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Pooch hooch
I don't know why Hopfully elected to make these two beers a matching set. The recipes don't seem related to each other. Was it just to save money on the artwork?The first is called Hair of the Dog...
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Fruit, real and implied
It all seems business as usual at Whiplash at the moment, all fruited sour beers and hazy pale ales. Let's take a look at the most recent ones to come my way.Fruit Salad Days are here again, this time...
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A Rocky start
My first time drinking beer from the Franco-Coloradan brewery Outer Range, I thought it was something else. It's not my fault, it's what it was sold as: a 5% ABV pale ale from an Irish brewery. That...
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Turn on, tune in, Longford
At time of writing, the latest from Wide Street is called Beat Generation and is in the style (is it a style?) called "American sour". I've had sour beers in America, though I don't think I encountered...
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Multicultural Munich
It's a return visit to the beers of Camba Bavaria, the Munich-based brewer of some very unMunich beers.First up today, for instance, is a saison, called Summer Kiss. Despite the pink branding and...
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Minibars and solitude
For my summer holiday this year I went to visit Bulgaria, largely because I've never been there before and it was an itch needing to be scratched. On arrival, the local mosquito population made sure...
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When in Plovdiv
I loved Plovdiv, the little city with a big history, right in the middle of Bulgaria. I wouldn't class it as an A-1 beer destination, however, although it has definitely made an effort.The Kapana...
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To the sea
The final segment of my Bulgarian adventure brought us to Nessebar, a cutesy and well-preserved mini city on the Black Sea coast. It's well preserved by the strictures of UNESCO, though increasingly...
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The nationals
My lastthreeposts covered what I saw of the craft scene on my visit to Bulgaria, and I make no attempt to define what I mean by "craft" there: Bulgaria has a fairly clear line between the small...
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Ze Germans
I'm guessing the large number of Czech and German visitors to Bulgaria are one reason it carries more of their beers than ones from any other country. When I was feeling down about what the Bulgarian...
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Distant horizons
The temperature hit the mid-30s when I was in Plovdiv. That necessitated some split-shift tourism, visiting sights in the morning and evening, with the sweltering afternoons spent cowering under...
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The Dublin comeback
The September beer festival at the RDS in Dublin was a fixture on Ireland's calendar between 2011 and 2017. A later move to other venues was less successful and it all wrapped up before Covid. This...
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Take the Lauterbach
It's like one of those ghosts that doesn't know it's dead. The Lauterbacher brewery claims a foundation date of 1889, with a history in Bavaria going further back to the mid-17th century. The website...
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Seasons in Galway
I have been a consistent enjoyer of the Catharina sour beers from Galway Bay, the only Irish brewery that makes them. The latest, Felina, has been around since the summer, and I think I anticipated...
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The sun in the sails
This year was my tenth at the Borefts Beer Festival, held at the De Molen brewery in Bodegraven. The Festival itself was celebrating 20 years of De Molen, with a theme of "Back & Future". 23 guest...
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Up comers
Today's post is mostly about beers from southern Europe which featured at this year's Borefts Beer Festival, but I neglected to mention Poland in my northern round-up on Monday. So we'll start there.I...
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Over here
The 2024 Borefts beer festival line-up included a couple of breweries each from the US and Brazil. Let's start with the Americans.Lost Abbey was a blast from the past. Time was, this was a veritable...
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Our host's cellar
As always, the largest selection of beers at the Borefts Beer Festival comes from the host, De Molen. At the main event inside the brewery's warehouse space, they reserve a long bar to themselves,...
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White bread and herrings
On 3rd October 1574, during the Eighty Years War, the Spanish who besieged the city of Leiden were routed by a band of Dutch rebels. Supplies of herring and white bread were brought to the starving...
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The usual valediction
On the way home from the Borefts Beer Festival in September I spent a night in Amsterdam, and the days either side of it going to mostly my usual haunts in the Dutch capital.That started at Arendsnest...
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Something for everyone
DOT continues to barrel age things that most breweries don't, such as the "micro fruit sour" called Yeah Yeah. It's not all that micro, at 3.4% ABV, and is a translucent pale amber colour. Strawberry,...
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Lager season
It's nice to see breweries and pubs making a bit of an effort around seasonality, and Oktoberfest time brought multiple opportunities around Dublin to drink appropriate lagers.That said, I've had Sun...
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Follow-ups
My September trip to the Netherlands yielded a handful of beers which I didn't get round to drinking while travelling and which therefore came home with me. Let's see what's in the suitcase.Kees is a...
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Pull the other one
The JD Wetherspoon Autumn Beer Festival arrived in mid-October. I managed to spend some time at it, both in the central Dublin pubs, and abroad. Here's what I found, beginning at The Silver Penny on...
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Dropping pilots
I paid a fleeting visit to Rascals HQ in October, something I really must make more of a habit of. They had two new beers from their pilot series.#118 Scarlet's Ale is in everyone's...
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