From salon to saloon

Each year, the city of Nancy hosts a brewing trade show called Le Salon du Brasseur. Every machine, ingredient and packaging format available to the industry is showcased here, with suppliers from far and wide. It's not something that interests me much, but the meeting I was at happened next door and there was a bit of time afterwards to walk the floors.

A couple of the hop suppliers had brought beers along so that potential customers could taste what to expect, and at the Barth-Haas stand, a fridge full of cans was getting thinned out by the punters. I was pleased to see Slovenian brewery Reservoir Dogs represented in there so asked to try a couple of theirs.

One was Little Sister, which the brewery describes as a "low ABV New England IPA", so a hazy session IPA then. It's 5% ABV, and a warm orange colour in the glass. I didn't get much juice or vanilla sweetness from it, only a broad new-world peach effect. The taste is dominated by a Germanic grassy bitterness, which I liked, but was unexpected. I guess it's the use of Slovenian hops that makes it different, and earned it a place in that particular fridge. It works, but it doesn't really hit the hoppy points of the style spec.

The brewery also does a wet hop ale with local varieties Styrian Wolf and Styrian Kolibri, the latter being a recently developed aroma hop which I hadn't seen before. The beer has been given the unfortunate name of Wet Dreams. It's another orange-coloured one, but clear this time. The flavour's centrepiece is a big Sorachi-like hit of coconut and citrus pith, leading on to a slightly sweeter note of peach skin. Both aspects run long into the aftertaste, helped along by a nicely dense body and 6% ABV. The off-kilter nature of the hops works much better here than in the previous one, and it's a good illustration of what Slovenian ones can do, which I guess is the reason it was there.

Elsewhere, the agency tasked with promoting French hops had a stand with three beers on tap. I began my taking advantage of the hospitality with La Parisienne Libérée, a 4.7% ABV lager from La Parisienne brewery in [checks notes] Paris. It was a good place to start as this is a rather boring affair, doing the clean pale lager thing but failing to go anywhere interesting with it. It was meant to demonstrate the benefits of Aramis hops, and if the benefit is that they don't intrude on the taste, then well done. There's a minimal kick of bitterness if you look closely but not a whole lot else going on.

Brique House, as featured on yesterday's pub tour, was also here. Their beer seems to have been made especially for the occasion: an 8% ABV hazy double IPA called Triple Hoppy, because it uses Magnum, Elixir and another new one for me: Barbe Rouge. It looks murky but tastes clean, though there's a significant heat. And the hops? Very convincingly American, with lots of fresh and bright pineapple and a funkier ripe guava side. It's a sipper for sure, but very enjoyable as it goes. Whoever commissioned it chose well.

Finally for this stall, a hazy pale ale called Nova, from Hardi. Mistral and Triskel are the hops here. Although it's only 4.5% ABV there's plenty of body, and a proper New England softness. The bitter foretaste is odd, starting on grapefruit peel but introducing a weird plasticky tang. My fellow drinkers were keen, but I wasn't a fan, perhaps from drinking the DIPA ahead of it. Thanks to the hops it's certainly different to most beers of this sort, but still not brilliant.

Takedown began as I was finishing that, and a neighbouring exhibition hall took up the mantle for the evening, hosting La Fête des Bières, an (almost) all-French beer festival, open to the public. It's a slightly boutique affair but there was plenty of choice. Plus my favourite feature of any beer festival: loads of breweries I had never heard of or drank before.

First thing to catch my eye as I entered the hall was a cask beer engine at the stand of Bon Poison -- a brewery name that's a little too on the nose. It was pouring Midsummer, a 5.3% ABV wheat ale, and that seemed like a good place to start. The low carbonation and soft texture was beautiful, and the flavour a bucolic mix of floral honey and candied lemon. Despite the strength it's very quaffable and I liked the classy simplicity of it: not the sort of thing I expected from a brewery with a skull as its logo.

Staying drinking beers by the entrance would never do so I made a point of heading to a distant corner next. There I found another skull-fan, La Bourlingueuse, with a range of mostly bottled stuff and a couple of draft lines. One of these was pouring a porter called Mr Hyde. This is a straight-down-the-line example of the style, 5.5% ABV but tasting like 4. A silky smooth texture complements medium-sweet milk chocolate. There are no fancy complexities but no off flavours either. It's a beer to have a case or two of on hand when you just want quality without having to think too much about it.

Because there were many more beers yet to try that evening, and the stand was selling bottles, I took away a La Catrina, their chipotle brown ale, after only a rudimentary quality check. It's really red rather than brown, and an ugly murky colour. I've known chipotle to produce a stale plasticky note, and that's here in the aroma, though offset by a caramel and honey sweetness. It's neither the malt nor the chilli which dominates the flavour, but the smoke. It's quite an acrid, dusty, paprika-powder effect, followed by a subtle hint of spice which tingles at the back of the tongue long after swallowing. It's not as good as it was at the festival -- funny how that happens -- but I'm OK with it. Don't expect any clean complexity though.

One of my tablemates had picked up a can of La Déesse des Chutes by Belgh Brasse of Quebec, one of the rare imports available. This is a 6.5% ABV white IPA, but one which takes a very different direction from the usual in its flavour. A candy base leads on to a massively spicy main act, with clove being the dominant taste. It took a bit of getting used to but it's highly enjoyable. I don't know what white IPA enthusiasts would make of it, but I'm not one of them so it doesn't matter.

I do like a beer with basil, so when I noticed Basilic from Ferme Brasserie Simone in passing, I jumped on it. It's a sour ale too, and 5.1% ABV. Though an unattractive dirty blonde colour, it's crisply tart to begin, and then massively lays on the oily green basil taste. One dimensional? Absolutely. But it delivers what's promised and I could drink a lot of it. One of those occasions when it seems a brewery has made a beer for me and nobody else.

There was an interesting looking grape ale on offer from the La Vaugermaine brewery, based on their Au Moût de Raisins blonde ale, with Pinot Noir. It turned out to be quite plain, however, with nice dry tannins but not much to show beyond that. The base offers a different sort of dryness with a bread crust note, and that's as complex as it gets. Fine as a beer, but below par for a grape ale, I'm sorry to say.

Time was running on, so it was time for a quadrupel IPA. This was supplied by Piggy Brewing and called Tangerine Dream. I'm not sure I've ever had one as strong as this, 12% ABV, and that doesn't bode well. Sure it's hot, but almost to the point where it becomes a feature not a bug. There's a bit of onion at first, then a tang of orange peel, before finishing on thick vanilla custard. It wouldn't be my sort of thing, but seemed well made in general for what it was.

French brewing has taken somewhat to the pumpkin beer, and one brewery was making a big thing of theirs: Brasserie de l'île de Noirmoutier, with Pump'king. It turned out to be a very poor example, tasting like a basic blonde ale into which someone has sprinkled a flavouring powder. It actually tastes powdery -- dry and acrid -- but without any real spice. Pointless. I liked the label, though.

A Schwarzbier to finish, from Parcel. The brewery's branding is quite farmy but there was nothing rough or rustic about this one. It's absolutely on the money for the style; only 5.2% ABV but still with a treacle unctuousness. The flavour is centred on dark chocolate but includes lighter cocoa powder as well. Roasted grains and cola nut also feature. Above all it's dry, supremely clean, and with nothing that shouldn't be in there.

That was quite enough for one day. We wrap up the trip, and pop into a country next door, tomorrow.

Les bars et les boires

On my brief visit to Nancy last month there was a small amount of pubbing done when there was time. On night one, Reuben brought us to a fun little basement metal bar with the unlikely name of Brooklyn Boogie Café. As it happened there was a tap takeover in progress, by Beer Truck des Alpes, a self-styled mobile brewpub. I'm sure the local revenue inspector is delighted with the concept.

First out of the taken-over taps was Lac Forchu, described as a smoked ale and at a venue-appropriate 6.66% ABV. It's on the right of my poorly-lit picture and is a hazy pale yellow colour, which such things rarely are. A light peachy aroma suggests nothing more noteworthy than an average New England-style pale ale, but the flavour does introduce a pleasant and subtle smoky complexity to the fruit and vanilla. I was reminded a little of Schlenkerla's Helles. It's accessible, refreshing and not at all the ridiculous novelty it might easily have been.

On the left is Les Orgues de Valsenetre, named a after a rocky formation somewhere in the mountains south of Grenoble. It's a porter with chilli and is 5.6% ABV. The aroma is rich and roasty, savoury like Bovril and with a hint of spice to come. Like the previous beer, the base style is well represented in the flavour, loading in dark chocolate and high-end coffee, suggesting the use of my favourite celebrity malt, brown. Once again the novelty ingredient is an afterthought and doesn't disturb the overall decency of the offer. More of a chill kick would have suited me better but I can't argue with the excellent fundamentals here. Rock on, Beer Truck.

A later mini-pubcrawl brought us to an L-shaped corner café called Le Ch'timi. The place looks set-up primarily for terrace drinking but it was too damp for that. The beer of the month had been the flagship of local brewery La Délicatesse but had just run out. They replaced it with Succulente from the same operation, an ambrée of 5% ABV. And it's very typical of how the French do these, being rather plain and unexciting, though darker than most. The mouthfeel is light and lagery, unsupportive of any flavour complexity, just a tiny burst of strawberry and a hint of ginger biscuit before a quick finish. It's a small bit more interesting than a typical Irish red ale, but not much.

Across the table was Yankee Trouble, a white IPA from Lille's Brique House. These aren't normally my bag, but this is an excellent example, softly textured and showing a lovely mix of hops and herbs, grapefruit meeting coriander and without a trace of soapiness. I only had a sip but could tell this would be refreshing in quantity, if a little dangerous at 6.5% ABV.

Hinano is the national flagship beer of French Polynesia. Despite being a holiday lager it has been brewed in France for a while, but I still wasn't prepared to pass it by. It's fine. There's lots of very typical attributes of cheap commodity lager here: a plain dry foundation on which a minimal structure of flavour is built, mostly consisting of tangy and metallic hop extract. I'm sure the real thing tastes much better on a Pacific beach. On a dreary evening in eastern France it didn't serve any useful purpose, other than getting me a tick.

The other beer of this set was much better. Piggy is the area's success story, and their beer is even found here in Ireland from time to time. Reuben had their West Coast Scenario which mostly delivered what it promises: plenty of piney resin, an explosion of grapefruit spritz, and the bit that contemporary west coast revivals often omit, the crystal malt toffee. It's full and satisfying, tasting bigger and bolder than its 6% ABV.

On then to Café des Trolls, another place that was poky and crowded, with its outside area rained off for the evening. I had never heard of Brasserie Meteor, from Hochfelden, near Strasbourg, but apparently they're the big guys in this part of the world. A family-owned brewery, it claims to be France's oldest, since 1640, adopting its current name in 1925.

Meteor Pils looks like a classic, being a sunny limpid golden colour. The taste is on the bland side of clean, unfortunately, lacking the hop bite that pilsner needs to be proper, and not just a label on boring commodity lager. A wave of celery is all you get for hops, and here's that metal tang again, telling me of corners cut. Knowing now what the brewery is, it makes a lot more sense, but it confused me when I assumed it was a modern micro.

Not that they're not paying attention to today's beer trends. The tap beside the Pils had the cloudy Meteor IPA. It might look New-Englandy but to me it tastes more in the Belgian style, the apricot hop fruit complemented by a strong estery quality, with lychee and pear. It works rather well. If they dominate the taps locally, as breweries of this sort often do, it's good that they're putting out beers of interest like this.

The finisher here was the New England IPA from Brasserie La Fouillotte in Épinal. It's only 5% ABV and a little dry for the style but wearing some fun satsuma and jaffa peel zest up front. Unfortunately this is let down by a thin watery finish for which there's no excuse, even at the modest strength. It's passable, but completely forgettable too. Cascade, Simcoe, Mosaic and Citra are all allegedly in here. Just don't ask me where.

As with rats, you're never very far away from an AB InBev beer, and on a late-night visit to La Taverne des L'Irlandais (look, it was late and it hadn't quite closed yet) I got acquainted with Loburg. I believe this is made at the Leuven megabrewery, presumably only for France. I don't know what the French did to deserve it, but it's awful: absolutely packed with greasy, buttery diacetyl from aroma to finish. There's a brief respite of fizzy crispness in the foretaste but the rest is pure dreck.

Staying Belgian, there's a franchise Delirium Tremens bar in Nancy, which seems to attract the young crowd for its mix of loud music, TV sports and Belgian beer. There wasn't much of interest, but I've never had Delirium Red, the cherry beer, so gave that a go. I think it belongs more with the brewery's Floris range because it is powerfully sweet, saturated in cloying and sticky pink-tasting syrup, concentrated to tooth-jangling levels. My tolerance for such things is quite high, but even this tested my limits. It's very much not a beer for beer drinkers.

We've done breweries and we've done pubs, so I guess the beer festival is next.

Nancy brew mysteries

It had been almost eight years since I was last in France, and from a beer perspective, it was a very different France back in 2015. One of the things I learned when spending a few days there last month was that nearly two thirds of France's 2500 or so breweries are less than five years old. And, it goes without saying, the newcomers aren't throwing yet more blonde/brune/blanche into the market; they're following what's trendy on the international scene, even if very few of them make it to export.

On arrival in the eastern city of Nancy, it was straight off to La Fabrique des GrÔ, a microbrewery in the suburb of Maxéville. I don't know if they open to the public normally, but they were kind enough to host a get-together for the European Beer Consumers Union, assembling for its autumn meeting.

They've named their flagship lager directly after the location: La Bière Maxéville. It's a middle of the road 4.2% ABV, and I think is mostly clear, though it was hard to tell from the clouded plastic beaker in which it was served. It starts out as a good clean Germanic lager, with some nice celery and rocket hop notes. With a bit of warmth on it it becomes heavier, adding honey and uncooked sweetcorn to the picture, as well as a slick body. Still, it stays drinkable throughout, and I wouldn't be unhappy if my town's name were on something like this.

Level 2 for the beginner drinker is Niasse, a blonde ale brewed for summer. It's another pale and clear one, and while it's meant to be plain and chuggable actually shows a very decent hop complexity. A candied lemon sweetness invites us in, then a harder lime bitterness smacks us around. It's simple fun; a story as old as time. I didn't mind at all that I was drinking it on a dark damp evening in a chilly warehouse.

Things get a bit more special from here. The beer I actually started on was their IPA, Bitter Juice: chasing two trends at once, there. And yet it does what it says. The texture offers a smoothie smoothness in a typical New England way, while the flavour eschews fuzz and is bright and clean in a west coast way. They've added bergamot to give it an extra citrus element, though I got plenty of mouthwatering mandarin from the hops. The whole unfancy and unfussy package is delivered at a nicely poky 7.3% ABV, very nearly at double IPA level. They could have taken this one in all kinds of different directions but, this early in my evening, I really appreciated the balance.

A bottle of Landaise was passed around at one point. This is a pale ale with added Szechuan pepper. I'm used to these looking pale and innocent before they deliver a throat-scorching, sinus-clearing kick of spice. This isn't like that, having only a mildly spicy aroma and actually not a whole lot of flavour of any kind. The hopping in particular makes it undeserving of the pale ale designation and much more like a plain blonde ale. There is, however, just enough spice to be interesting. Maybe this suits the palate of others, but when I see chilli advertised, I expect to taste a goodly amount of it. Here there's only just enough of it to hold my interest.

Finally, Monsieur Le Patron was very keen to show off his boutique barrel-ageing programme, set up in one corner of the brewery. Its first fruit, not yet released to the public at that point, was Barikagrô Moscatel 01. This started life as a saison and was then given nine months of ageing in a Muscatel wine barrel. It's no dry or peppery saison, having absorbed a huge port or sherry flavour from the barrel, and more alcohol than its 8.7% ABV might suggest. The overall picture is of a well-integrated warming sipper; a softly-textured digestif. Breweries often take a couple of goes to get barrel-ageing dialled in. These guys seem to have hit the ground running. I wish them luck and hope to see more of the similar.

Maxéville is also home to a larger operation, called Hoppy Road. It's a good example of how the French microbrewery culture is as resolutely Francophone as everything else in the country, yet brewery and beer names are often inexplicably in English. Pick a lane, guys. Gathered around the malt stacks, we had a super-quick tasting of a portion of their sizeable beer range.

That began with a draught hazy pale, created for the local jazz festival and named NJP '73. As such they haven't put a whole lot of effort into designing it, aiming for sessionable gig drinking. What came out is a 5% ABV hazy pale ale, single-hopped with Ekuanot. I could have taken it for Mosaic: it has the savoury caraway and garlic that it shows when misbehaving. The soft texture helps with the drinkability, but otherwise it's unremarkable, which was very much the point.

Next out of the crate was Flamingo, an appropriately flamboyant name for a hibiscus and lime Berliner weisse. This is only 3.2% ABV and pink coloured. As one might expect, it has been kettle soured rather than mixed fermented, but its funky aroma adds an unexpected and most welcome complexity. That doesn't last, unfortunately, and when we get to the flavour we find it much more simplistic, with hibiscus's pink cherry taste most prominent, and a pinch of citrus sourness being the lime's contribution. This is simple and decent, offering something a bit fun at a very low strength. You could pint it, were it available on draught.

Moving up the scale, next it's a wheat ale of 5.6% ABV called Hopper. The best part of this is the label, reimagining Hopper's Nightowls as a Hoppy Road brewpub. There's a smidge of wheat softness about the texture, but mostly it's a dank and resinous hop walloper, indistinguishable from many other American pale ales. The lemon zest of the aroma softens it somewhat, but otherwise it's no more complex or interesting than the jazz ale. 

Soif!, clearly also meant as a thirst-quencher, is another pale ale, though at 5% ABV we're getting beyond the point of simple chuggability. Chinook and Mosaic are the hops this time, and again it's the savoury side which comes out, loading the palate with sweaty white onion and not a whole lot else. For me this doesn't meet its one-job remit: my thirst wasn't quenched and I was immediately looking for something else to take the taste away. Your sensitivity to armpit-mode Mosaic may vary.

Another wheat ale clocks in at 5.4% ABV and is called White Demon. I didn't get the full details but it was a complete disaster for me: heavily bitter, plasticky, and with a weird rancid grape overtone. I should add before moving on that all these recent beers were doubtless exactly what the brewery intended them to be, with not an off-flavour to be found. It's just that their on-flavours really didn't suit me.

It wasn't all bad, thankfully. The beer called 1984 is one they seem very proud of, and I can't think of any other examples: a saison based on acidulated malt. It's 6.5% ABV and hopped with Loral. Generously, as it turned out, delivering loads of floral and citric brightness. The body is light and clean, meaning the alcohol is dangerously well concealed. The icing on the cake, however, is a punchy lime-like sourness, presumably derived from the malt. Here's another beer that would have worked much better in a sunny beer garden than a rain-soaked industrial lock-up.

Before it was time to go they brought out the house imperial stout, Mazout. This exists as all kinds of variants, but I'm glad I got to taste the archetype. It's 12% ABV with a textbook warmth and softness. The flavour does nothing fancy with the basic components of the style, piling in bitter espresso and high-cocoa chocolate, before a long and almost spirit like warm finish. There are neither bells nor whistles on offer, but it's excellent without them. Only a bit of extra hopping would propel it to the next level for me, but I have little to complain about here.

I was impressed enough by what Hoppy Road were making to stage a raid on the brewery shop, and some time later, back at the hotel, I drank a nightcap of another Hoppy Road imperial stout, this one with coconut added. Coco en Stock is 12.2% ABV. The coconut is extremely pronounced here, adding almost a chemical solvent note. Any possible harshness is offset, however, by layer upon layer of smooth and creamy milk chocolate. And while that in turn runs the risk of making it cloying, the alcohol heat gives the palate a thorough scrub. It's big and it's busy, but it's also magnificently balanced, with none of the different elements pulling it too far in any direction. I'm reminded in particular of Lervig's Coconuts: it's possible the brewer may have had a glass or two of that before getting started.

Back at the shop, of course the double black IPA had been first into the basket. This is Beetle Juice, a very black number with a softly fruity aroma of peach and pineapple. That's done with Citra, Simcoe, Columbus and Amarillo, only the last of which I would consider any way fruit-providing. The bitterness from the others does show up in the flavour: acidic resins and a hard zesty citrus. As is appropriate for the style, there's a backing of dark roast behind it. Oddly, it finishes quickly with a light and fizzy body, which is not what I would expect for something at 8% ABV. Easy drinkability shouldn't be on the spec for double black IPA, making this one not a great example by my personal style guidelines. I liked what it does, but I think it should be doing it at a couple of percentage points less.

There was another of my favourite styles in Light My Sour, a sour IPA at 5.5%. They've absolutely nailed the good points of the style here, even if the ABV is a little on the high side. For refreshment is the name of the game, and a bit like the acidulated saison above, this uses a super-clean tartness to project a ray of unadulterated sunshine. It's not so sour as to be puckering, nor even zesty, showing instead a gentle spritz of ripe lemon and Tangfastics. The fizz is busy and the finish quick, but that's all part of the charm. The extra strength does provide a little more body than most of these, and I think that helps balance it more. It's not a massively complex beer, but it's also not meant to be. Very nicely done, overall.

I wasn't going to pass by a Baltic porter, even if the one on offer at Hoppy Road, Erebus, is a bit of a lightweight at only 6.2% ABV. There's a little too much foam on pouring, and some unexpected dregs at the bottom of the can make it more of a brown colour than black. The aroma is green and leafy, with a pinch of roast, making it seem more like a black IPA than Baltic porter, initially. That freshly green bitterness is there in the flavour too, starting slow but building in intensity towards the finish. Columbus is the culprit, we're told. The body is creamy and stout-like, making me wonder if it's really a lager at all. I'm also looking for the more herbal, liquorice-like bitterness which for me is the style's signature, but I'm not getting that either. It's enjoyable -- chewy and satisfying -- but while it does have the impactful bitterness of Baltic porter, it's the wrong sort, and no other part of it is to style. That's disappointing when it's what I was in the mood for.

Our third big stout, Speedol Star, is a mere 9.5% ABV and billed as a "coffee triple stout". What does that mean? Well, it smells like coffee, tastes like coffee and looks like coffee, so that's three. I'm being flippant, but it is all coffee right the way through. That doesn't leave much room for stout, and you get a rudimentary level of dark toast with some hazelnut or peanut sweetness. Like the black IPA it's simple, balanced, clean and straightforward: a real homebrewer's pitch at precision, but which lacks an individual character. I would like something more than the roast and oils of the coffee: the best of these add some berry or cherry complexity, and that would be most welcome here.

There was a selection of large format bottles in the brewery shop but my groaning bagstrap made it clear I could only take one. That was Balinbarbi, a beer fermented on a French word I didn't know: marcs. I looked it up and out turned out the English translation is "marcs". Apparently it's the waste material left over when grapes are crushed and I'm glad I've never had need of a word for that. The heartbroken varieties here are Gamay and Pinot Noir.

It's 4.8% ABV and pours a pale shade of murky rosé. A head says hello and swiftly goodbye again. On the aroma there's a promising mix of serious vanilla-spice oak, but muted, and overlaid with a fruity summer cocktail buzz. The texture is thin and spritzy at first, though a gumminess follows, from which one can almost see the Brettanomyces strands. It's mostly fruit in the flavour, where it meets the sourness to create something sweet yet still crisp, clean and balanced. It bears a strong resemblance to a quality young framboise, but the ABV is very unBelgian, and that really thins it out. Very nice, but not brilliant by grape ale standards, if that helps you make up your own mind in the Hoppy Road brewery shop.

So that's the breweries. Next, we head for the pub.

Two lonely lagers

Usually, Lineman releases new beers in multiples. When I saw Reflector for sale during the summer I figured that a companion beer wouldn't be long behind it. However, in the months since, the brewery has been concentrating on the return of older recipes so this has been left sitting on its own in the back of the fridge. It needed opening.

Reflector is a pilsner of 4.2% ABV. While it's a beautiful amber-gold colour, it took a bit of coaxing to get a head to form on it. Luckily, the beer isn't at all flat and has a perfect refreshing sparkle on a light body. "Zesty Motueka" is what the can tells us about the hopping, and it ain't kidding. This has the citric blast of an American pale ale, zesty and bitter in a way that's delicious, but not very typical of pilsner. A slight dry and grassy bite on the finish is its only nod in that direction, othrwise it's all the lemon, lime and grapefruit. If I'd known how much this depended on its fresh hop taste, I would have opened it sooner. While it may not win too many points for style fidelity, it's a beaut.

Some months later, Ballykilcavan dropped a hop-forward lager too: Clancy's Cans #13: 1904 Hüll Melon Lager. The year isn't explained, but I'm guessing it's a recipe from then. It's even darker than the previous one, bright orange rather than any shade of gold, with a sizeable head. I didn't get much of an aroma from it, while the flavour, too, is rather understated. Dry cracker and crisp grain husk are the principal features, with the hops bringing little other than a hard and waxy bitterness. I didn't get any of the strawberry and melon promised by the can. It's fine, overall, but not very interesting and not the fruity hop showcase I was hoping for.

These two feel a bit like they've been switched: what I expected would be a plain pilsner was hop dynamite, while the one wearing its hops on its sleeve was quite the damp squib. It just goes to show the importance of drinking all the beers.

Wintercore

Rascals has branded The Phoenix Dark an "autumnal ale", though it was October by the time they canned it and I suspect it may be around a little while longer. No matter. I'm theorising it'll be fine for winter drinking.

It's certainly dark enough, a deep shade of brown that's very nearly black, with the pillowy head of a stout. There's not much of an aroma, just a little roast and caramel. It's cold-fermented, according to the label, and I get schwarzbier vibes early on. The texture is rounded and quite creamy, which puts us back in ale territory. We're promised subtle smoke, but it's too subtle for me. Instead, schwarzbier's liquorice features next to treacle bread and dark chocolate, all very integrated into a single piece, in a very lagery way.

Never a subscriber to seasonal drinking at the best of times, I think this one would work well year round. It does draw well on the positive aspects of both dark lager and dark ale, though at only 5.3% ABV lacks any real warming effect. When you don't have time to drink both a porter and a schwarzbier it could be a real time-saver.

Today's Schnitzls

Schnitzel doesn't grow on trees, or so I believed until Privatbrauerei Schnitzlbaumer entered my life, its name conjuring an image of juicy breaded cutlets, hanging ready to be picked. Four beers from this Bavarian operation have landed into Ireland and into my fridge, priced at a very reasonable (for here and now) €3.50.

The first is not in a style I readily associate with Bavaria, the stolidly Rhinelandish Export. Schnitzlbaumer Export Hell is 5.2% ABV, a strength I readily associate with Bavarian Helles. Could I tell any difference between that and this? Maybe. It certainly has a similar sort of sweetness, presumably just a function of the gravity. And of course it's a medium limpid gold: I wouldn't expect the brewery to have survived (seit 1575, allegedly) if it weren't. But I think there's a smidge more hopping than you'd get in a Helles. They tend to taste like spongecake; this has more of a grass and spinach bite, but is just as rich and smooth. My palate is really not trained for such distinctions. Or at all, really. It is a nice beer, however. You don't need to know anything else about it.

What makes me think that perhaps they're not pitching at anything Dortmunderish is the existence of Export Dunkel. Presumably this is is meant to be a Bavarian Dunkel, only slightly stronger. Again, it's 5.2% ABV. The colour is striking: that pure ruby garnet that Bavarian and Bohemian breweries have perfected and which always signals great beer to even an appearance-agnostic like me. I got hops first on the aroma, suggesting a pale lager with no more than a glamour on it. A little burst of darker caramel does arrive on inhaling deeply enough, however. Those positions are reversed on tasting, to positive effect. First up, it's all about the burnt caramel sugar and sterner grain roast. It doesn't lay it on thick, proceeding quickly to the squeakily vegetal green noble hops, before the swift flourish of a clean lager finish. This is easy drinking, almost Helles-like, but with enough dark character to give it a different purpose. That's a spec every brewery should have in its core line-up. Here's an example of how to do it well.

On to the obergärig segment, beginning with Schnitzei Weisse. This looks like a typical weissbier, though on the darker, oranger side of the spectrum. While there was lots of head to begin with, it faded a bit quickly for my liking, robbing me of the full foamy effect by the time I got to take the first sip. That revealed that, yes, there's nothing much especially noteworthy here. The banana/clove dial, which all of these should have on the label, is turned mostly towards the fruit, though there's a little spiciness as well, confined to the finish. 5.5% ABV is on the strong side, relative to others of its type, and I think that can be tasted in both the heat and a weighty toffee malt base as well. The worst sin a weissbier can commit is being watery, and this is definitely not that, staying easy-drinking while filling and satisfying too. It works, which for €3.50 is sufficient.

I followed that immediately with Schnitzei Weisse Dunkel. I don't really get the point of dark weissbier: they don't do anything better than the pale ones. Could this be the one to change my mind? The appearance is immediately off-putting: orange and hazy is fine; brown and hazy looks like mud. It's the same strength and has the same poor head retention so I didn't expect much difference once I poured it. The aroma is identical but I'll admit there is something different in the flavour. That malt weight and heat is reduced a little by a roasted dryness, plus a hint of chocolate and a mineral metallic tang. The banana is still there, especially in the aroma, but it's muted in the flavour. I was shocked to find myself enjoying this more than the previous one. Not by much, but it's something. Getting the very estery weissbier yeast to play nicely with the dark malts is an achievement.

And on that note I return to my musings about the schnitzel tree. Can we have a Kartoffelsalatstrauch too?