European Beer #1 - Focus: France

At the weekend Fuggles was lucky enough to make it to the inaugural European Beer Bloggers conference, hosted at various locations in London.  A beer lover's paradise, this predictably consisted of learning more about beer, and blogging, and several "practical" sessions.

Left: A light practical session on Friday night.

One of my highlights of the conference was being enlightened to the existence of the craft beer culture in Europe.  With less bloggers in continental Europe put together than the UK, and the craft exports from these countries still small, I was previously ignorant to the variety and quality out there.  I know alot more now, including the fact that I definitely want to plan a trip to see Lorenzo at his Bad Attitude brewery in Switzerland (more on that in another post).

We all know some great Belgian beers, some interesting Czech and German ones.  But experimentation without traditional boundaries is actually rife throughout the continent.  This is a fact that we should all embrace and explore.

The observant amongst you will spot that the title of this blog is slightly spurious, as the French-focused part of this post is purely photographic.  Shame on me, but unfortunately, the French beers were consumed when I had another beer in my other hand and (you may also note by the wobbliness of the photos) they were not exactly my first beers of the day.  If you ever recognise these beers from the photos they are all worth a try.

I definitely wanted to feature France in this series, as these bottles were kindly selected by and transported in the suitcase of one of the conference participants.  Not sponsored or funded by any brewery or company, Michael just brought them along to share the experience.  To me, that was the embodiment of the passion for beer that made the weekend so much fun.  Thank you Mr Ironside.

No notes, but I do remember this last one was a particularly fabulous example of the Rodenbach style.  A wonderful sour finish to it, really astringent, but very pleasant with it.  As Rodenbach appears to be the marmite of the beer world, this may not be your cup of tea.  But if you like your flavours strong and interesting, defnitely worth a try.

Still to come in the European Beer series: Italy, Switzerland and Sweden (more editorial on those).