Czech Coors says hop

I happened across some Žatec lager in Redmond's the other week. It is, it seems, the genuine article: brewed in the brewery of the same name in the town of the same name with the hop of the same name (though known more commonly in English as Saaz). But unlike the usual imported pils, the label copy is all in English: if the good citizens of Žatec get to see any of it, it won't have this label on. The small print says it's imported by Coors UK, seemingly intended exclusively for the British market. Could be it's then independently imported to Ireland, or else it's part of the new and growing Coors operation here.
(pssst, Coors Ireland: any chance you could squeeze a case or two of White Shield onto the truck next to the Carling and Caffrey's? Just asking.)

The large print on the label, after spraffing on typically about pure this and finest that, claims the beer is brewed "with no additives or artificial carbonation". What?! Are they actually claiming that this clear golden pils is bottle conditioned? Or was somebody just pasting from the Big Book of Bland Beer Label Text that all the macros use. I dunno. It's odd either way.

I suppose I should say something about the beer, then. It's nice. Mostly dry and slightly bitter on the finish -- certainly not loaded with grassy Saaz as the name might imply. It's light and sessionable, though I'm glad it came out of my beer fridge at 10°C as any colder and the flavour would have vanished completely.

In short it's a decent drinking pils, one step above cooking lager, but not a huge one. You'd be better off with something cheap where the can has text in twelve languages.

A moment of clarity

Boak and Bailey's quest for the origins of beer obsession lead me to revisit a story I touched upon three Sessions ago.

Two days after I turned 19 I moved to Dublin. Guinness, of course, was what one drank in the capital, and I took to that without complaint, getting to know the pubs around town that had a reputation for a good pint. As my first year in college ended I was in no rush to leave city life so rented a flat in Temple Bar and got a job at a nearby pub, one very conscientious about the quality of its Guinness, of course.

I was a terrible barman and hated every minute at the taps. I loved the quiet afternoons just moving glassware around, and treasured evenings in the cellar, shifting and stacking kegs. Serving people drink was a pain, and cleaning up afterwards even more so. The pub was jointly-owned by three very hands-on managers. The youngest was quite the bon viveur and made a point of visiting every new restaurant and pub as soon as it opened, and would report back to his co-managers about what the competition was up to.

After closing time one evening I was cleaning up and making my usual heavy work of it. The owner I mentioned, who had been on an evening off, strolled in under the shutters, poured himself a pint of Bud and plonked himself down on a barstool.

"Went to that new place round on Parliament Street," he told his colleague on duty, "and get this, they're making their own beer. In the pub. And they don't even sell Guinness."

I remember distinctly, over in the corner, I stopped dead with my mop. They do what?!

It's no exaggeration to say I felt a personal paradigm shift right there. The notion that beer could be made anywhere other than in a big factory by anyone other than a multinational corporation staggered me. At the first opportunity I headed down to this "Porter House" to find out what they were up to. Sure enough, there was no Guinness. The centre of Dublin, on the well-worn tourist path between Trinity College and St James's Gate, and no Guinness. Not only that, but a whole soapbox piece on the back of the menu on how our beloved national brands had steadily killed off the variety that once existed in the Irish beer market, and how, once they controlled the market, they set about dumbing-down their beer to meet the needs of their accountants and shareholders. I was sold before I ever ordered my first pint of novelty beer.

That summer I dragged everyone I knew to the Porter House to show them what a pub could be like in this brave new world. Few took to it, though I tell myself it's because so many of my friends were cider-drinking students on whom craft beer was utterly wasted. My immediate first love was Porter House Red. This was the mid-1990s and the nitro-red craze was in full swing, led by Caffrey's but followed swiftly by Guinness's own Kilkenny. I'm a little surprised that PH Red is still available, given that the style has long gone out of fashion -- Kilkenny is pitched squarely at tourists and Caffrey's is no longer made or sold in Ireland. Yet this beer and another craft clone of the same vintage -- Messrs Maguire Rusty -- are still going strong. Within a few weeks of my first visit, the Porter House had added Wrassler's XXXX stout to the line-up. It was the boldest tasting beer in the country, strong and uncompromising, and I was hooked immediately.

In the following years I began to travel and discovered that pubs with in-house breweries could be found all over the world. It became a habit that, as part of my trip planning, I'd check BeerMe and European Beer Guide for the presence of brewpubs at the destination. This inevitably led to going out of the way to find microbreweries, and then, also inevitably, making trips just for beer. After doing that for a while I became more interested in getting good beer at home -- life's too short to drink bad beer, I reasoned. Or to drink each bad one more than once, at any rate.

But how do I avoid drinking a bad beer twice, or recognise a good beer the second time it comes my way? A bit over three years ago I figured I should start writing this all down. And so here we are. As every quantum theorist knows, observing anything changes its nature. My interactions with beer have certainly changed by being written down here, and reading all the other great beer blogs out there just makes me thirstier.

In the meantime I kind of drifted away from the Porterhouse (as it renamed itself). It gets very crowded and loud, the service is lousy and that initial draw -- beer brewed on the premises -- came to an end as the company outgrew its brewery and moved production to a new facility in the suburbs. I'll still go back for specials and seasonals, but I've mostly lost touch with the place.

So last weekend I went back, to my old seat by the window, for a couple of pints of nostalgia. Porterhouse Red is much bitterer than I remember it. In my head it's loaded with slabs of toffee flavour; in reality there's a good solid dose of galena hops in the driving seat. It's still very refreshing, though I don't know how much of that is down to the temperature and nitrogenation. Interesting without being challenging -- what a good session beer should be. But not what I was expecting.

Wrassler's hasn't changed, however. After all these years it still has the power to shock: intensely bitter tobacco notes kick in first, smoothed out by an underlying and lasting chocolate flavour, and based on a thumping great dense body. No amount of nitro can tame this one, and I'm very minded to re-establish more frequent contact. The newest branch of the Porterhouse is considerably more civilised than its parent. If we get a summer this year I might just make an appointment with some Wrassler's in its beer garden on a regular basis. We have some catching up to do.

Parting shots

I spent my last evening in Cyprus milling around on my own in Larnaca. In amongst the blaring seafront bars competing with each other for the cheapest Keo, and sandwiched between the golden arches and an ersatz-Scandinavian ice-cream chain, is a bar/restaurant called The Brewery, decked out with breweriana and decommissioned brewing kit with four house beers on tap.

It's not a microbrewery, however, and gives no indications (in English, at least) of the beers' origins. I have my suspicions, though, on which more later. What they're definitely not doing is competing on price with the neighbours: 33cl of each beer costs at least €5 a throw. Should you be so inclined, you can get them in measures up to three litres in a table tap, and there are also two self-service bars which can be reserved in a designated area. The non-draught selection is largely canned rubbish like John Smith's, Caffrey's and Guinness, plus bottled lagers like Warsteiner, Sol and Bud. From what I saw, none of the beers is as popular as the iced coffee drinks and fruit cocktails which formed the vast majority of drinks sold.

The house beer that interested me most was their Dark Lager. This reminded me a lot of a Czech granát: good dry, roasted grain notes though with just a touch of sourness on the end. The addition of some nitrogen into the gas mix gives it a fluffy head more like a wheat beer.

I was expecting a wheat beer to be the base of the Cherry beer, but it really really tasted and felt like a lambic to me. It's sweet and very slightly syrupy but, tempered by the underlying hint of sourness, that isn't a problem. The result is balanced and pleasant; tasty and refreshing -- very reminiscent of some of Belgium's lighter krieks, like Mort Subite and Timmerman's. Though while the taste may be Belgian, the price is positively Norwegian, at €6 for a 25cl glass.

The commercial parallels continued with the Lager: a very pale clear yellow with none of the graininess I enjoy in standard microbrewed lager. Instead it has a very Germanic hops-malt balance and really could be any of a number of pale lagers from big German breweries who know how to make it properly. Could it be a rebadge? Could they all be rebadges, in fact?

With this in mind I finished the set with the Wheat beer. Greenish-yellow, lemon-perfume notes and some isoamyl under it all. If you'd told me it was Hoegaarden I'd have believed it without question. The only thing that stops me announcing that these are all simply macrobrews in disguise is the advertised strengths: 5.3% for the Dark Lager; 4.5% for the Cherry, 4.8% for the Lager and 5.3% for the Wheat. This, if truthful, doesn't tie in with any easily-grouped bunch of mass produced beers from, say, InBev. The mystery remains, and my preference for knowing where my beer comes from means that's not a good thing, especially at these prices.

The Brewery is loud, crowded, insanely dear and with poor service. It's still probably the best bar in Larnaca, however.

Feels good to be home.

Red and dead

As I mentioned, I had a particular aim in mind when I went looking for my first pint in England at the weekend, and it was to try the enigma that is Guinness Red. Diageo brew this in St James's Gate but export all of it to Britain where it is currently being trialled, primarily through the O'Neill's chain of franchise Oirish pubs. I was intrigued by the way it was being marketed, as a tweaked version of Guinness stout, utilising "lightly roasted" barley, rather than what it looks like: your standard nitrogenated Irish red, like Diageo's own Kilkenny or Coors's English-made Caffrey's brand.

The verdict? Well, it has a thicker, creamier head than any pint of Guinness I've met. It tastes of almost literally nothing. Guinness is pretty far from being the world's most flavoursome stout, but this dispenses with even the faintest trace of the dry roasted barley which sits shivering at the back of modern draught Guinness. What would happen at this point in an Irish red is the arrival of sweet, biscuit-like crystal malt flavours, with maybe a dusting of summer fruits, but no, there's none of that either. Just more empty space, and maybe just a hint of dryness at the end. A dry Irish red? Whoever thought of that one needs locking up.

Funnily enough, like Guinness Mid-Strength, Red does have all the texture characteristics of ordinary Guinness. If you've had your senses of taste and smell removed then you might even enjoy this one. Though since you probably work in product development for Diageo, you've doubtless already tried it.

Back to the original question, then, and it's not as clear-cut as I thought. The mouthfeel and the nearly-not-there dryness do suggest that this could be classed as a super-light stout, though a dreadful one. Alternatively, a dry take on the traditional Irish red is another valid perspective. I won't be lying awake thinking about it. The knowledge that this tasteless travesty is being shipped out of the country in its entirety will assure restful sleep.

How to classify a beer with no flavour. Have the BJCP thought about this one?

Vote red

It's been a tradition of mine that after voting I go to the local (whose doors I rarely darken) for a pint. Today is the first election day since this blog began and I'm using it to report on my pint of choice in said local (and Peter's Pub, which is the only other Dublin pub I regularly find it): Beamish Red. Beamish Stout is dreadful muck, but their nitro-red is rather better than the competition from Caffrey's, Kilkenny or Murphy's. Like all of them it's smooth past the point of blandness, but if you're paying close attention there's a faint kick of ripe strawberries at the end which makes the whole thing worthwhile. That, and the fact that my local charges a mere €3.40 a pint (up 40c from last election day, mind).

Beamish Red: Drink early, drink often

Med-iocre

Just back from the Catalan capital, where the beer roost is ruled by Damm, who have a large brewing facility near the airport. Estrella Damm is their plain red-label lager which has the malty weight typical of the region, and which I most associate with San Miguel, also made in Barcelona. Confusingly there's also Estrella Galicia which is made by Hijos De Rivera in La Coruña and tastes exactly the same. San Miguel themselves now make a German-style pilsner called 1516 which is lighter than ordinary San Miguel, being 4.2%. It's a bright golden colour, instead of the brown-gold hue of their basic lager and is sweeter and generally more German tasting. Lastly for the big guys, Moritz is another lager native to Barcelona. This is my favourite of the common lagers available -- a full 5.4% but very light, soft and fluffy. There's a slight bitter aftertaste, though not much else by way of flavour, but the texture makes up for that. If it's hot and you're sinking cold ones, go for the Moritz.

I was last in Barcelona a bit over four years ago and while there I visited La Cervesera Artesana, a pleasant little brewpub up in the Eixample. It was Saturday night but the place was deserted. I remember thinking "Bless them, it's a nice idea, but it looks like it's just not going to last in this town." I fully expected the place to close soon after. So I was very surprised when I did my research for this trip to find not only was it still there, but it now has a web site. I went along yesterday afternoon to sample the wares, finding it drinkerless once again. The most surprising thing is that, while everything is brewed in-house in full sight of the punters, all the brews are nitro kegged. There can't be many microbreweries who do this (for obvious reasons) and it's very strange to get a pint of local brew with three inches of tight foam at the top -- though it did prove useful when some of the local six-legged wildlife took an interest in my beer.

I had time for two "pints", each containing about 400ml of actual liquid. The Iberian Pale Ale bears some passing resemblance to real IPA, but is served totally cold and, coupled with the nitro head, is more reminiscent of Kilkenny or Caffrey's or one of that sort. It's pretty refreshing though, if you're after that cold lager experience with just a smidge more hops to it. Their Iberian Stout is an altogether better proposition, though again nitro-headed and served at arctic temperatures. I reckon they borrowed the Small Brewers' Guide to Good Stout from the local library (in Catalan, of course) because this has a smooth sweetness up front and a dry finish: almost everything a good basic stout should be.

La Cervesera Artesana is the reason my second-rate brewpub index is headed "Top Marks For Effort": it's not terribly impressive as a pub, their beer isn't brilliant, but by God they're trying and they're fiercely proud of what they do. That sort of dedication deserves credit.

Down near where Barcelona meets the Mediterranean is Cerveceria El Vaso De Oro -- a tiny neighboorhood café consisting of a long bar, some stools and very little else: the sort of joint for which the term "watering hole" was coined. It was jam-packed with locals being served platefuls of amazing food from an open kitchen and tall glasses of Rubia, the house märzen. Once again it's typically malty, though sweet and fairly flat. The result is something smooth, easy-drinking but chock full of flavour. Some more choice would be nice, but it's really not that sort of place and I respect that. Thanks, finally, to European Beer Guide without which I'd never have found the place.

Barcelona's beer may indeed be quite mediocre, but I had a great time finding that out.