Sassanachs!

I have no idea what's in these glasses

Even though it has an on-site brewery and is a staunch supporter of local beer, the Hanging Bat beer café in Edinburgh can generally be relied on for a selection of English beers, especially from the more interesting and progressive breweries south of the border. And the readily available third-pint measures means ticking one's way through them is disturbingly easy. So...

A burgundy-aged version of The Kernel's Table Beer? Gimme. Bière de Table is a stonking 4.5% ABV and a very pale shade of yellow. There's little sign of wine or wood in the flavour, this highly attenuated beer being light, cold, clean and very refreshing. There's a very mild sourness but it barely impacted on the rich succulent Hanging Bat pulled pork. There was similar refreshment power in Rooster's Fort Smith: a lovely light lemony zip from the 5% ABV golden ale.

On the dark beer front, I found Henley Dark porter a bit sickly. The summer fruit aroma is enticing but the big milk chocolate gets quite cloying, even when only drinking a third of it. Railway Porter by London's Five Points is an unctuous coffee-laden affair with lots of oiliness and a strong liquorice bitterness. If you're in the mood for a coffee flavoured beer, this will keep you happy but it's not going to be for everyone. Best of the lot was the Dunkel Bock by Harbour Brewing, a long way from home in Cornwall. It's the appropriate shade of red-brown and with an unfussy mix of chocolate, coffee and bourbon biscuit, but then there's also a beautiful fresh green-hop nose which puts it ahead of any German version of the style I've ever tasted. Beautifully drinkable and one I'd be happy to have a larger measure of.

Evolver, probably

And IPAs? The 'Bat's got 'em. The nearest thing to ordinary was The Devil <3s Cascade by Summerwine, a big and sticky 7.2%-er, dark orange and almost headless. The unctuous candy malts are well balanced by a similarly oily resinous hop character, producing a peachy aroma followed by a more serious bitter pine flavour. Bit of a knife-and-fork job, but fun in small measures. Siren's Das Soundwave was the lightest of the bunch, a German-hopped IPA of 5.6% ABV, greenish gold in colour with a zingy orange sherbet aroma. There's a lot of heavy hop dank in the flavour and it leaves with a mouth-watering mandarin flourish. Overall, extremely drinkable yet marvellously complex. The outlier was Evolver from the Wild Beer Co. and I almost didn't order it. The description marks it as a brett IPA and I wondered who in their right minds would want something like that? Why soil the lovely fresh taste of hops with the dirty funk of brettanomyces yeast? I'm glad I ran out of options and had one before I left because it was gorgeous: soft peach and juicy mandarin to the fore, only funked up a little by some well-mannered brett. It's a beautiful blend of what the two elements bring to a beer, reminiscent of fresh Orval only with brighter, more exciting hops.

I returned to the Hanging Bat a couple of days later on a Sunday afternoon, hoping to catch a beer or two from the in-house brewery. But there was none of that, the blackboard was looking a little bare, and the place was loud and packed, so I nipped round the corner to the altogether more civilised Blue Blazer. No stuffy old-man beer here, however: I opted for 2014, a black IPA from Arbor Ales. It's 7% ABV and so densely black I could feel it draining colour from the pints on neighbouring tables. You get a big hop burn from the first pull: pine, mostly, but with some flowery perfume, a pinch of gunpowder and a generous helping of boiled cabbage. Light relief is provided by a squirt of grapefruit zest, but mostly this is a very serious beer. The dark malts and heavy texture lend a tarry burnt flavour, with a tiny hint of bitter dark chocolate peeping through the seventeen other kinds of bitterness it offers. Amazing stuff, and very good value, since it takes ages to drink.

I mentioned previously that there was a themed range of beers at the Bow Bar for Anzac Day. England was represented by Bitter Kiwi from Bristol Brewing. This is one of the best exhibition beers for Nelson Sauvin I've ever encountered. The aroma is beautifully flinty, like ultra-dry Sauvingnon Blanc, with a little bit of added peach nectar, and this theme continues in the flavour: dry white grape, some lychee and succulent sweet peach. Not bitter at all in fact, and not even a trace of cat piss, which is a win.

A bottle of Hobsons Kiss Me Now had found its way north with a family member. This claims to be a stout but its soft plumminess made me think more of warming winter ale, even at just 4.3% ABV. Keeping it sessionable, I found Cullercoats Lovely Nelly on cask, an oddly tart dark gold ale with strange but pleasant strawberry notes. Brewed as a lifeboat fundraiser, it's ironically very sinkable. This was back at the Cask & Barrel on Broughton Street where they also had Broughton Street Domestic Ale on. Never pass up the house beer is one of my rules. Turns out this is a re-badging of Gladiator Bitter, brewed by Hadrian and Border. First impressions are of an unexciting 3.9% ABV brown bitter: biscuity, shading towards twigginess, but a couple of sips in I got a sudden jolt of summer fruit: redcurrants and raspberries. A session bitter deserving of a second chance, then.

Last cask ale of the trip was at the airport where the Wetherspoon had the tail end of their latest international beer festival available in the form of Saint Archer Pale Ale, ostensibly from Saint Archer in San Diego but actually brewed at Banks's in Wolverhampton. It's good stuff: a healthy layer of dank hops livened by some lighter peachy notes and set on a light easy-going golden malt base. The perfect gulp-and-go airport beer in fact.

Judging from this lot, the Edinburgers are picky about which English beers they let in, and reap the rewards it brings.

Turning sour

The beers at Borefts, like many of the attendees, offered a generous insight into what's currently in fashion. It seems to be all about the sour these days, a modern twist on styles developed before ingredients were first-rate and hygiene was everything it is now. If you don't have some sort of hacked gose in the line-up you may as well be brewing... er... no: there isn't really a style that's too unhip to be ever resurrected ironically, is there? Anyway, Italian brewery Toccalmatto had a gose, made with only the poshest of salt, unspecified red berries, and called Salty Angel. It's a cloudy pinkish colour, looking and smelling for all the world like a Bellini. Lots of clean mineral dryness overlaid with fresh fruit and just a gentle seaside spray of salt in the finish. A bit lacking in flavour, perhaps, but nicely refreshing and quite quaffable at just 4.3% ABV. Not that it's the sort of thing one would expect to arrive in pints.

While we're on nearly-extinct German beerstyles, Thornbridge brought a Berliner Weisse, a straight-up unenhanced one at 3.5% ABV and a sickly pale hazy yellow in colour. The grainy aroma is spot on but any sourness is pretty much absent, leaving it clean, crisp and lightly lemony. Simple and pleasant. For proper Thornbridge sourness there was Sour Brown, which does exactly what it says on the label: light vinegar, some balsam spicing, and a touch of coffee. It has a lot in common with Belgian oud bruin though I think HP Sauce may also be a distant cousin.

Just edging into sour territory is The Kernel's Bière de Table: a 4.6% ABV pale yellow saison with very dry, almost crunchy, grains and a refreshing hint of citrus. A mild vinegar undertone qualifies it for this post while also enhancing its cleansing refreshment power.

A few were more funky than sour, showing clear signs of brettanomyces action. Smonk by Struise was probably the loudest example of this: masses of earthy, woody, organic flavours but lightened nicely by some cherry and smoke, all wrapped up in a 7% ABV red-brown package. Upping the strength and enhancing the hops, there was Laugar's Laino Basatia at 9% ABV where the barnyard brett sits next to resiny hops and there's lots of lovely incense spicing and fresh herbs. Mikkeller's It's Alive appears to be based on a fairly straightforward honey-coloured brett ale but the edition I tried was aged with mangoes in a chardonnay barrel which added a lovely fresh grape juiciness to the horseblanket funk.

A couple of beers seemed to be going after the Flemish red flavour profile: one my favourites. Alvinne's Foederbier is a cheery bright orange, though cloudy with no head to speak of. It's mildly tart with some red berries and just a kiss of old oak. Very drinkable and refreshing. De Molen upped the ante, as is their wont, with Zure Kersen Bom (above left), a 6.2% ABV blood red beer featuring sharp, jangling wood and vinegar, weighted with balsamic resin. It sounds severe but there's also a vast quantity of very sweet ripe cherries added for balance and adding a wonderful complexity.

That brings us to the end of the sour set. We'll have something more orthodox tomorrow.