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Next up at Warsaw Beer Festival was Raduga Brewery, another one that I haven’t come across during my Polish visits. I liked the Fruit Mate name, very Inbetweeners.

There was certainly a range of colours and textures visible here. From back left to back right and then front left and front right:

(i) Fruit Mate #4 – heaps of kiwi in this and an ingredient that I couldn’t initially work out, but it’s tea…. It was all a bit clumpy and slightly odd, but I was drawn to it despite it being rather medicinal.

(ii) Peach Melba – like a rhubarb and custard sweet, a sourness from the peach and a lingering flavour that I couldn’t identify, but it’s likely fruit of some kind and that’s not a specialism of mine.

(iii) Sour Forest – this is quite tart even for me and I like a heap of sourness, but it’s juicy, thick and tastes of currants. Like a decadent and punchy fruit juice.

(iv) Soft Garden – possibly the least appetising looking beer that I’ve seen, it was positively clumpy and not a pretty colour. There was a taste of banana, maybe apple alongside tastes of lawnmowers and garden sheds.

(v) Fruit Mate #3 – there’s a bit of pineapple and it wasn’t entirely well rounded beer.

(vi) Trapeze – light, fruity but nothing much deeper than that.

I did enjoy these, even though I was sitting in a deckchair trying not to look like an idiot…. The brewery’s output is what I would call rustic, but who wants perfectly rounded beers all the time? There has to be room for experimentation, adventure and ugliness along the way.

Incidentally, look at the state of the Warsaw weather in this short video…. It was too hot yesterday and then we had a little snow blizzard.

Third and final day at Warsaw Beer Festival and I wanted to have one last beer from Funky Fluid. There were beers that I hadn’t tried, but I went on this occasion for the Gelato : Figs and Bananas.

It was another sweet and sour combination, flavours of figs first and then a lingering flavour of banana, a proper depth of taste. It’s obviously now what might be traditionally expected from a beer, but it was really rather lovely once again.

I look forward to the next beer festival and working through the next batch of Funky Fluid beers, particularly those from the Gelato series. I notice from Untappd that I’ve had 52 of the brewery’s beers, but they have 951 different ones listed and so there’s plenty more to discover.

Recraft is another Polish brewery that I haven’t encountered before, but it looked like they had some interesting beers going on, not least the tiramisu dessert pastry ale.

The other options, all bright and tempting.

I’m liking that the easy way to resolve what beer to have is to just have all of them. From back left to back right, then front left to front right:

(i) Juicy Sour Series: Brzoskwinia X Banan X Jabłko – fruited sours are always a good place to start and this one had peach, banana and apple. It’s a smooth beer, like a lightly soured Appletiser, although the banana and peach were more subtle. Very agreeable though.

(ii) Fruit Berliner Weisse – I had to Google what a chokeberry is, but it’s in this beer…. It’s quite a light and thin beer, although the ABV is only 3.5%, more of a palate cleanser than anything else.

(iii) Tiramisu Dessert Pastry Ale – this is the beer that I had seen that had tempted me and it didn’t disappoint. I very much like pastry sours so this is my sort of beer. There’s coffee, toffee, slight chocolate and it all combines to be like a liquid dessert. It even moved into the territory of being slightly decadent….

(iv) Hoppy Family – a punchy beer, but very hoppy and perhaps too hoppy, but still entirely drinkable.

(v) Sprau Floe El Dorado NEIPA – another very hoppy beer, but smooth and stonefruit taste to it.

(vi) Polish Hazy IPA Lubelski x Książęcy – coconut and creaminess, something of a hazy delight.

(vii) Chmelowy Most – a Pilsner isn’t my preferred beer style, but it’s clean and light.

(viii) Wielka Szycha – same as the previous one, this is clean and inoffensive, but not something I’d tend to veer towards.

Anyway, this is yet another brewery I’m going to have to look out for in the future. I preferred their sours, but the brew some interesting beers across numerous beer styles.

As I’ve mentioned numerous times before (perhaps too many….), this is my favourite European brewery and I was delighted to see them at Warsaw Beer Festival.

So many exciting options…. This is strictly speaking from day one, but I don’t think either of my two loyal readers will note that I’ve posted them the wrong way around.

The Triple Gelato : Mango Sticky Rice from Funky Fluid. This beer was bang on what I ideally like, it’s rich, it’s thick and it has coconut and mango powering through it. Beautiful.

And it was so exciting to see the partnership that they’ve got going with Goose Island.

Next up for me at Warsaw Beer Festival was Browar Sarabanda, who I haven’t encountered before but they had some interesting looking beers. The service was immediate, friendly and warm, they seemed keen to engage about their options that they had. Their tasting set changes during the festival, but it’s clearly visible on the left-hand side.

Ignoring their numbering, from back left to back right and then front left to front right:

(i) Serenity – a very hoppy little arrangement. A little rough and ready, but there’s always a place in life for a beer like that. As long as it’s not rough like the bloody awful generic lagers are….

(ii) Black Celebration #3 – this isn’t holding back. Rich, decadent, heavy and maybe a bit brutal. Chocolate and coffee flavours, but subtle this is not. An adult’s beer.

(iii) Currant the Black & Red – lots of berry flavour going on here. A nice level of sourness, very agreeable. And premiered at this beer festival 🙂

(iv) Mango Passion Delight – not as rich as other mango pastry sours that I’ve had before. It’s a bit tart to be honest, but there’s a nice lingering mango flavour. There’s a bit of lime or similar in there as well.

(v) Tantalus #2 – very heavy grapefruit flavour from the hops, it’s a bit thin and not one of my favourites, but still a credible beer.

(vi) Cofeecolus – I can’t recall having had a coffee IPA before so marks for innovation here as I thought it worked well.

This is another brewery that I was surprised and delighted by, so I’ll look out for their beers in the future.

As far as I’m concerned, Funky Fluid are the best brewer in Europe at the moment and thanks to them for giving me stickers so I can show that love. There are three parts to this Funky Fluid love as the beer festival is taking place over three days and I’ll be there every day at their stall.

This is actually day two, but I don’t think anyone will worry that I’ve posted the days the wrong way around. Just looking at these tempting options, let alone the 2024 Bourbon County Stout.

This is the Gelato XTREME : Tropical Shake from Funky Fluid, an 8% sour, and it’s made of 40% fruit which pushes beer to its absolute limits. It’s an 8% ABV and punchy in taste but not boozy, like an adult fruit juice. Innovative, packed with mango and verging on perfection once again.

This is the Gelato White Fluff from Funky Fluid and it’s deeply clever, a mixture of sweet and sour. There are tastes of marshmallows alongside peaches and pears. Smooth, decadent and innovative.

I love innovation in beers and Funky Fluid merrily push at this, in a similar way to how Vault City play about at the margins. All very lovely.

This is a brewery that I haven’t come across before, but they had some interesting sounding beers so I thought that I’d get a flight to experience their offerings. The service at the bar was personable, engaging and I liked that they suggested an order to drink the beers in which I always think shows an attention to detail.

OK, from front left to front right, and then back left to back right.

(i) Tańczący Wilk – a clean and malty beer with a bitter ending. Not my favourite beer style, but decent.

(ii) Dobry Wiewiór – a very dry stout, roasty with chocolate notes.

(iii) Kot Browarny – a really decent DIPA, hazy, a little dank, tropical, stonefruit and very agreeable.

(iv) Pachnący Motyl – you have to like lavender to enjoy this, it’s effectively an IPA with a heap of lavender. Luckily, I liked it.

(v) Cherry Wild Ale – I love sours, but I can find wild ales a little bit too much sometimes. However, this one wasn’t overly sour and it had lingering flavours of cherries and it didn’t have a chemical edge.

(vi) Coconut and Vanilla Imperial Baltic Porter – this was very boozy, thick and rich. Lots of coconut and vanilla flavour, a big ABV (10.4%) and a very drinkable beer. Not perfectly smooth as it was so punchy, but I quickly forgave that.

All told, I was very impressed with this little selection, I’ll look out for the brewery in future

I accept that I might need to get out more, but this is just magical, a combination of my two favourite breweries in the world, Funky Fluid and Goose Island. I’ve visited the Goose Island taproom in Chicago and there’s no shortage of posts on this blog about the outstanding Goose Island outlet in Shoreditch before it closed. One of their highlights, brewed in Chicago, is the annual Bourbon County Stout and I thought I’d be missing out as I hardly dare visit the US at the moment and there’s now no UK outlet of this marvellous beer. However, I was surprised and delighted to see that Funky Fluid have brought some of this excellent beer to Warsaw Beer Festival.

This is possibly the best beer in the world, or at least, it’s up there. It’s the 2024 edition of Bourbon County Stout and it weighs in at a mighty 14.7%. In terms of the taste, this is incredible, it’s smooth and hides its booziness with some ease. There’s the flavour from the Bourbon barrels and there’s chocolate, cherry, coffee, fudge and vanilla going on there, tastes almost competing with each other. The maturity of this beer is incredible and it has travelled well, but these rich and decadent stouts don’t struggle with that. Outstanding, it’s a glorious chaos of tastes, it’s rowdy and aggressive, but yet calm and settled.

It might be possible to read between the lines and note that I liked this.