Labels

tasting notes (39) brewing (35) beer review (26) yeast (16) hops (12) breweries (10) Beer Geek Night (9) malt (6) beer names (5) brewing gear (4) festival (2) MtG (1) games (1) macro (1)

donderdag 28 mei 2015

HoppySlosh Innovation: Leuven Innovation Beer Festival hits the ground running

Fate is a fickle bitch.

Ain't it just so?
One day you're running a brewery in the hinterlands of Brabant, the next your looking at its smouldering ruins while the devil shits hot coals down your spine.

In January 2015, a fire laid waste to the buildings in which Hof ten Dormaal housed its brewery. Even though most of the equipment was salvaged from the flames, a large part of the brewery's stock was lost. Things looked pretty bleak for the brewery, and its future looked as promising as a republican during the pre-election tour.
And slighty less cheerful.
A bitch she may be, but fickleness comes in forms not always unpleasant. Even as the ashes were still smouldering, the beer community reared up. Incentives were launched, crowdfundings initiated, and brewers the world over reached out to lend a hand.

Instead of rejoicing at their competitor's misfortune, brewers from around the globe came to their friend's rescue, and before the end of winter, the brewery's future was more or less secured. Flame and fire and a shitload of bad luck later, Hof ten Dormaal was still in business, and the display of compassionate camaraderie in the face of such misfortune was a sight for sore eyes in these seemingly callous times of selfish capitalist opportunism.

Long story short: in the wake of all that's happened, André decided to launch a festival. Tired of Belgium's somewhat sad reputation as the Land of Blonde, Dubbel and Tripel, he decided the theme of the festival was to be Innovation.
Hence, perhaps, the name.
As I have lamented about before, Belgium doesn't seem to be too keen on foreign beers, but will you just look at that list of attending breweries? 

BeerBert and I attended the last day of festival, in the stunning venue of Leuven's historical brew house De Hoorn. 
"You've got style" achievement unlocked.
The venue alone would be a reason to visit the festival all by itself, even if there was no actual beer present, but sometimes fate smiles on us, and we can have our cake and eat it too.

Because who would lie about cake?
But there was beer (*), and some of it was really quite innovative (°).

*) obviously. Wouldn't be much of a beer festival if there wasn't, right?
°) obviously. Wouldn't be much of an innovation beer festival if it wasn't, right?

We started things off with a visit to Siren Craft Brew's, stall. They embrace a brew philosophy which I've come to think of as the New Wave of British Brewing, which is somewhere in the middle between present-day contintental craft brewing and contemporary USA attitude. This translates to beers like the wonderfully refreshing Calypso, a Berliner weisse hopped with Comet and Simcoe. I remember having the Amarillo version earlier this year (°) but this iteration was decidedly more rounded and complete, blending the lactic sourness of the Berliner weisse with the American craft vibe of Simcoe and Comet. Deelish. 

°) Praise be unto Saint Arnoldus for specialty beer stores (De Caigny in this particular case). If it weren't for them, we'd never have proper foreign beer in Belgium at all.

Beerbert had the  7 Seas, a black IPA (*) with 7 C hops. 

Clever beer needs a clever name.


*) I know. It makes no sense until you drink one. 

From there on, we headed over to Goose Island. Yes, friends and neighbours, Goose Island showed up at a Belgian festival. I was sceptic about the obvious tie-in with InBev (*) but honestly, I was happy to see them.

*) Seriously. When you exit the Leuven train station and take a right, just walk donw the road for 5 minutes. Before you know it, you will find yourself inside InBev Citadel. It's like mini-Europe with Leffe posters plastered all over it. Pretty weird, a craft beer festival in the middle of enemy territory.

BeerBert had their Sofie, which, despite being called a farmhouse ale, tasted more like an up-state wit. Loads of orange zest, with a faint lactic/wheaty zip in the back. Classy, but not my taste at all. I went for the Class of 1988, a complex beer with tonnes of oak and grape. 

Much much later, Goose Island brought forth their flagship brew in the form of the Bourbon County Brand Stout and its Vanilla Rye variant. The Constant Reader may recall my infatuation with both the 2011 edition and the Vanilla edition, but it saddens me to say that time has made me a difficult geek to please. I found the the BCBS 2015 and the Vanilla Rye both to be overly sweet. Syrupy brews, both bordering on liquid ice cream desserts. Oodles of flavour, yes, but the sweetness got the better of me very quickly. Festivals like this are a dream for beer geeks though, because they provide an opportunity to taste rare(°) brews which would otherwise remain unobtainable to them. In this case, quite a few visitors where possitively creaming themselves in aticipation to snatch a sample of BCBS, to the further glory of All Things Craft. Say what you will, but Belgium's just not kitted out for this kind of stout violence.

°) and sometimes pretty damn expensive.

Lunch then. 

Hell yeah.
De Hoorn hosts a pop-up restaurant where we were served a nice meal, which we washed down with some brews by De Molen, recommended  by John & John. BeerBert had the Cuvée#3, a blend of thisses and thats, aged in various barrels. I think my exact words, upon sniff ing the beer, were "Even if I never got to taste this, I'd still be happy knowing just how amazing it smells". It has that signature Molen-smell all over it: roast and coffee and chocolate and booze and leather and vanilla and lots and lots of other things all just screaming at you to be drank. Spectacular brew again, and empiric proof that you can't go wrong with De Molen's stouts. I went for Groot&Sterk, a beer which was described by various people as "that ham beer". A smoked barley wine with a spicy chili bite, this really was a lot like prosciutto in a glass. The fleur de sel was a nice touch as well, emphasising the meaty character of the beer, without turning into beery broth. Awesome, and well into innovation territory.

Think this, minus the actual meat.
Heading back inside, we bumped into Kjetil, the gentle viking and CEO of Norway's Nøgne ø brewery. Whilst sampling his outstanding Vic Secret IPA (gotta love those NZ hops) as well as the Aurora Australis (°), I goaded him into commenting in my homebrewed fenugreek porter.

°) Aurora has an amazing story behind it. Apparently, it is a Norwegian tradition to send alcoholic beverages across the globe in order to benefit from the temperature fluctations as they cross the equator. How much of this is yippy-talk I cannot say (how many Norwegian alcoholic beverages can you name?), but in Aurora's case, the beer (a Belgian-style quadrupel) is brewed in two locations. A batch is brewed in Grimstad, Norway, where Nøgne ø is located. The other is brewed in Beechworth, Australia, where friendly brewers Bridge Road are located. Kjetil racks his batch into whisky barrels and sends them to Australia, where it's bottled as Aurora Borealis. The guys at Bridge Road rack theirs into red wine barrels and ship to Norway where it gets bottles as Aurora Australis. Wonderfully complex and vinous, and another fine example of International Innovative Intoxication I mean Inventiveness.


Interludium : fenugreek & festivals

Really, there is no better way to get feedback on your own brews than by asking a brewer his opinion about it.
So every time I attend a festival, I make sure a haul a couple of bottles along with the express purpose of harrassing brewers and anyone interested until they voice their opinion. If they think it's shit, I'm counting on them telling me. And while the "It's shit and this is what's wrong with it" comments are invariably priceless in terms of learning and upping one's game, secretly of course, there's always that eager kid inside hoping for approval from the big guys.
So, pepper fenugreek porter this time, and a single bottle of Zwarte Madam with raspberry. For the heck of it.


Done Interluding

Kjetil seemed to genuinely appreciate my porter, which made me all fuzzy and glowy on the inside. Until (and I kid you not) he asked for seconds! Which made me all glowy and fuzzy on the outside as well! 
I was all, like, wiiiiiiiii!
John&John seemed to like it too, so I must be doing something right. 

Back to the actual attendees, whose limelight was in no danger of being eclipsed by yours truly's homebrews. 
We headed over to Tiny Rebel, where we sampled the vowel-less cwtch, a Welsh red IPA which I thought had a bit of lager-funk going on. I've said it before and I'll say it again: IPAs tend to not work well for me in a festival setting. There's only so much hoppiness I can objectively compare before my brain and palate seem to fuse into a single alpha-acid saturated lump of lupulin. I'm sure the cwtch would have fared better had I tried it earlier though, as it was a very decent brew. I got a taste of the Dirty Stop Out which was a solid smokey brew.

Stillwater Artisanal's Surround is a coffee-flavoured beer and delivers its coffee in spades. Reminded me a lot of cafe con hielo which I like having on hot spanish mornings whilst on vacation. 
Sidling over to Freigeist Bierkultur for quick primer to what's brewing in Germany of late, we got ourselves some Nosco's Café, another coffee infused brew which reminded me a bit of my own Yog-Shotoddy, which is both a good thing ("Hey this could have been brewed by me.") and a bad ("I'm not sure I'd want that particular brew to be on display at a festival"). 
Later on, I tried their Atlantis Gose, a beer which seems to drive home the fact that I am underwhelmed by most goses. This one was a mildly lactic, refreshing and uncomplicated brew. I can see myself using this as a reward for mowing the lawn: easy, quenching  and interesting without being complex.


Wenn ich meine Rasen gemähet hatte, möchte ich gerne eine Gose trincken bitte. 
Ja?

Heading out for more sun, I dragged out two brews by Foglie d'Erba. HopFelia is a an Americo-Italian IPA, hopped with USA hops and, surprisingly, Tettnanger in dryhops. Freewheelin is its DIPA counterpart, using pretty much the same ingredients but in a double version of the HopFelia.
Perhaps it's just me and festival-IPAs again, but I found myself a bit underwhelmed. There was a certain lingering undercurrent to both beers which I've started to associate with Italian IPAs, and which doesn't seem to agree with me.

Kees!  was there!
And he brought (among others) his intensely roasty Export Porter 1750. A robust, bitter, but very smooth brew which impressed me no end. The nutty flavours which I detected in the batch he brought to ACBF earlier this year were gone, and I think what Kees has produced now is pretty much as authentic a porter as we could hope to get without actually drowning an entire borough in it.

Horror, even without metric conversion.
Brekeriet were present, and I had their Rye Whiskey Sour which brought a big smile to my face. Daring to the point of being brash, the beer was assertively sour, with the rye and the whiskey bringing an smoky touch to the whole. The best weird sour I had that day. 

Time to head over to the award ceremony; walk this way please!

No, not that way.

Interludium : brewing contest

Realising how homebrewers have ever been at the forefront of innovative brewing, André organised a competition, inviting attending homebrewers to submit their most novel brew.
I hastened to oblige and submitted Good Girl Ginger, figuring a ginger-hibiscus radler-saison hybrid would be adequately innovative to have the jury sit up and take notice.

Meta never felt so good.
Long story short, I did not win but got honourable mentions for innovativity. The beer needs work (quite of few of my beers do) but the idea seems solid enough to explore it further. Which I will, and you will read about it when I do.

This Honorable Mentions thing, together with what seemed like genuine approval from whoever I subjected to my brews is certainly invigorating, and an incentive to step up my game.

Congratz to the winner and the runners-up! Pity we never got to sample each other's brews though.


Done Interluding Again


A couple of post-ceremonial samples later (*), BeerBert and Yours Truly settled on the terrace with a final serving of Cuvée#3 (°), whilst chatting about beer and nationality and whatnot with the amiable Mikkel .

*)Zure van Tildonk was a pretty classy lambic-ish brew, and the Revenge of the Raspberry was revealed to be a beer re-racked onto raspberries, which imparted a solid falvour without the color. Definitely one of the more innovative ideas I saw explored to great effect that day.

°) Someday, I'm going to post something deep and meaningful about "the final beer of the festival" and what this says about both the beer and the festival, but today is not that day.

In spîte of being relatively below-radar, this was a fantastic festival, crammed with nice people, nice beers, in a setting which was just awesomely spectacular.

André, this was a blast. May friends, good cheer and good beer be ever with you, even in the face of chaos and the fickleness of fate.

Greetz

Jo

Geen opmerkingen: