The Bar Towel

Here we have Calena, a Biere Brune of La Brasserie Artisanale de Nice. A rich suave number, only lightly flavoured with cocoa beans and citrus peel. Proof were it needed quality brewing operates irrespective of place or meridian.

Thanks for these updates Gary! I haven't been to France in many years, before the current craft beer revolution hit. There wasn't much back then but still a memorable visit for all the other reasons that makes France great.

I'm not sure why the pictures show up sideways in the thread as when I click on them they are right side up. Ah well, quirk of the forum software I guess. Again, thanks for sharing!

Thanks Cass, brewing here has become much more craft in nature, yet always with a twist. Eg. I noticed they like flavoring beer, all kinds of spices and other things, even in IPA. Or they will do a smoked malt IPA.

One kind of neat thing is the bigger names, the Grimbergen Abbey line say, do takes on craft we don't get at home. Like a Brut Grimbergen, a mash up with Brut IPA. I was at a place today that offered it on draft and I was going to try it but the cask had just kicked.

I don't know why the pics do that! Maybe their size, I'll try to fix it. I upload similar ones to Twitter and it seems okay there. When I download them on my site I have to reduce the size, so maybe it is that, I'll see if I can adjust.

A draft Christmas ale, from Brasserie du Comte in the Nice area. Lost its brewery in a storm 3 years ago, was rebuilt, but some beer is still made other breweries loaning their premises. Nice sweet malt taste and pleasant subtle balancing of seasonal spice flavours. At Foam bar in port area.

As Cass noted, when you click on these images it straightens out a sideways looking image.

Not sure why that happens, I think may be the way
the forum software reads data embedded in the jpeg.

Here is intended image for previous message, but same issue.

The forum software strips out image metadata when it resizes the pictures for previews or thumbnails, which strips them of their orientation. There's nothing we can do about it short of installing a sketchy plugin to handle images differently.

Some of them did show upright I believe? I think if I do two the second shows that way. I can try putting two in a message, and remove the first or dummy one by an edit. Eg here to show Meteor Christmas beer.

No, doesn't work. Will see further what I can do at this end. Here is the Meteor Christmas. Old established, still independent brewery in Alsace. Rich and sweet, with orange accents (orange rind is added).

Per the abel malt extract and sugar are also used in recipe. Perhaps this cuts the palate back a bit, in intensity I mean, but still a worthy drink.

G.M. Gillman wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:38 am No, doesn't work. Will see further what I can do at this end.

The photo thing definitely isn’t you Gary. I’ve uploaded pics and they show up sideways too. Craig ID’d the issue above but clicking on them they show up right way up so that’s ok. Thanks for adding more updates from your trip, it sounds great!

Rotate your camera 90 degrees?

Thanks to Cass and others for input on the sideways images, I may try the 90 degree deal but for the moment will continue.

Here you see a place that is a shared premises for a craft brewer, Brasserie Bleue, and a specialty beer retailer, Allez Hops. It was closed today but I'll visit later this week and report more.

The brewery has a taproom so I'll try one of their beers and maybe pick up something interesting from the beer shop, which covers craft brewers (some 20) of this general region, the Alpes-Maritimes, and beers from elsewhere in, and outside France.

Maybe I'll be pardoned for showing a bit of non-beer Nice, as well.

German beer is not easily found in France apart specialty retailers. Ditto foreign beer in general, unless brewed in France of course,. Belgian beer is the main exception, with big brewers' Abbey beers widely available like Grimbergen, Leffe, etc. You find others plus Trappist in many supermarkets too.

This German, Export-type, a 100 percent organic, was found in a "bio" store. Made by an old family brewery in Bavaria, once attached to a monastery. Very light colour and in body too similar to our macro type beer - but not the taste. It shows clean, all-malt character with a fine dancing bitterness through the finish from the hops. Needs a big mass glass and good German food.

Leffe is ubiquitous as most reading know. This Xmas version has the same background notes of clove and smoke as the rest of the line, from the phenolic yeast approach. It is a familiar taste in much Belgian, and Northern French, beer. I like it in small doses, as the bottle provided down in Nice here.

And now a textbook Red IPA, called Via RIPA, from Carru Brewery in Carru, in the northwestern corner of Italy, not far from Monaco. A husband and wife team, the man was a published writer before entering this venture. Their website is written with humour and verve, reflecting this other talent.

Not that different from a number of darkish Ontario IPAs including say Boneshaker. A sign were it needed how craft brewing techniques stride the world today.

(Old line brewers innovate too, I hope to show an example from Peroni soon).

I turned the phone 90 degrees for image, thanks for that suggestion!