Sign of the times : new beers from Harvey's

The ‘crafty’ rebrand of a traditional brewery is, at this point, a recognised phenomenon. From the addition of a hop cone to the logo that adorns Shepherd Neame’s otherwise unchanged and increasingly tired range to 'craft' sub-brand such as Thwaite's Crafty Dan, there’s an almost palpable desperation for relevance amongst national brewers of brown beer. Such efforts verge from the cynical – give an old beer a new name and funk up the typeface a little bit and bingo, craft beer – to the sincere yet misguided, with only Adnams and Fuller’s generally thought to be successfully bridging the craft/trad divide.

Harvey’s of Lewes, East Sussex, would rank amongst the breweries I’d least expect to employ a modernising makeover. Their approach is thoroughly old-school, and they persevere with such near-extinct styles as sub-3% milk stout in the Mackesons vein and brown ale coloured with caramel, both packaged in 25cl ‘nip’ bottles. And yet, at this year’s Great British Beer Festival, Harvey’s revealed a sleek new look, both updating their visual style and forging a coherent brand identity amongst their numerous seasonal releases. More astounding was the announcement of two new beers to be packaged in kegs as well as cans, and this news is accompanied by a namecheck for Beavertown and BrewDog on their website.

Alongside the snazzy new branding and newly pressurised containers comes a new slogan – “we wunt be druv”, an expression in local Sussex dialect meaning “we won’t be driven”, as if to assert that Harvey’s continue to do things on their own terms. In fairness, I should stress that they are in no way claiming to produce ‘craft’ beer, and there is a definite continuum between their existing beers and the new range. Still, there’s no denying that these new beers are targeting a new audience. Large family brewers may be flailing to recover diminishing sales, but having operated as an exclusively local brewery, Harvey’s are now making a conscious decision to extend their reach, extending their sales area beyond the current 60 mile radius.

I have slightly mixed feelings about this. In Lewes, I’ve found that even pubs who clearly aren’t focused on beer quality or choice are likely to deliver a superb pint of Sussex Best. This is because there’s an immense sense of local pride surrounding the brewery. Best is the default beer for a generation of drinkers – my brother works as a barman in Brighton and says it is common for men of a certain age to order a pint of Harvey’s without first scanning the bar to check whether it is on sale, often indignant if it isn’t available. It is a beer tied to a place – if you travel to Sussex, you might seek out Sussex Best, knowing that you’re unlikely to find it elsewhere. Increased availability may dampen that magic.

It’s also hard to gauge exactly who these kegged beers are aimed at. I can see the logic behind Golden Bier – golden ales have long been considered a potential converter for lager drinkers, and cool, carbonated keg dispense will strengthen that link. Malt Brown, however, seems misguided. Modern beer remains all about hops – perhaps, actually, it is increasingly about hops – so the focus on malt, together with the reference to that most unglamorous of colours, makes them seem a little out of touch. I can’t see existing Harvey’s fans ordering this over their cask beers, and can’t see cask sceptics ordering a beer called Malt Brown, either.

The most sensible move in this revamp is canning Sussex Best, a beer with existing cult appeal which, until now, has only been available on draught (Blue Label, a bottled beer, is ostensibly a version of Sussex Best, but doesn’t taste particularly similar to me). It pours a familiar coppery brown, with a thin white head that fizzes intensely before disappearing altogether and the aroma is carried by malt, together with just-ripe plums. The taste is, as ever, mysterious – I get a slightly different impression every time I drink Sussex Best, which isn’t to say that it frequently changes, but rather that it has an unusual flavour profile that seems to suggest different things with each pint. Recently, I’ve tended to think of tea – black, possibly with a slice of lemon – and wholemeal toast. As with several Harvey’s beers, there is the faintest suggestion of tartness – small enough that you may find you’re still debating whether it’s really there by the time your glass is drained – which adds complexity. The carbonation in the canned product is gentle, replicating a well-conditioned cask and deftly avoiding the distracting fizz which dogs many bottled and canned bitters. 

Predictably, Gold Bier is a good shade lighter and with its generous, tight head, resembles a pilsner in appearance. On the nose are cereals, but with a hint of plum which suggests a familiar yeast strain. The initial taste is underwhelming – bland and watery, though there is an edge of toasty malt and Digestive biscuits before a lemony, bitter aftertaste. This lingering bitterness sends you back for more, but each subsequent gulp is a little disappointing, bringing a kind of empty absence of flavour that recalls alcohol free lager. And yet for all that, by the time I finished the glass I realised I’d been rather enjoying it. It’s a beer that doesn’t reward analysis – it all about sessionable drinkability, and I could happily have cracked another. 

Malt Brown is fairly dark, edging into stout territory save for some reddy-brown patches around the edges of the glass. It instantly reminds me of the brewery’s phenomenal porter, though without the harsh and acrid brown malt edge. Smooth milk chocolate dominates and, paired with a distinct malty tang, it recalls a malted chocolate milkshake. Surely they’re missing a trick not marketing this as a chocolate porter?

Harvey’s does have something of an image problem. Some of my craft-educated friends challenge the perception of Harvey’s as a fine brewery as received wisdom and don’t think the beers stand up to their reputation. These people can be sceptical of cask beer, but it’s not just that - but put a pint of Golden Bier, dispensed from a keg, in front of them and I don’t think they’d change their minds about Harvey’s. I’m with those who consider the likes of Sussex Best and Old Ale legitimate classics, and I don’t think a shiny keg font will ever tempt me away from these beers.

Big screen brews

Those who are obsessed with beer may sympathise with my habit of squinting at the labels on Hollywood’s beer bottles. “What beer are they drinking?” I wonder. “The label definitely says IPA, but what’s the brewery?” Probably the most exciting moment in the rather silly Tammy was seeing Susan Sarandon’s character, Pearl, grab a six pack of Dale’s Pale Ale from the fridge before heading out on a road trip. The effect, for someone who recognises the brand, is distancing, and takes you out of the world of the film. How did that get there? Is it a bizarre piece of product placement paid for by Oskar Blues? More likely is that someone in the props department is a fan and wanted to give a little nod to their favourite beer. Anyway, the filmmakers don’t want you to ponder these details — the beer is there to communicate that this raunchy grandma likes a drink. It’s meant as beer, any beer, not intended to signify anything other than a carefree, thrill-seeking quality in Sarandon’s character.

Sometimes, though, the style or brand of a beer is carefully chosen. In David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) enthuses, “man, I like Heineken!” as he and Sandy (Laura Dern) drink in a dark, neon-lit bar. The word ‘imported’ on the bottle’s label is prominently displayed. Sandy confesses she’s never had it before, to which Jeffrey replies “you’ve never had Heineken before?” in disbelief. The psychotic Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), with whom Jeffrey becomes mixed up, has simpler tastes. “Heineken?” he howls, “Fuck that shit! Pabst! Blue! Ribbon!”

PBR is the perfect brand for Blue Velvet and for David Lynch in general. Its clean, red-white-and-blue branding has an air of Americana about it, suggestive of the white picket fence suburbia. But it’s not entirely wholesome, either. The fact that the brand takes its name from a prize supposedly awarded in 1893, already almost a century old by the time Blue Velvet was released, suggests faded glory if not outright decay. It’s a cheap beer, associated with dingy dive bars (the film predates PBR’s renewed popularity as hipster affectation) and therefore leaning towards the dark underbelly of American suburbia. Blue Velvet announces its intentions with an opening sequence in which the camera, having registered a freak accident as Jeffrey’s father waters his garden, descends below the manicured lawn and into the insect life below. Pabst Blue Ribbon embodies the tension between the façade of squeaky-clean public respectability and the darkness and sadness that lies behind closed doors.

As David Foster Wallace notes in his essay on Lynch, Blue Velvet frequently draws visual equations between Jeffrey’s father, lying in a hospital bed on assisted breathing apparatus, and Frank Booth, who huffs a mysterious gas from a medical face mask.  These visual rhymes suggest a lineage between Jeffrey and Frank that the younger man doesn’t want to admit. As he finds himself increasingly caught up in Frank’s violent world, Jeffrey is disturbed to find darkness within himself, too. The imported Heineken is an affectation, a liquid equivalent of the earring he dons throughout the film. He likes to think of himself as sophisticated and cosmopolitan, separated from conservative father figures like Sandy’s Bud-drinking Dad and especially from nightmares like Frank. The horror of Blue Velvet is the suggestion that Jeffrey is, deep down, a good old fashioned, PBR-drinking American sadist.

In the French-Canadian comedy The Decline of the American Empire, a group of affluent, sexually-liberated academics discuss life and sex, culminating in an elaborate dinner party. As they embark on their feast, they are unexpectedly joined by Mario, a punk-ish young man of limited intellectual ambition who is physically involved with Diane, one of the guests. Mario is clearly not of their class or sophistication — refusing the host Claude’s offers of coulibiac fish pie, Stilton and, finally, wine, his request for a beer finalises the perception of his common-ness. Claude obliges, fetching him a Pilsner Urquell and a flared, vase-like glass. The imported beer (which Claude points out he enjoys only “occasionally”) is not to Mario’s tastes — “what’s with this beer?” he asks. To ask for beer at all is one marker of status, to refuse such a tasteful selection another. Although Mario is an unpleasant character, I feel for him as he sips, thoroughly patronised, on his Czech lager — everyone at the table looks at him as if he is of another species. But he, too, is dismissive and small-minded and makes judgements of character based on the contents of the glasses around the table.

To use beer as a signifier of class and taste would be more complicated today. Imported pilsners (few as distinguished as Urquell) are perhaps more mainstream in modern Britain than they would have been in 1980s Quebec, but amongst casual lager drinkers, they still carry a suggestion of premium-ness — there is a perceived difference between ordering a Peroni and a Fosters, even if beer geeks find both just as offensive. But equally, I could imagine a scene similar to The Decline of the American Empire’s climactic dinner party in which an unexpected guest is offered an IPA and complains that its “one of those grapefruit beers”. Whilst beer isn’t perceived as so impenetrably middle class as wine, it can at times be just as expensive, inaccessible or even elitist. Even as beer diversifies and grows, we still assume that the beer we drink says something about us. We should take extreme care in such assumptions — beer is for everyone, every beer has its place, and no beer is entirely right whilst another is entirely wrong.

Biére de garde : A brief survey

“Devotees have long regarded this style as a minor classic, and in recent years it has become more widely recognised, especially in Britain and the United States.”

Such was Michael Jackson’s introduction to biére de garde in his Beer Companion in 1993. If this resurgence in popularity really occurred, it’s hard to say how long it lasted. Some fourteen years later, K. Florian Kemp heralded a similar resurrection in an article for All About Beer. Today, though, biére de garde seems to be in a bit of a slump. Sure, your average post-Jackson beer nerd may be familiar with a couple of the classic examples, but you’ll see few contemporary takes on the style on Britain’s bars.

Biéres de garde are often grouped with saisons under the banner of ‘farmhouse ales’. Farmhouse brewing traditions extend way beyond France and Belgium — as Lars Garshol’s fascinating blog consistently demonstrates — but nevertheless, the biére de garde lives in the shadow of the saison style, and 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. However, appreciation of simple beers is a fine thing, and in my view, some examples have more complexity than they’re given credit for. If nothing else, a handsome corked bottle won’t set you back more than a few Euros in a continental supermarché and will bring far greater rewards than the green stubbies that share the shelf.

The term itself refers to a production practice more than a coherent group of beers — the name roughly translates as “beer for keeping”, and these beers were first brewed in the spring and kept for drinking throughout the summer months and harvesting season. The Second World War delivered a further blow to the already waning tradition as many breweries lost their brewing equipment when it was melted down by the occupiers.  Once artificial refrigeration made seasonal brewing obsolete and bottom-fermenting Alsatian lagers gained prominence, biére de garde all but disappeared.

In The Beer Bible, Jeff Alworth suggests that the effect of the Second World War defined modern biére de garde; as breweries recovered, they found that drinkers didn’t want the rustic, vinous farmhouse ales of old, and looked to lager brewing for inspiration. Today’s incarnations of the style are ‘kept’ in the sense that they undergo a lengthy lagering stage —longer than an average ale, not as long as what we think of as lager — which is part of what separates the style from the saisons brewed over the Belgian border. Some modern breweries have also switched to a bottom-fermenting yeast strain.

What, then, does one expect from the style? Well, it depends — biére de garde comes in blonde, ambrée and brune forms, though I have yet to encounter the latter. Michael Jackson refers to the beers as “rich and toffeeish”, with an “ale-like frutiness”, which seems mainly applicable to the ambrée beers. He also notes that “biéres de garde sometimes have a dash of cellar character, with suggestions of oak or cork”, which applies mostly to the dry, vinous blonde examples.

Amongst the blondes, 3 Monts (St. Sylvestre) is the most complex and by far my favourite. A pilsner malt backbone carries a gentle, semi-sweet marzipan and honey flavour before a dry finish reminiscent of white wine. This, along with brisk, palate-livening carbonation, definitely recalls a saison. Jenlain Blonde (Brasserie Dyuck) has a hint of barnyard in the aroma, and similarly has marzipan along with a crisp, lager-like malt flavour. There’s a dry, vinous finish here, too, with a bitterness that’s gentle but lingers nevertheless.  La Goudale (Brasseurs de Gayant) is brewed with orange peel and coriander (and, less attractively, rice), but doesn’t exactly come off like a witbier. It’s closer to shandy, its pale malt base merging with an elderflower-like sweetness and a citrusy tang. The bitter finish builds, and is actually quite significant for a beer of this style. It’s a great refresher in the sun, but one that must be handled with care since its 7.2% ABV is not remotely evident in the taste. Ch’Ti Blonde (Castelain) is very sweet, and lacks the dry and bitter finish in these other beers. I don’t like it much.

Ambrée versions of the style have more of a history, however. Brasserie Dyuck was the brewery that revived the biére de garde in the 1970 as their distinctive champagne-style, crowned and corked bottles became popular with students in Lille (their blonde was only introduced in 2005). Their Jenlain Ambrée is probably the closest thing to a style-defining benchmark. It is a heavily malt-forward beer, not a million miles away from an English bitter, except with very little balancing hop character. Its character principally suggests marzipan and vanilla along with tangy citrus fruits. Ch’Ti Ambrée is very similar, whilst La Goudale Ambrée is notable for introducing some faint banana esters. Page 24 Reserve Hildegarde (Brasserie Saint Germain) is from a smaller, perhaps more artisanal brewery. It’s the only bottle-conditioned beer amongst all these examples and perhaps as a result has bolder flavours than most beers of the style. Although the recipe doesn’t contain candi sugar, there’s a definite note of candy floss or cinder toffee, and it is faintly earthy and spicy. The finish brings a citrusy snap recalling a good, hoppy pilsner.

Within France, too, there are certain beers mixing the biére de garde tradition with outside influences. The highly regarded Etoile du Nord (Thiriez) resembles dry, highly attenuated saisons and, unlike most biéres de garde, has a notable hop profile thanks to large additions of Kentish Brambling Cross. Bellerose Biére Blonde Extra (Brasserie des Sources) sells itself as a meeting of biére de garde and IPA, which is a bit much — it doesn’t have anything even close to the hop character of an IPA, but there is a peppery spice before a finish far bitterer than most beers of the style. This bitterness isn’t enough to balance what is a strikingly sweet beer, like a sticky, sugary iced bun.

As I have already suggested, biére de garde isn’t often seen in the UK, but modern breweries will occasionally produce their own interpretations. My first taste of the style was the eponymous example from Thornbridge, which was later re-brewed as Jehanne. As I recall, this was a sweet, malty ambrée with a strong marzipan note. In a slightly curmudgeonly blog post, Thornbridge brewmaster Rob Lovatt suggested that this beer would have sold better if it had been labelled as a saison, the latter being the more ‘fashionable’ style. This seems to be Parizan’s strategy with their Biére de Garde Triskel, which is labelled as a saison first and a biére de garde in much smaller letters. This is actually an accurate representation of the beer, which leans towards the Belgian style with just a little French influence. It’s full of orange blossom and apricot with some phenolic pepper and clove flavours, and has an exceedingly crisp, dry, vinous finish. The Triskel hops, an Anglo-French hybrid, may be responsible for the grassy, herbal notes, but this is a firmly yeast-driven beer. I wouldn’t recommend it to those wishing to understand the biére de garde, but I would recommend it to fans of delicious beer.

More experimental was Brigid Fire from the currently dormant Celt Experience. This was a smoked rye IPA brewed with biére de garde yeast, a bonkers recipe that almost seemed to have all its elements picked at random. It didn’t wholly work, partly because that yeast overpowered everything else, dominating with toffee, almond and honey flavours.  Also in an inventive vain is a red wine barrel aged edition of Olde Garde, a biére de garde brewed by Cloudwater in collaboration with Burning Sky. I haven’t been lucky enough to try either the original beer or its barrel aged incarnation, but I am pleased to see modern British breweries take an interesting approach to an under-utilised style. In the past few years, we’ve seen impossibly obscure styles blow up in the craft beer world, the rise of the gose being the most obvious example. Perhaps, then, the biére de garde will have its moment in the sun.

Brighton Brewer's Market

Great keg beer isn’t easy to find in Brighton. There’s plenty in specialist pubs and bars, of course, but walk into your average boozer and you’re likely to find three or four handpumps, often dispensing excellent local beer, whilst the keg lines remain dominated by the usual macro lagers, Guinness and cider. Whilst pubs with brewery/pubco/chain ties might have some freedom to choose from either SIBA’s supply list or a pre-approved selection of breweries, I suspect this freedom doesn’t extend to kegged beers, subsequently making kegs harder for small breweries to sell. But with more established breweries like Burning Sky selling in kegs for a few years now and the likes of 360, Gun and Arundel now moving into this area, there’s an emerging demand for locally produced and full-flavoured keg beer.

I love cask beer too, of course, and would never state a general preference for either dispense method. Notably, the organisers of the Brighton Brewer’s Market, an outlet for local kegged beer, promoted the event without denigrating cask, and most of breweries pouring there produce cask beer too. It was a welcome chance to redress the balance a little bit and experiment with styles perhaps better suited to the keg format. Set in Yardy, a small courtyard adjacent to the Marwood coffee shop on Ship Street, there was food grilling at one end and beers pouring from a converted piano at the other.

Having written about Beercraft, the small pilot brewery based on the Watchmaker’s Arms premises, I was delighted to finally sample a couple of brewer Jack’s wares. A 3.2% Table Beer was seriously impressive – its easy-drinking light body and brisk carbonation made it really refreshing on an (occasionally) hot and sunny afternoon, and the hop flavour and aroma crammed into such a small beer is amazing. It’s truly sessionable in the sense that it’s difficult to stop at one – my plan to try as many different beers as possible was abandoned as I went back for two more glasses of the Table Beer.

There was also Zeit Weisse, a hefeweisse born out of a collaboration between BeerCraft and Brewtorial. This was excellent, too, familiar in its classic Bavarian yeast character – banana and clove – but a little different at the same time, with some gentle soft vanilla flavour in the background and just a touch of sharp fruitiness.

Brewtorial’s Logic Engine American Pale Ale recently won first place at the London and South East Craft Brewing competition, and I can see why – it’s an impressive beer. I want to say that it tastes like fruity sweets – Fruit Pastilles, or maybe Fruit Salad chews – but that would give an impression of cloying sweetness, which is far from the case. It is bursting with citrus and tropical fruit flavours, though, with a gentle bitterness and a beautiful full body that makes each gulp super satisfying.

The dream would be for a greater number of Brighton’s pubs to kick off a couple (just a couple!) of the big lagers, halt the creeping presence of pseudo-craft sub-brands from large breweries, and extend their support for local breweries to the keg fonts. In the meantime, Brighton Brewer’s Market will be back on the first Saturday of August, and again in September.

Drunken sailor

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was recently in Barcelona for the Primavera Sound festival. Though I've never considered myself a nautical type, we ended up staying on a (moored) boat because it was cheap and extremely convenient for the festival. The purpose of the trip wasn't beer, and it wasn't a wander by day, booze by night holiday either. Still, I did get a chance to stock up at BeerStore, a bottle shop I'd highly recommend - its well stocked in general, but heavily promotes local beer. Each evening, I sat on the deck with a couple of bottles, enjoying the last of the sun before heading out to the festival and its plastic cups of rancid Heineken. Here's what I thought of those beers.

Guineu - IPA Amarillo

On a previous trip to Spain, I was really impressed by a double IPA Guineu brewed in collaboration with the Bavarian BrauKunstKeller. On the strength of that, I opted for two of their IPAs from the bulging Beer Store shelves. This one is resolutely old school in approach – British IPAs seem to have become paler and paler over the past few years, but this pours an attractive hazy red-gold, with a thick, tight white head. Peach and orange aromas jump out immediately, with lots of peach carrying into the flavour along with apricot and some grapefruit. There’s a savoury element to the beer which almost recalls tomato (possibly a characteristic of some of the darker malts? I often get the same thing in red ales) which sounds weird but does kind of work, and the finish is notably bitter but not excessively so. It reminds me of the IPAs doing the rounds when I first fell in love the style – not-so-pale, not afraid to bump up the IBUs – and it definitely still hits the spot.

Guineu - WIPA (Wheat India Pale Ale)

I was hoping for something like a white IPA, my current favourite pseudo-style, from this, but it doesn’t have any of the estery or phenolic flavours of either a Belgian wit or a German weisse beer, seemingly brewed with a standard ale yeast with wheat mainly contributing some extra body.  There’s a sweet-ish candy sugar thing going on which, along with the hops, presents as a summery stone fruit character before a long, bitter finish. It’s kind of non-descript and a little disappointing given the label’s reference to dry-hopping – it doesn’t have that juicy, amped up hop flavour and aroma you’d expect, possibly because the malty sweetness refuses to let the hops sing.

Edge - Apassionada

The motivation stated on this beer’s label is refreshment in sticky Barcelona weather, and in that respect, Apassionada absolutely knocks it out of the park. A passion fruit beer in the generic ‘sour’ category, its flavour is incredibly vibrant and has all of the freshness and complexity of the fruit itself. A restrained honey sweetness, a floral note, rich tropical juiciness and a light tart finish. It’s deftly managed - any sweeter and you could almost believe you were drinking a can of Rio rather than a beer, any more acidic and it would become hard work – and extremely accomplished.

BeerCat - La Masia

How could I resist that branding? And the BrewDog-aping isn’t the only British influence on this beer. Described as an English-style bitter on the back of the label and table beer on the front, it has a super-pale malt base (100% Marris Otter) and a big, juicy hop character in an otherwise relatively small beer. I could be wrong, but I’d wager that this is modelled on The Kernel’s majestic Table Beer. The aroma is beautiful, a big burst of sherbet, and in the mouth there are tangerines and grapefruits and something almost herbal or botanical which recalls gin. For one of the lowest-ABV beers on the shelf, this is packing a huge amount of hop flavour and was undoubtedly the best beer of the whole trip.

Barcelona Beer Company - La Niña Barbuda

One of a healthy number of brown ales on offer, La Nina Barbuda pours a translucent cola-brown with a tight off-white head. There’s wholemeal bread and boozy Christmas pudding on the nose, and the flavour is exactly what I want from a modern brown ale – cola, cereal, savoury cereals and the peach and clementine flavours characteristic of a meeting between New World hops and darker malts. Its drawback is its pointlessly high 7% ABV – some mouthfuls have a kind of boozy spikiness which just clashes with the otherwise smooth flavours. Knock this down to 5% and you’d have an excellent brown ale.

Zula - Hoppala!

I was drawn in by the beautiful label on this beer – not the best way to choose, but faced with hundreds of bottles from unfamiliar breweries, what else do you have to go on? This is just one of the reasons why beer branding is important. This is far, far darker than I’d like an IPA, veering towards amber ale territory. The malt brings a kind of caramel and candy floss foundation for a smooth mango hop character before a slightly spicy and bitter finish. There’s great promise here -that tropical hop flavour is gorgeous, but I’d suggest lighter malt character would accentuate it a little further.

Having recently re-read this old post from Mark Dredge on the 'pale and hoppy' cask ale, a style that's remained prominent in the UK, I started to ponder my reservations with the malt character of a couple of these beers. Many modern British breweries favour a very pale malt base, at least in beers which prominently showcase American and Southern Hemisphere hops - consider the Juicy Banger and the latest breed of  IPAs favouring ever-later hop additions and geared towards massive, booming hop aroma and flavour (the Cloudwater DIPA and BrewDog Born to Die series spring to mind here). It's telling that the beer I most enjoyed was the BeerCat, which acknowledges a British influence - I like beers like this, and they're also what I've become used to drinking. I hope this doesn't come across as a suggestion that this is what beer should be like - I'm just stating a preference.

Cat Bar, Barcelona

Hot on the heels of my recent trip to Valencia, last week I was back in Spain. This time Barcelona was the destination and, since we were there for the Primavera Sound music festival, there was considerably less time available for beery pursuits. I didn't even scratch the surface of what seems like an interesting beer city, but on the first night before the festival properly kicked off, we stumbled across Cat Bar. We found it whilst researching vegetarian-friendly restaurant options, and I jumped at the chance to check out a bar with a fully vegan kitchen and a broad range of Spanish craft beer.

It’s a fun place - cramped and candlelit, all mismatched furniture and low ceilings, just on the right side of the bohemian/divey spectrum. The burgers we ate were fantastic, and even if the dominant accents around the tables were British and American, the draught beer is heavily skewed towards the local. I drank the Powerplant saison from Barcelona’s own Edge brewery, which was sadly drastically under-attenuated and under-carbonated and should be approached as a faintly phenolic pale ale to avoid disappointment. There are some nice lemon and lime flavours, with just a hint of juniper and pepper. It stood up well to a big, bready burger and patatas bravas with lots of paprika, which is high praise.

Also from Edge was Padrino Porter, a beer with a rich, decadent chocolatey malt depth that suits after-dinner drinking. There’s a certain earthy, Shredded Wheat hop character (East Kent Goldings?), but also a hint of New World fruitiness before a light bitter finish. It’s a little thin bodied for the style, but was also served at a temperature that suits the close Barcelona evening which makes this less of an issue. I'm rarely so refreshed by a dark beer.

Paying my tab on the way out, I decided to take advantage of the pub’s CAMRA discount, more for the novelty value than the 60c it saved me – I always forget about it and so have never used it at home, and I like the idea of doing so in Spain at a bar serving precisely no cask beer. I'd guess that not many people redeem this generous offer as it completely baffled the bar staff. The British ex-pat proprietor seemed delighted to oblige, though - he explained that there's only one bar in Barcelona that sells cask, as few bars have cellars and the climate means that a cask goes off almost instantly. He did reassure me that all his beer was KeyKeg - "beer in a bag!"

I also stocked up at Beer Store, a great bottle shop recommended to me by Joan at Birraire, via Steve at Beers I’ve Known – thanks guys! Since all conventional accommodation in the immediate vicinity of the Primavera site books up within minutes of tickets going on sale, we ended up staying on a boat in a nearby port. Heineken is the only beer available at the festival, so I established a routine of sampling the wares of Barcelona’s craft breweries on the deck before consigning myself to the Dutch fizz. A separate post detailing those nautical brews will follow soon.

My Bamberg onion

Bamberg might be getting a lot of things right, but vegetarian food isn't necessarily one of them. Actually, that’s not really true – finding good veggie fare in Bamberg was no problem at all when I visited, but the traditional dishes you’ll find served in the brewery taverns are as carnivorous as they come. I begrudge nobody their mountains of gravy-soaked pork, you understand, and was particularly envious of those getting to sample a speciality of the Schlenkerla pub, the Bamberg Onion. As it turns out, Bamberg is notorious for its onions as well as its beer, and in this dish an onion is stuffed with lots and lots of smoky meat and served with a gravy made from rauchbier and the drippings – the recipe can be found here. Quite understandably, a vegetarian version did not appear on the menu, so I started to think about how I could create such a thing at home.

How does one go about constructing a meat-free equivalent of a dish that revolves around pork, smoked pork, and a little smoked bacon for good measure? The answer was to fall back on the old vegetarian staples of mushrooms and cheese. Mushrooms bring a vaguely meaty depth of flavour, and cheese is, you know, delicious. In order to replicate the smokiness, I opted for smoked applewood, and decided to cook the mushrooms in Schlenkerla rauchbier. I sautéed them at a high heat until they took on a caramel colour and their liquids started to evaporate, then threw in around 100ml of beer, a teaspoon of smoked garlic powder and some smoked sea salt and cooked briskly until the liquid had mostly reduced. These mushrooms, even on their own, were a bit of a revelation, and something I’ll be cooking again. Leftovers made a sublime grilled cheese sandwich the next day.

I didn't have a genuine Bamberg onion at hand, of course, so went for the biggest Spanish one I could find. Spooning the middle section out was no fun at all. If I had to do it again, I’d seriously considering donning swimming goggles for this stage. I chopped these parts finely and fried them off, then added them to the mushrooms, before stuffing this mixture alternatively with grated cheese until the onion was bulging. I roasted this for about 45 minutes, occasionally topping up the water in the bottom of the dish whilst making a quick sauce out of vegetable stock and beer, thickened with a little flour and simmered in a frying pan. The sauce was simple but tasty, and the dish didn't need much anyway. The final touch was a smoked applewood crisp, tucked between the onion 'lid' and the main body where normally a slice of smoked bacon would rest.

I served it with mashed potato and some steamed veg, washed down with the remaining beer. It was delicious. That onion is no mere vessel – all of its sweetness is revealed, but it retains some texture and bite at the same time, and the filling was full of smoky umami flavour. It may insult Franconian tradition. It may sound unappealing to meat eaters drawn to the deeply porky original. It may have taken all afternoon. I don’t care. It’s my Bamberg onion and it made me happy.