18 March 2024

Viennagain

It felt like I had only just left Vienna, having last been a little over a year ago. The spring meeting of the European Beer Consumers Union had me back in early March, and it's just as well it's a city that keeps on giving, beerwise. I'll get to the new bars and breweries anon, but there was time at the beginning of the trip for a leisurely return to some old haunts.

Ubiquitous brewkit manufacturer Salm's city brewpub had been explored in 2011, when I found it no great shakes in the beer stakes. It was the first port of call, and it was interesting to see how little the beer menu has changed. Experimentation does not seem to be valued by the Good Bürghers of Salm. There was a seasonal, though: Osterbock, what with Easter only around the corner. Though a sizeable 6.5% ABV, it's as mediocre as most of their other beers. It's a pale and murky brown shade and for all that it's meant to be celebratory, tastes rather austere, of brown bread, black tea, and similar institutional flavours. There are noble hops, but they're twangy and acidic, not grassy or green. There aren't any off flavours or problems from the haze, though I count the rapid finish as a bit of a flaw. As it was my first beer I was looking for some welcoming complexity. Salm isn't the place to seek that.

The evening closed out at my Vienna regular, and a candidate venue for sprinkling my ashes in the drip trays: 7 Stern. Here, the beer list also changes little, yet amazingly there are regulars I haven't yet reviewed. 7 Stern Märzen is one of them. It's interesting in a nerdy way because the menu says it's a Dreher-inspired Vienna lager, and all good students of the infallible Beer Judge Certification Programme know that a beer cannot be both a Märzen and a Vienna lager. You would think the owners would know the basics after 30 years of brewing in central Vienna. It's Märzen strength at 5.1% ABV, but dark too, resembling the smoky Bamberg ones in appearance. To taste, though, it's definitely a Vienna lager, packed with crunchy bourbon biscuit made up of cocoa powder and brown sugar, then adding in the fresh and leafy effects of the hops, all raw spinach and lamb's lettuce. Frankly, whichever of the two styles you're after, it meets the requirements of both, and is just very good, thoroughly unfussy, high quality drinking. This was a proper welcome to the city.

With time for another, I was back on bock. I don't think I realised that 7 Stern Bock was a pale one when I ordered it, but I was concerned when that's what arrived. These are generally too hot and harsh for me. Thankfully, this one wasn't like that. Golden and hazy, the flavour centres on a fluffy, super-fresh baguette breadiness, leaving the hops to a mere seasoning of background lawn clippings. That escalates in the finish, becoming a hint of tin, but at no point did any aspect become problematic for my bock-sceptic palate. It's simple, but packed with class, covering a lot of the ground one might expect from a Helles. Bock purists may complain about its understatedness; it suited me down to the cellar, however.

My new brewpub for the weekend -- throw a stone in Vienna and you'll hit one -- was Beaver Brewing, a small and pleasant little L-shaped bar at a busy traffic intersection. It offered a solid cross-section of craftonian styles, meaning I began with...

... black IPA, of course. I'm guessing they're hinting at Irishness with the name, Wandering Aengus, and a high proportion of the flavour was given over to stout-like roast. But it was also hopped with Citra, Mosaic, Sabro and Simcoe, and those Americans weren't here to play. Simcoe in particular brought its dankly resinous charms to the affair, resulting in a very powerful hop bitterness, which was needed to balance the dark grain. I use the word "balance" loosely here: there was nothing subtle or nuanced about it, just big roast and loud hops roaring along together. I loved it.

As a comedown I went for the 3.7% ABV gose next, called Passion. You won't be surprised to learn it contains passionfruit, as everything must now, even in Austria. The most interesting thing about this one was the deep amber colour. Beyond that it's very basic, with a simple syrupy sweetness and loaded with the taste of passionfruit concentrate. Nether the sourness nor the briney salt of proper gose feature at all. It's not even particularly refreshing, though is drinkable and inoffensive. I'm sure there's a fanbase for beers like this. What else explains how many of them there are around?

We get some quality punnage with Ides of Märzen, and it's a quality beer. I think I detected an certain American influence here: it's dark-coloured and heavy, in the way that American breweries tend to think Oktoberfestbier ought to be. Thankfully it lacks the cloying sweetness of those ones and instead is quite dry and woody in the aroma, leading on to lots of out-of-character roast and a strong bitterness from the Germanic hops. By way of complexity, there's a soft and fun strawberry element as well. All of it blends together well, creating a very süffig lager, chewy and satisfying, punching above its weight at only 5.5% ABV.

I'm not sure if having west coast IPA on the menu should be considered retro or cutting edge, but they had one, and it was delicious. This is Sunny Day, which is a light and frothy name for a seriously dense and funky hop bomb. The hop roll call includes Centennial, Citra, Idaho 7, Mosaic and Sabro. The subtler tropical ones get completely drowned out leaving us with bags of damp pine and dank nuggs. The only thing I can ding it on is the strength, and it's not really a criticism to say that something which tastes like 7% ABV or more is a mere 5.8%. I guess that gives it a certain lightness of touch and makes it easier drinking than it would otherwise be. Whatever the details, this is west coast as it should be.

My one for the road here, perhaps appropriately, was Loneliest Monk. This is a tripel, 8.4% ABV and clear and amber, making it darker than I thought tripel should be. The sweet candy aroma is all that really tells you how strong it is; I didn't get any alcoholic burn on tasting. Instead it's clean and dry, and frankly a bit boring, in the way a powerhouse Belgian-style ale shouldn't be. Maybe this is what happens when central European precision gets its hands on the spec. There's a touch of clove but that's about as complex as it gets. It's good that they have a nightcap-appropriate strong beer on the menu, but I would have preferred a more interesting one.

In general, Beaver Brewing has some lovely stuff on offer and is well worth a visit if you're in the area.

From the small breweries to the very big one. Heineken owns the Schwechater brewery out near the airport. A foundation date of 1632 is one of its claims to fame (you can do your own research on that one), the other being that this was the workplace of Anton Dreher, the inventor of Vienna lager. They've even pasted his face on a grain silo -- quite the honour. Today it's spread across quite a low-density set of non-descript buildings, where there once stood maltings, a cooperage and all the other fun old-timey brewery stuff. There's a small public restaurant and beer garden on site too.

So proud of Dreher's achievements were his heirs that they ceased brewing Vienna lager for decades, only bringing it back in 2016 when they noticed that beer nerds were paying attention to the history and had money to spend. It was accordingly revived, and packaged in an admittedly beautiful long-neck green glass bottle.

For all that it's a meaningful beer, Schwechater Wiener Lager is still a Heineken beer, and as such doesn't taste of a whole lot. It's a lovely chestnut red colour, mind, yet not heavy or strongly malt sweet. Instead it's dry and very clean, with only a hint of roast and tangy metal in the finish. While I had a lot of time for its honest unfussiness, and would be perfectly happy to chomp through a few of those bottles of an evening, there are much better Vienna lagers even in Vienna. Heineken's belated attempt to reclaim the style as their own is a bit cheeky, and not terribly well served by the product.

Not all the green bottles are used for that beer. There's also a similarly anachronistic-looking Schwechater Zwickl. This is an especially hazy example, a foggy yellow shade, conjuring unpleasant dreggy images. Thankfully it tastes much cleaner than it looks, though also has lots of rough and rustic character: crisp grain husk and dry sackcloth. A rich golden syrup element makes me think of decoction-mashed Czech lager, and there's an understated but nonetheless present tang of noble hops. Obviously they're trying to conjure an old fashioned vibe with this one, and I think it's more successful, the beer tasting less processed and sterile.

Over at the restaurant, my lunch began with Hopfenperle, the brewery's draught-only flagship pils. It's no lightweight at 5% ABV, and uses that to show off a beautiful creamy texture of the sort I associate most with the sublime Herren Pils from Bamberg's Keesmann. The flavour broadly hits all the style points of pilsner, with a bit of grassy hop and lots of dry crispness. It does so without any real enthusiasm, however, being another beer where the result is doubtless precision engineered, but not to be interesting or exciting. I would describe it as "vanilla" if brewers who ought to know better weren't putting actual vanilla in their beers.

Heineken's Austrian footprint includes several other large breweries which they inexplicably haven't closed yet, grouped together under the Brau Union brand. One is Wieselburg, in the town of the same name. As well as Wieselburger beer, it also has several under the Kaiser brand, including the interesting looking Kaiser Doppelmalz. A tablemate helpfully explained how malzbier is the region's dark and alcohol-free unfermented "beer", so doppelmalz means you get a modest amount of alcohol -- 4.7% ABV -- even though two times zero is zero. This is indeed a dark red-brown and smells of both sweetness and roast, like molasses or treacle. While it's sweet to taste, it is a proper beer, and doesn't taste saturated in unfermented sugar. The burnt edge helps dry it out, and gives it a certain bitterness. This isn't too far away from the Munich Dunkel style, though it's missing that one's hop character. On a menu of bland industrial lagers, this stood out as the most characterful option available. I could drink several.

Another brewery in the chain is Puntigamer, and from the discarded cans in the bins on the packing line at Schwechater, they had recently finished canning a batch of it. I liked the stately blue branding and ordered a pint of it when I saw it on draught in Café Bendl, a gorgeously unspoiled brown basement bar where it looks like the last smoker only just left and there's a clear and present danger of one of the customers striking up an accordian. The beer is rather less charming. Almost a week later I don't really remember how it tasted, but my notebook claims it's "like vomiting candyfloss". So, sweet and acidic, then. I have also deemed it clean and inoffensive, so make of that what you will. I drank two of them so it couldn't have been that bad.

That's a cheery note to wrap things up on for today. We'll go back to the independent brewers next, with another ragtag assortment of solidly traditional lagers and the sort of pseudo-American craft beer you get everywhere. And most of that will come from the same enormous Vienna brewery.

17 March 2024

I'd rather dye

Time was, we used to scoff at the green beer phenomenon that foreign types, Americans especially, seemed to indulge in on St Patrick's Day. You wouldn't get that sort of nonsense here, and especially not in the microbrewed sector. That came to an end about 15 years ago when Dublin's then top beer bar, the Bull & Castle, began squirting food colouring into half litre mugs of Blarney Blonde. These days, it seems that The White Hag have claimed the green beer genre to themselves, with a disturbing number of verdant novelties on their logs.

For 2024 it's The Serpent. We should give thanks that it's not one of their sticky syrupy jobs, even though it looks like one: a luminous, Fairy Liquid, shade of green. In fact it's a pretty simple pale ale of 4.5% ABV. Motueka and Nelson Sauvin hops have been used, and while they're not in there by the bucketload, there's enough to give the beer a distinctive background flavour of eucalyptus and pine. I don't know if this recipe exists without the colouring but it would be worth a go if not.

Here ends your special coverage of St Patrick's Day from Dublin. Nonsense of the regularly scheduled kind returns tomorrow.

15 March 2024

A reawakening

"Here at Galway Hooker, we are always innovating with new brews and new ideas." Well, no. Since the brewery became part of the Connacht Hospitality Group in 2022 they've stuck resolutely to their core range while furiously rebadging them as house beers for pubs around the country. But it looks like that might be changing, with two new special edition beers arriving last month.

Galway Girl is a bit of a route-one name for a beer from a Galway brewery, but maybe it'll help shift some units. It looks route-one too: a medium hazy orange, allowing a little more light through than the best of these do, suggesting it belongs with those examples made by breweries whose hearts aren't really in the style. Still, it smells bright, fresh and clean, of mandarin and satsuma. The flavour is not to style, and is delightful. Those fresh little orange citrus fellows are back, bringing a cleansing bitterness and a little resinous spice: not very east-coast but who cares? I got a tiny kick of dregginess in the finish, but it's barely noticeable, plus a not unwelcome spark of fried onion. The texture is light for 5.2% ABV, though not thin by any means. The brewery's ownership may have changed, but it seems they've kept the old Galway Hooker talent for balance and drinkability.

The companion piece is in a style much more to my taste: Baltic Porter. Wild Sea Swimmers is 7% ABV and does a reasonably good job of things, smelling bitter and herbal, all aniseed and warm red cabbage. I detected a very slight sourness too, but nothing off-putting. It unfolds in several different directions on tasting, incorporating soft and comforting cocoa, invigorating espresso, floral rosewater, treacle, toffee, cola and a greener vegetal bitterness than the aroma suggested. While it's as busy as it sounds, it's tasty too, the different aspects queuing politely and taking turns. I'm impressed by how close to continental Baltic porter it tastes, for a brewery that's never made one before. 

A sign of good things to come from the veteran Oranmore brewery. Shame about the 2007-vintage distressed lettering.

13 March 2024

Wild journey

Today's beer is a collaboration in the truest sense. It started life several years ago in Bagenalstown as O'Hara's Red Ale and was then shipped to Firestone Walker in California to be refermented in oak foeders with Brettanomyces and finished with late stage additions of thyme and honey. Then it came back across continental North America and the Atlantic Ocean, which I'd say makes some contribution to the €12 price tag on my 375ml bottle. It's called Fiáin.

The coppery colour of the base beer has survived everything it's been through, and the head stays put in a way that's unusual for wild fermented beer. It smells quite sharp, with the mild balsamic vinegar and tart cherry of a Flanders red ale. The texture is light, verging on thin, with little malt left behind by the Brett as it boosted the ABV to 6.5%. That's not a problem; it's not watery, and there's a pleasantly clean and refreshing sourness right at the front, not quite as full-on as with a geuze but subtly oaked in a similar way. That would be enough to make it a decent beer, but towards the end there's a bonus contribution of real thyme, still tasting bright and fresh after almost three years in the bottle. That flashes briefly, leaving the Brettanomyces to end proceedings with a peach or melon gumminess.

I don't know that it's a €12 beer exactly -- you can get 75cl bottles of beers as good and better for only a little extra -- but it's extremely well made, and has held up beautifully in its time abandoned on the shelves of the Mace on the South Circular Road. There's still some there if you want to try it.

11 March 2024

Pick and Mikks

It's a source of some bemusement to me how the breweries and beer brands which were bold and exciting, (if never actually revolutionary) a decade and more ago have become part of the mainstream, when they survived. I barely notice the wares from BrewDog, Stone and Mikkeller in the off licence fridges now. I see it as broadly a positive thing that they became so commonplace; that flavour-first beer is now easily available. It's just, as I say, bemusing that any sense of thrill or intrigue is completely gone. In fact, it was not boldness but the charming retro packaging of these two lagers that caught my attention. I have never liked the Keith Shore artwork for Mikkeller and here it's minimised, giving prominence instead to stolid, commonsense, pastiche Victoriana. You know where you are with a roundel.

Ice Cold Pilsner is where we start, the name and 4.5% ABV suggesting something pale, clear and possibly passed through a Clydesdale. In fact it's very hazy, dark yellow under a rocky head resulting from some messily overenthusiastic carbonation. The aroma isn't classic pils either, being lemony in a very New World way. The fizz had settled by the time I took my first sip, so while it does have a busy prickle, it's not at the expense of the flavour. There's a certain amount of the noble-hop grassy bitterness that pilsner is supposed to have, but it's an easily-missed background element, behind a citrus kick that's by turns sweet (Club Orange; Orangina) and sharp (thick-shred marmalade; Angostura Bitters). It's a bright and jolly affair, and has enough of the pilsner character about it that I can forgive its meanderings. It did leave me wanting the crystal-clear pilsner I had been expecting, however.

Ice Cold seems to come twinned with a Vienna lager, 5.6% ABV, which has similar branding. And a similar name too: Iskold. It's a bit muddy looking in the glass: red like Vienna lager should be, but the murk is not a good fit. The crisper and roastier side of the style spectrum is well represented here: lots of wholegrain toast and crisp malt kernels. The high gravity makes its mark with a thick and treacly body, and that's balanced against a very vegetal tang of tender green cabbage and cool celery: noble hops at their subtle best. Like the beer above, it's nice, but doesn't have the style points quite where they should be. The best Vienna lagers have a cleanness and a precision which this, presumably, Belgian-brewed craft take doesn't show. A polite round of applause and, while I wish it success, I hope it doesn't become anyone's idea of what Vienna lager should be.

For dessert, a taster courtesy of Simon, voted Most Likely To Have A Bottle of Imperial Stout To Share by the barflies in UnderDog. It's called Vanilla Shake and is bourbon barrel-aged. Other Mikkeller Vanilla Shakes may exist; I don't keep track. It's a strange mix of sweet and dry: a powerful 13.4% ABV and heavily laden with milk chocolate, the effect doubtless accentuated by whatever vanilla extract they've added. And then the barrel kicks in. If it adds yet more vanilla, that gets lost in the general vanilla-y morass of the foretaste, but there's a sizeable dose of cork, port wine, and then a splintery dry-wood rasp. The two elements aren't complementary and neither is particularly enjoyable by itself. I daren't think what this costs to buy, but whatever they're asking isn't worth it.

Bemusement of a different kind, there. The hits keep coming at Mikkeller.

08 March 2024

UnorthoDOTs

2024 for DOT Brew's beers began with a tap takeover at UnderDog and three brand new offerings. 

A bold move to start: Micro Oak Fruit Thingy, reflecting the brewery's commitment to established beer styles and the perfection thereof. It's 2.4% ABV, which is brave, but suffers from no thinness, the sweet fruit refusing to ferment and giving it the necessary body. I thought I detected favourite DOT ingredient verjus at work here: that tangy lime-esque sourness, but Shane says it's too expensive, so instead it's simply grapes, hitting against whatever sour culture they've used. I got a hint of pink flavour too: spotting the raspberry and not being surprised to learn that there's strawberry too, and then and happy tannic dryness on the finish. That makes it deliciously drinkable and refreshing, aided by a light and almost cask-like sparkle. I spent a lot of time drinking and exploring a pint of it when really it's built for quaffing. We're off to a good start.

The next one is a base blend of pale lager and a light sour beer which is then aged in former white port barrels, and badged as BA White Port Blend when it comes out. The base is quite immaterial as the barrels are firmly in control of the taste, adding lots of smooth, old oak and the good kind of oxidation you get in white port and pale sherry. It's all a bit much at first, accentuated by the substantial 6.6% ABV. White port is an excellent aperitif but I would be inclined to save this beer for dessert. There's a little bonus sweetness in the finish with the arrival of concentrated red grape, more ruby port than white. Either way, I think you absolutely need to be a fan of port before considering this beer. I am, and rather enjoyed it as a result.

The next one is extreme even by DOT's regularly way-out standards. Almost all of The Chairman's Cut has been exported to Italy, saving the one 20 litre keg tapped up in UnderDog. The headline feature is that it's a 22% ABV barley wine so was being served in very small snifters. It's a murky russet colour and that alcohol is extremely apparent from the aroma, where I could almost feel my nose hairs singe on sniffing it. Among the barrels used for ageing it was peated whiskey, and for me that absolutely dominated proceedings. It smelled of real fried bacon and tasted of bacon flavouring at a remove, most specifically of Bacon Fries corn snacks, with the same sort of dry wheatiness underlying the savoury, meaty foretaste. The booze isn't as prominent as I had expected from the aroma and I class the whole thing as smooth, warm and mature rather than rough or hot. The small measure was plenty, however: the density and the intense peat suggest that it could gum up the palate very quickly. Fun for one, but not something I need to see in regular production.

So DOT is still doing things the uniquely DOT way. Expect more of the unusual, as usual.

06 March 2024

Go fish

Lough Gill features regularly on these pages. It's a brewery which turns out a lot of product, and one which appears to have an eye on the US as its target market. As such, it tends to go big: high-strength IPAs, barrel-aged imperial stouts and smoothie-like "pastry sours" feature prominently. Today, however, it's a change of tack, with two rather more sessionable beers, both appearing on draught at UnderDog recently.

The first is Horizon, a pale ale at 4.7% ABV. It looks like the straightforward proposition it is: a mostly-clear pale amber with only the slightest cast of haze. They describe it as a "California IPA" without elaborating on what they mean by that. One might be expecting piney hops in the west coast style but it goes for gentler peach and melon instead, suggesting to me that Mosaic or its ilk have been employed. The texture is as light as the sessionable ABV suggests but comes with a heavy dose of fizz which I found slowed my drinking down. This is simple and decent stuff, and will hopefully find its way to being a permanent offering in places that don't already have the likes of Little Fawn, Ambush or Scraggy Bay on tap.

I neglected to take a photo of the other beer, which is a shame because it looked well in the Lough Gill Willibecher pint glass. Black Wave is a stout, nitrogenated and 4.2% ABV so very much made for pub drinking, and as far as I know that's the only way it's available. It performs the task well, without doing anything too unusual, for good or ill. For the most part the flavour is dry with a medium level of roast, enough to satisfy a regular drinker of such stouts without causing problems for those that are wary of it. There's a countermelody of milk chocolate which gives it a character of its own, and then a herbal echo, suggesting spearmint freshness to me. That sounds odd but it fits the rest of the profile seamlessly and is barely noticeable unless you look for it. I would say that getting a beer like this into pubs is a very hard sell and I wish the brewery luck with it.

This new turn towards more accessible beers is a welcome one, so long as it doesn't interfere with the regular production of fancy cans. Either or both of the above would be a welcome addition to the line-up in a pub seeking to give mainstream drinkers quality options from a small independent Irish brewery.