tops out on 11% ABV with Omnipollo's Noa "pecan mud" imperial stout. Neither pecans nor mud appear on the ingredients. I am not predisposed to enjoying the pastry stylings of this Swedish contractor (this one brewed at De Molen) but I gave it a sporting chance by drinking it late on a Friday evening when I was in a good mood. The aroma does not suggest a sugary mess, being all hard and bitter espresso. The flavour too is no more nutty than a good coffee, a little burnt around the edges with a touch of vegetal hops, but not severe about either. And there's no silliness, none of the syrupy ersatz-chocolate candy I had geared myself up for. While not especially complex, and not as silly as the branding implies, this is a highly enjoyable straight-up imperial stout of the kind I associate with, well, De Molen. Nice.

Thanks to the folks at Craft Beers Delivered for the selection. With all the pale ale variants on the market at the moment a good dose of strong stout has properly rebalanced the oul chakras.

In the interests of balance

Like many a hardcore beer geek I'm a fan of Rheinbacher, the cheap and cheerful house pilsner from Aldi. In accordance with the natural of order of things there is a Lidl equivalent: the equally hardy Perlenbacher. I have never featured it here, but was I being unfair by giving Rheinbacher all the glory? I didn't try them blind but did drink them one after the other so I think this is a fairly accurate comparative assessment.

It's not as good. It's not even nearly as good. Perlenbacher is very slightly weaker, at 4.8% ABV, but is thicker and immediately sweeter. There's an almost worty flavour and quite a greasy feel. No cripness; no hop bittering; just porridgey malt. To be fair, it does compare favourably with other cheap crappy lagers, and even a few expensive crappy ones. There's none of the nasty tinny twang that afflicts them, and the texture is far from thin. Maybe this simply appeals to a different demographic, one which prefers pilsner to have more meat on its bones. I will take the finely-honed balance of Rheinbacher over this, literally any day of the week.

And you know how it is when you go to Lidl: you come out with more than you intended to buy. In my case, in the interests of thoroughness, I picked up a can of Perlenbacher Hefe Weissbier to see if they fare any better with a more forgiving style. The packaging is pretty grim: there's something very unflattering about that fleshtone beige. The beer inside, 5% ABV, is quite dark for this sort of thing, which bodes well. I can't abide wateriness in weissbier. The aroma has a pleasant, middle-of-the-road blend of sweet banana and nutmeg spicing. Its flavour is light and cheery without being bland. Yes it's on the sweet side but not cloyingly so. I get vanilla, strawberry and spongecake, in a public-school-dessert combination, at once comforting yet refreshing. Good fun for under €2 a can, though maybe too strong and sweet to serve as a session beer. Just one with breakfast is fine.

Both of these seem to have been brewed for the sweet-toothed budget-conscious beer drinker. In my selfish opinion nobody should be brewing pilsners to cater to them. Try the weiss, though, next time there's room in your trolley.

Not so witty

A few weeks ago I reviewed a pair from Belgian brewer De Brabandere in their Brewmaster's Selection series. I subsequently found there's a third one in said series, and tempting as it was to just go back and wedge this review into that post I thought it only fair to give the straggler its own day in the sun.

Again it's a twist on a standard Belgian style: witbier. "The microflora has been harvested from the oak foeders and unleashed into this beer" squeals the label. Before we get to that, the specs all seem quite normal: 5% ABV and hazy yellow with a fine white mousse on top. The aroma is interesting, akin to a dry white wine, which I'm guessing must be because of the oak. This comes right out in the foretaste too: a clean white-grape effect with elements of tart gooseberry and sweet lychee. The crunch of a wheat ale lurks beneath it but doesn't really integrate. The impression I get is of a very plain witbier with a glug of Chablis poured on top.

It's not bad, and will appeal to fans of balanced and refreshing sour beers. I thought it would be more complex, however, and the promise of funk isn't really delivered on. "Herbs" are listed in the ingredients but whatever they spent on those they wasted. While witbier began life as a sour style, I find it difficult to believe first-generation Hoegaarden tasted as simplistic as this.