Category: beer reviews

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beer reviews

Five a day: the wholesome vegetable beers of the Balkans

A small glass of still yellow beer on the counter of a bar.

How many times do you need to come across different vegetable beers before you start thinking it might be a regional style?

It’s debatable whether Romania counts as being in the Balkans. It certainly shares some culinary heritage with its neighbours to the south, however, including a fondness for roasted vegetable spreads. Red pepper is the most common base vegetable but tomatoes, aubergines and beans can also feature.

In Romania these spreads are called Zacuscă; in the former Yugoslavian countries it’s known as Ajvar or Pindjur; in Bulgaria it’s called Kyopolou.

Whatever they call it, you can be sure that if you go into a supermarket in any of these countries, you will see shelves filled with jars of various varieties of delicious red goop.

But our first encounter with Zacuscă in Romania was in a craft beer bar, not a supermarket. We were working our way through the twelve or so taps at Flow, a craft beer bar in Sibiu, Transylvania. When we got to Zacuscă by Timisoara-based brewery One-Two the barman warned us to have a taste before committing to a full measure.

At the time, we wrote in our weekly tasting notes on Patreon:

It’s allegedly a Gose, at 5%, and is named after a national dish of roast peppers and aubergine. It tasted incredible – which is a word that can go either way. It has a powerful red bell pepper flavour and yet was still undeniably beer. It’s like when that tzatziki sour broke our brains a few years ago. It might even be a possible beer of the year contender. We had a second, because we enjoyed the thrilling weirdness of it so much.

I was sufficiently enamoured that I read up about Zacuscă and went hunting for it in the supermarket the next day. I then ate it, or similar, for breakfast or lunch almost every day of the rest of the trip.

We’d assumed this was a one off oddity but the next example of this type of beer we came across was at the Lo/Hi bar in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. They had a Tomato Basil Gose from Czech brewery Zichovec. (Definitely not in the Balkans.)

A glass of red-orange beer with a head of white foam. There's a bottle of chilli sauce behind.
Zichovec Tomato Basil Gose.

I had to try it – both as it came, and with the optional dash of hot sauce proffered by the barman. The basil was ever so subtle, which is good, as I really don’t like an overly herbal beer. It tasted like a fairly standard pale ale with a dash of V8 canned vegetable juice in it – a favourite cornershop treat for me when I was in my early twenties.

The only problem with it was the 8% strength. On a hot day, after tramping around a strange city in the sun, you just want to neck it… and you really shouldn’t.

At the High Five Taproom in Sofia, Bulgaria, we got to try another offering from One Two, this time called Tomatina. Once again, they pulled off the magical trick of making a beer taste both like beer and like a sauce. The condition was really good, too, with an appealing foam and lots of life. Many Gose type beers with fruit or vegetables seem to end up a bit flat but this one avoided that trap, while maintaining the essence.

They’re really keen on salads in Bulgaria. As in, they’re sort of the national dish. Ray read this bit from Bulgarian novelist Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter out loud to me when he came across it:

In the late afternoon we had sat down in one of the little pubs along the shore, every last one of us writing, unmarried, and unpublished, at that pleasant age between twenty and twenty-five. The waiter could barely keep up, scribbling down our orders of brandy and salads…

Well, if salads are what people eat during boozy sessions in the pub why not brew beers inspired by them?

We drank Cucumber-Juniper Kisel Gose by Sofia Electric Brewing at the lovely Kanaal bar in Sofia. It was 3.5% and cloudy in appearance, with a heady aroma of fresh-cut produce. There was a pronounced wholesome wheatiness along with a refreshing whack of raw green cucumber. It wasn’t too sour, or too ‘soupy’, and definitely retained plenty of beer in its DNA.

We were starting to think that perhaps the sun and exotic climes had got to our tastebuds because we kept finding ourselves, to our surprise, declaring these beers to be delicious.

It was interesting, then, to have an example that didn’t work as well, and be reassured that we could still tell good from bad.

A small glass of very red beer with a faint scum of foam.
Docker Tomato Bastard Gose

In Belgrade, Serbia, we visited the Docker tap room and among other beers tried their 4.4% Tomato Bastard Gose. As the dreadful name might suggest, it wasn’t as subtle or accomplished as the other beers we’ve written about. It was reddish in colour, as if it had been dyed, and tasted more like a Bloody Mary than a beer.

Perhaps it’s a coincidence that we came across what felt like a lot of examples of a very niche subset of a very niche style in this part of the world.

Or perhaps we should start work on the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage application now.

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beer reviews

Two decades in pursuit of perfect pints of ESB

Two glasses of dark red brown beer on a pub table with a packet of bacon fries.

At a Fuller’s pub in West London on Friday night we drank perfect ESB – one of life’s greatest pleasures.

Despite takeovers (Fuller’s is part of Asahi these days) there’s a definite romance about its beers.

When we first started to take a serious interest in beer, back in the mid noughties, ESB had a reputation as a big, important beer.

It was strong and expensive.

And it was served, most of the time, in a chunky chalice that said: “This is a pint that demands your full attention.”

It was drunk by old boys in big coats – men who knew what was what, and who was who, and could handle the booze.

We drank it in The Jugged Hare on Vauxhall Bridge Road or The Sanctuary in Westminster, both of which were handy for our respective offices.

We drank it at The Plough in Walthamstow, East London – a pub that no longer exists.

And we drank it in beautiful pubs like The Red Lion in Piccadilly, where ornate mirrors echoed the jewel-like details of its elaborate drinking vessel.

With practice, we learned to know what good ESB tastes like – and bad.

At its worst, ESB can be like chewy, vegetal pond water. In pubs where nobody drinks it, neglected and unloved, it loses its sparkle.

And unfortunately, because it’s strong, and old fashioned, it is often neglected.

It’s neither session beer nor the kind of ‘craft beer’ that people expect at that ABV these days.

Frankly, we’re surprised it’s still being brewed, 50-odd years being a good run for any particular British ale.

As it is, the chalice has gone, as has the handled mug that replaced it for a decade or so. Now, pints come in standard straight glasses – nice enough, but a sign of ESB’s loss of dignity.

Our perfect pints on Friday were served this way, as towers of autumnal mahogany topped with loose but steady foam.The aroma was of marzipan and fresh woodland sap.

And it tasted like the inevitability of one pint too many, like the Holy Grail, like the White Whale, like a miracle in progress, like being 25 again learning for the first time what beer could really be.

It was so good that it made Jess switch from Titanic Plum Porter. It was so good that she didn’t even resent the inevitable day after headache. It was so good that, even with the headache, she co-wrote a blog post about it.

The pub was nothing special. Fuller’s pubs are run by a an entirely separate company these days and, even in the West London heartlands, can feel a bit plastic. We’re not naming it because, frankly, there’s no guarantee the ESB will be this good on your visit.

Other breweries are making ESB these days.

We had a good one from Tiley’s recently, for example, and a really interesting version at the West London micropub/microbrewery The Owl and the Pussycat. The latter felt like a tribute to, and text about, the real thing.

Because, of course, Fuller’s remains the temperamental reference model.

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beer reviews

Four truly exciting beers in 10 days

Zero Degrees Italian pilsner, a golden beer in a stemmed glass with condensation on the sides.

It was inevitable that having written about beer feeling unexciting we’d encounter a run of beer-of-the-year contenders.

First there was an Italian Pilsner at Zero Degrees in Bristol.

Bearing in mind Italian Pilsner was basically a mythical entity to us at the start of this year, it struck us as absolutely convincing.

It was extremely bitter and desert dry despite its 6.4% ABV. It had the requisite white wine quality with suggestions of elderflower and lemon.

On a warm evening, after you’ve schlepped up Christmas steps, it’s exactly the glass of lager you dream of drinking.

OK, so beer can still excite us, we’re not dead yet, we said.

Then, a few days later, we found ourselves at The Pembury Tavern in Hackney, East London, and thought, sigh, we’d better try Five Points Gold, out of grim duty.

We love some Five Points beers (Railway Porter, the sadly defunct Pils, and Pale) but don’t get on with their Best Bitter. We find it muddy and confused. Gold, we assumed, would be like that, but more watery (it’s 3.4%) and less interesting.

But, blimey, it was good. We spent quite a bit of time thinking about Boddington’s and Young’s Ordinary as they were in the past – very pale, very bitter, mysteriously alluring.

That this beer, and only this beer, was pulled through a sparkler made us wonder if it might be a deliberate homage to the North.

We pulled out some of the old shopping basket descriptors: tangerine, peach, grape… But, really, the appeal was its clarity, cleanness, and balance. A real Swiss watch of a beer, perfectly put together.

Despite the presence of cask Railway Porter, a favourite of ours, we stuck to Gold, and left the pub several hours later with just the slightest buzz on.

Lost & Grounded Landbier with sunlight glowing behind it in a taproom building.

Last Friday, as we often do, we wandered to the Lost & Grounded taproom for a couple of pints between work and tea.

It feels like most weeks there’s some new lager substyle on offer and this time it was 10 Years On Land, a Landbier brewed in collaboration with The Royal Navy Volunteer pub.

Again, we ordered it because it was new, and we felt vaguely obliged, but it was love at first slurp.

For one thing, it proves that a beer can be hazy and still somehow taste clean – or maybe fresh is the better word.

It took us back to last autumn, trolling around Nuremberg and writing one tasting note after another that said something like: “Simple, but so fresh.”

There was a bit of lemon barley water about it, some grass and crunchy grain, and a decent amount of bitterness. At 4.4% it made us think, you know what? Dinner can wait.

Finally, on Saturday, we popped out to another local taproom because we’d heard a rumour that Moor Brewing Smoked Lager might be available.

It’s not quite as magical as Schlenkerla Helles but, on draught, was certainly fresher than the bottles of Schlenkerla we get in the UK.

It’s smokier than last year, or at least struck us that way, pushed just to the edge of too much. Or, in other words, just right.

Drinking it in the sun, surrounded by the hops that grow over the fences and street signs by the brewery, we thought, perhaps, we heard the echoes of an oompah band across the industrial estate.

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beer reviews France

Diverse ideas of sour beer in wine country

A glass of red-gold beer on a cafe table.

One thing that struck us in France and Italy is that sour beer is as popular as in the UK but with more range in what constitutes ‘a sour’.

In particular, we got the impression, based on limited data points, admittedly, that there’s more overlap with the flavours and character of wine.

When Jess ordered Odissea by Birrificio Menaresta in a craft beer bar in Milan (pictured above) she was warned about the sourness by the staff. Presumably they’ve had one too many customers complain. But it really wasn’t what we in the UK would think of as a sour beer at all. It was more like beer (golden) with a shot of red wine in it. It had fruit tannins rather than fruit acidity. Looking it up later we learned that it is brewed with “top quality Mantua Lambrusco must”.

On the opposite end of the wine spectrum was Viti Vini Vici by Brasserie Dunham. Dunham is a Canadian brewery but we drank it in Les Cuves de Fauve, Paris. We understand this to be a series of beers matured in grape barrels but didn’t get a note of the particular batch we had – 12, maybe, or 14? But it certainly used a white grape and, boy, did that come through in the flavour. It was also intensely sour, with a character very like beer from Cantillon.

At Birrificio Italiano Polock en rouge was described as a 4% sour fruit Grodziskie. This presented a challenging, almost vinegar sourness, reminiscent of Duchesse de Bourgogne. It’s interesting that DdB is such an iconic beer and yet there are so few clones. But perhaps there’s an obvious reason for this.

We did also find some sours that were like the ones we get at home, and resembled fruit juice or fizzy pop. For example Peace Connection Unitaire by Sainte Cru tasted like a fresh tropical juice drink from a can, as purchased at the local corner shop. Nothing like beer but a nice thing to drink after seven hours on the train from Milan to Paris.

In contrast, Yoyo by Effet Papillon, at La Binouze in Paris, was described as a mango and redcurrant sour, but really wasn’t especially sour, or even sweet. There was a very subtle fruitiness but this suggested papaya or guava, and was barely there. It also had a hefty body, a proper head, and a good bitter aftertaste, all of which are quite unusual in our experience of sours.

Then there was also some playing around with sour notes in beer styles not badged as sour. For example, Blue Edith by La Debauche was a salted raspberry stout, where the raspberry aroma was noticeable but the flavour was extremely subtle. Raspberry often gets lost in beers; here, it added a pleasing layer of complexity.

And finally, we’ve been talking about wine influences in beer, but what about beer influences in wine? We took the opportunity in Italy to visit a few wine bars. We absolutely do not want to “get into” wine, because we already overthink beer and want to keep wine just for fun.

But we did find ourselves intrigued by Mare d’Inverno, a natural wine refermented in the bottle which therefore came with a little fizz and a small head. Fizzy reds are not unusual in that part of the world but it was interesting how funky this tasted. Our tasting notes make it sound more like an imperial stout: tobacco, leather, cocoa…

When we wrote Brew Britannia in 2012-14 the idea of hybrid beer-wine-cider struck us especially interesting. It’s never quite become A Thing – beer drinkers want beer, wine drinkers want wine – but we still wonder if there’s potential here.

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beer reviews

(A version of) Kelham Island Pale Rider lives

The pump clip for Pale Rider with MADE IN SHEFFIELD.

Sheffield’s Kelham Island brewery is important. Last year, it looked as if it was going to disappear, until it was saved, and the Pale Rider is riding again.

For two weekends in a row, we’ve been able to find Pale Rider on cask at The Llandoger Trow in central Bristol. And drinking it has made us think about it.

The press release about the saving of the brewery was light on practical detail. A few months on, the story seems to be that it’s being brewed by Thornbridge, at Thornbridge, in Derbyshire.

The pump-clip doesn’t say that, though. In fact, it states very clearly MADE IN SHEFFIELD. There’s a little local consternation about this fact, if our social media replies are anything to go by.

But Thornbridge is a Sheffield brewery at heart, despite its location, and Kelham Island and Thornbridge were always tangled up with each other.

Digging through the notes of our interview with Thornbridge’s Simon Webster back in 2013, for Brew Britannia, we find this:

In August 2004, Kelham Island Pale Rider won the Champion Beer of Britain. We started brewing in October 2004 and, at first, we were helping Dave with the sudden demand for his beer. We were brewing once a week for Kelham Island, which was more often than we were brewing our own!

So this version of Pale Rider is perfectly authentic in its own way.

Here are some tasting notes on Pale Rider 2023: crisp, clean, classic 1990s citrus hop flavours; plus a certain round peachiness that comes with being 5.2% rather than 4 point something.

Everything we remember, in short, from drinking it frequently in and around Sheffield more than a decade ago, and on rare occasions since.

You can see how a beer like this won Champion Beer of Britain. You can see why Michael Jackson listed in his 500 Great Beers. You can certainly see how it played a part in spawning an entire sub-style – pale’n’hoppy, if you like, or the ‘juicy banger’.

But perhaps there’s a bit of Thornbridge there too, now? Maybe it’s even a bit better than when we last tasted it, in 2018, or at least more to our taste.

Clean and peachy. Those are two words we associate with Thornbridge beers.

But perhaps all we have to do is think of Thornbridge, or see the name in the small print, and those qualities pop into our heads.

If so, good for Thornbridge. That’s a good, powerful brand, that.

Now, let’s hope that either production moves back to Sheffield, maintaining the current high quality, or that ‘Brewed by Thornbridge in Derbyshire’ pops up on the pump-clip.

We don’t want a localised version of The Soul of Madrid, do we?