HORAL Megablend 2017

Origin: Belgium | Date: 2017 | ABV: 7% | On The Beer Nut: May 2017

Even though this is the 2017 joint project of the brewing members of lambic's High Council, created for the Toer de Gueze that year, the best-before date of November 2036 suggests that it was being bottled around this time ten years ago. I didn't think much of this when first I tried it, noting only that it was a dark shade of orange. It still is. Getting it open was tricky, thanks to the dried-out cork.

There's a distinct funk in the aroma on which I'm sure I would have passed a remark if it had been there originally -- earthy and sharp, like the more involved sort of runny French cheese. The flavour is intensely sour, going beyond the level of sharpness found in even the sourest oude geuze, and setting course for white malt vinegar. It is saved from that fate by a slew of additional complexities including, most strongly, pungent firework smoke, plus mature oak and raw lemon juice. Sometimes, geuze at this strength can feel a bit flabby, with too much cereal and heat. This goes the opposite direction, being light-bodied and mouthwateringly zingy.

It has dried out and soured up in its decade of ageing. That's definitely an improvement for me, and if you like a geuze to jostle your teeth and sizzle your gums, you'll enjoy it at this vintage too. I'm intrigued to know if it'll keep going in this direction, and where the limit of acceptability lies. I may never find out, but I'm in no rush to tackle the later vintages of Megablend which I'm currently storing.

Porterhouse Celebration Stout

Origin: Ireland | Date: 2006 & 2016 | ABV: 10% & 6.5% | On The Beer Nut: October 2006 & August 2016

I noted on the main blog recently that The Porterhouse celebrated thirty years as a Temple Bar pub and associated beer brand with a red ale, whereas normally these anniversaries are marked with a stout. It seems like an appropriate occasion to get out a bottle each of said stouts and see how they're faring.

This is my only bottle of the 2016 Celebration Stout, the last and weakest beer to bear the name: down at 6.5% ABV from the original's 10% and the intervening versions' 7.5% and 7%. I have no faith in the pull-tab bottle cap's ability to keep oxygen out, hence didn't keep a substantial number of these. Still, it doesn't smell off, having a lovely vinous port aroma with overtones of dark chocolate and cork: proper vintage stout vapours. The chocolate is at the centre of the flavour, and is more prominent than the hard liquorice bitterness with which it led when fresh. Still no unpleasant oxidation in the taste, though there's a growing meaty quality, suggesting some autolysis may have occurred. It remains good clean fun, however, with a seriousness that belies its modest strength. Boozy fortified wine follows the chocolate, and there's a vegetal old-world hop bite too. Assertive bitterness was rare in stouts then, and it's rarer still today, so I really enjoyed finding one that does it properly. I will look doubly hard to see if I have a further bottle of this buried somewhere in the stash, because I think it will keep a little longer yet.

It's only four years since I last opened a bottle of the 2006 tenth anniversary stout, the full 10% ABV one, in the half-litre bottle. It also made an appearance for its own tenth birthday in 2016. In 2022 I deemed it probably past its best, so wasn't expecting much from this. Certainly, the appearance was disappointing, with no more than a desultory effort at a head. There's a strong hint of cardboard and sherry in the aroma, suggesting oxidation is fully under way, though I got some residual chocolate and burnt caramel as well. So the flavour was a surprise. It's very mellow, with no sharp edges or any strong bitterness. A wisp of bonfire smoke is as severe as it gets, but there's a surprise fruity element: the cherry and raisin of a dense and chewy Christmas cake. Behind it, a metallic mineral rasp where the hops are refusing to age out gracefully, plus a spark of firework or incense spices. This has taken an upturn in complexity and overall pleasantness since I last had it. Maybe there's something to this beer-ageing nonsense after all. I think there was just one bottle left in the box, and I won't be in a hurry to open it.

I'll go out on a limb and suggest that it's because these were classically well-constructed stouts from a brewery that knows its way around the style backwards, that they're still both very good drinking, a decade or two after bottling. The Porterhouse doesn't make its own stouts any more, nor are any of its beers bottled and, as we've seen, it was a red ale for the 30th anniversary. That serves to make this pair extra precious. I'm glad they weren't disasters.

Beoir#1

Origin: Ireland | Date: 2014 | ABV: 9% 
On The Beer Nut: April 2014 | On Stash Killer!: September 2017

Over on the other blog I write daft puns and oblique references for the post titles. Here, I don't do that (it's exhausting) but if I did, this one would be called "To The Faithful Departed". I have reviewed Beoir#1 here before, but a few years after that I inherited a couple of extra bottles from Andrew Moore, the man who orchestrated the beer's creation and distribution but didn't live to drink all of his own allocation. This is one of those.

By way of background, it was created on foot of a crowd-funding project by Black's of Kinsale and had been an attempt to make Ireland's first double IPA, though was beaten to the punch by Galway Bay's now legendary Of Foam & Fury. Though the fresh hops were long gone by 2017, it was still good drinking. And now, almost nine years after that?

At first I thought all the carbonation was gone, but it's a viscous creature, and though it began by pouring flat, a head did form. It has got darker, presumably from oxidation, and has passed out of amber and into deep garnet or even brown. There's still a trace of the port aroma from last time out, but it has deepened further, into chocolate and toffee. It smells beautiful, though.

Amazingly, the first thing that hits on tasting is the hops: still bitter after all these years, presenting a very English mix of metals and minerals. After that there's a rush of tannin, something which had been a feature from the get-go but is now the central character, by a long way. Where there used to be port-like grape and musky spices there's only old leather and raw tea leaves. Its smoothness and relatively gentle alcoholic heat prevent it from turning harsh, which is good. I still think it's past its best, though. The complexity is gone. A winey nose and starkly dry flavour are all you really get.

Still, it hasn't spoiled, and although I'm sure that evil oxygen has been getting busy in it, it hasn't quite turned to cardboard. My advice is to drink it now anyway, unless the sentimental value of the liquid is what matters.

Cheers Andrew.

YellowBelly The Last Stand

Origin: Ireland | Date: 2019 | ABV: 8.2% | On The Beer Nut: December 2019

Poignancy is rare on this blog, but today's beer is something of a nostalgia bomb. It's one of the final releases from YellowBelly, the most fun brewery of the late lamented Irish beer boom. This one ended the last of their annual runs of exclusive beers for club subscribers.

I see from my 2019 review that it was brown. It seems to have brightened up over the years, because this glass of it was distinctly red, in a mahogany or teak way. There's a fresh raspberry zing in the aroma, alongside wine-like cork and a hint of toffee. Still, the sweet malt is its main feature, and there was never any fresh hop character to lose. But while the various elements were easily pulled apart for analysis while fresh, age appears to have mellowed and melded its flavours.

Doing my best anyway, I find smooth and runny toffee hitting against brightly tart raspberry and strawberry. There's a distinct background of tannin, suggesting the beer has dried out in the can as it aged. I get a spice element as well -- part clove and part pepper -- which I'm reasonably sure wasn't there when it was fresh.

It's lovely. With all the cans up in the stash these years, I was beginning to fear that beer doesn't actually mature in them, just occasionally explodes. This one indicates that fun stuff still happens under the aluminium blanket. No oxidation, no infection, just a clearly agéd barley wine, smoothed out and highly enjoyable with it.

There is still YellowBelly beer out there, contract brewed and occasionally rebadged as pub house beers. I buy them when I see them. Poignant.