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beer reviews France

Diverse ideas of sour beer in wine country

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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France pubs

It is possible to have fun drinking beer in Paris

In the past, we’ve struggled to enjoy drinking beer in Paris, but this time it’s worked out well, and we found some great places.

There’s some disconnect between British and French manners that can make hospitality experiences challenging.

That’s one reason we haven’t been there for a while. Not avoiding it, exactly, but not prioritising a return visit either.

And, look, Brussels is just over there!

This time, though, on our way back from Italy, we scheduled a few nights there and tried again, applying things we’ve learned over the past couple of decades.

The industrial interior of Fauve Paris with concrete bar, metal fixtures and a small brewery in the background.
FauveParis.

Say hello when you enter a bar or cafe

This sometimes happens in the UK but mostly in smaller establishments.

You wouldn’t cut towards the bar to greet the staff in a branch of Wetherspoon, though, before finding a table.

In France, we’ve found, people will do exactly that, effectively announcing their arrival, and getting (quiet, possibly unspoken) permission to take a seat.

This is true (we think) even in craft beer bars where service may be at the bar, and there’s loads of English being spoken and on signs. It might not feel like it but you are still in France.

Categories
Beer history Belgium France london News pubs

News, Nuggets & Longreads for 2 June 2018: Flanders, Erith, Easterly Road

Here’s everything that grabbed our attention in writing about beer and pubs in the past week, from D&D to WWI.

First, a great story by Liam Barnes that just missed the cut off for last week’s round-up, about the part pubs and bars are playing in the resurgence of Dungeons & Dragons:

On first glance this branch of BrewDog in Nottingham might seem like your typical hipster hangout, but one thing gives it a slightly different air: numerous hand-drawn maps, some character sheets, and voluminous bags of 20-sided dice…. It’s the bar’s monthly tabletop gaming night – and regulars love it…. “I think the escapism is the best bit,” says 27-year-old gamer Hannah Yeates. “For a few hours you can become a completely different person living a completely different life, making decisions you’d never make and forgetting what’s happening in the real world…. It’s liberating.”


German troops sharing beer during World War I.

For All About Beer Christopher Barnes has written a long, detailed, heavily illustrated account of how World War I affected French and Belgian breweries:

The monks of Westmalle and Achel were forced to flee to The Netherlands. The Belgians, in their defense of Antwerp, destroyed a tower at Westmalle to prevent it being used as an observation post by the approaching Germans. Achel was occupied by the Belgians and shelled by the Germans until they were able to solidify their hold on Belgium. To keep citizens from going back and forth over the border with The Netherlands, the Germans erected an electrified fence along the border. Since Achel straddles the border of The Netherlands and Belgium, the fence bisected the abbey’s lands. When the call went out from the German War Department, the monks of Achel were able to sadly watch as their brewery was dismantled. No beer was brewed at Achel until 2001.

Categories
France

Artyfacts from the Nyneties #5: Sainsbury’s Bière de Garde, 1991

Sainsbury's Biere de Garde.

The image above comes from the Sainsbury’s supermarket in-house magazine for November 1991 and is a great reminder that interesting beer didn’t arrive in Britain in 2010.

Here’s the text that accompanied the product shot under the groansome headline THE BEER WORTH GUARDING:

The new Sainsbury’s Biere de Garde derives its name from the traditional brewing metiiods used at tlie brewery in Benifontaine, in the Nord-pas de Calais region of France. This strong beer, which is made with seven malts, spends six weeks ‘kept’ in special chilled tanks in a locked Garde room while top fermentation takes place. Hence Biere de Garde – ‘kept’ beer.

The design of the bottle, and the label, is a striking blend of the modern and traditional, and the amber beer is, in the words of the buyer: ‘robust, delivering a rich bouquet and an intense full, rounded flavour.’

Biere de Garde is available in 123 stores at £1.79.

Retro Sainsbury’s branding is very cool right now — some of it has aged rather wonderfully — and this Biere de Garde isn’t bad at all.

You can read the whole issue as a PDF via the JS Journal Online pages at the Sainsbury’s Archive, and there’s more on the arrival of ‘world beer’ in Britain in Brew Britannia, especially on pages 106 to 111.

Categories
France News

News, Nuggets & Longreads 10 September 2016: Keith’s, Kwak and Kveik

Here’s the best of the beer- and pub-related writing that’s caught our attention in the last week, from Canadian IPA to sour celebrity-endorsed Guinness.

Illustration: Biere de Garde text on weathered wood.

Joe Tindall at The Fatal Glass of Beer has been considering the relatively unfashionable Biére de garde style and especially British-brewed takes on it:

Biéres de garde are often grouped with saisons under the banner of ‘farmhouse ales’… [but] whilst the saison booms, its French cousin generates far less interest. This is understandable, in a way — if the dry, peppery quality of a saison in the Dupont vein invites dry hopping, mixed fermentation and other ‘crafty’ goings on, the soft, sweet, malty character of many biéres de garde hardly screams experimentation.


Yeast samples in jars.

Lars Marius Garshol summarises highly technical lab analysis of the various Kveik yeast strains he has collected around Scandinavia and the Baltic region:

[These] yeasts are extremely diverse, and that the yeasts don’t cluster by what region they came from. A Finnish yeast sits in between the Lithuanian ones, and some Lithuanian ones are closer to some Norwegian ones than to the others. Even within Norway the geographical relationships don’t hold. Stranda, furthest north, is the most similar to a yeast from Voss, furthest south.


Bottles of Alexander Keith's 'Fundy'.

Londoner Rebecca Pate of Brewing East has made a trip back to her native Canada which she finds herself viewing through a beery prism:

When I was a student at the University of King’s College in Halifax, we happily cradled sloshing pitchers of Alexander Keith’s IPA without a thought of hop characteristics in our heads… In Halifax, you can’t go far without having a Keith’s thrust upon you- it’s the province’s favourite sup and was heavily marketed under the slogan ‘those who like it, like it a lot’ throughout the summit of its popularity in the 90s.