Brewberry - Paris - It's not as lame as the name suggests

On the contrary, Brewberry is actually a little gem of a place, a somewhat hidden treasure.
I actually went there expecting a beer bar but it's more like a liquor store/off-licence with seating and serves food. You peruse the shelves and buy beer. If you would rather drink it in the shop then so be it. Needless to say, we picked a load to drink in the shop. We arrived just after opening*1 and were there for a number of hours.

There are shelves with beer arranged by country/region. I was mainly interested in the French beers but that did not stop me snooping around the entire shop. It was interesting to see that Nøgne ø was more expensive in Paris than Dublin.
The only "Irish" beer was Guinness Foreign Export, though St Peters was listed as being Irish so I let the lovely girl* who runs the place know and she changed it. I also gave her my details and directed her to Beoir.org for a list of Irish Craft Breweries in case she wants to get more in.
The picture here shows all the Belgian beer, by far the biggest section.





The low ceilings give the place a cavernous feel and it is rather cosy. There is not a lot of seating, and indeed we had the place mostly to ourselves with the off person popping in and leaving with beer.
After a couple of hours a group came in and sat down so the place livened up a little. They seemed to be more interested in Belgian beer. They also ordered a cheese platter with seemed an awfully great idea considering the volume of beer we had already consumed so we ordered the same.

This shelf and part of the one to the left are the French beers. Not a hell of a lot but better than I was expecting considering just how hard it is to find French beer.
We did not quite get through them all but we did our best. I put four on the counter to bring home and then opened the rest to consume on premises. If I needed help, the owner was on hand. She helped with some translations and knew all about the beers she had and what they tasted like. Clearly she drinks her produce, always a good sign.

First up was Fleurac Dark IPA, an 8% beast of a beer. Grapefruit and caramel on the nose with a hint of alcohol. On tasting, the first thing I noticed was the carbonation which is explosive, a bit much for my taste in beer and it makes it hard to properly taste any complexity in the beer. A treacle like backbone mellows the harsh bitter hops.
This is a bitter beer and rather tasty. You can tell it's 8% but there is no acetone harshness.
I was told that it's a Belgian brewer, brewing in France.

St Glinglin Tripel is brewed by the originally named Brasserie Artésienne (website not working?). It's a 9% beer which had an aroma that was nothing short of a jar of honey. In fact when I tasted it, I could have been drinking fizzy mead.
It's not my sort of beer so my wife finished it off. I imagine it's the sort of beer that would see a swarm of flies buzzing around it in the summer.

And then there was only one beer that had to be tried. Only one beer could pack enough of a punch to rid myself of fizzy sugar water. The label is brilliant and promises to save me. Super Power from La Belle is a double IPA (8%) and it was a very welcome beer. The colour screams orange marmalade and I was not disappointed. Oranges and lemons were mixed in with grapefruit to create a bit of a citrus bomb. It was lovely stuff.
While it is rather bitter, there is enough of a sweet malty backbone to keep the beer balanced and it was perfectly carbonated. Not too fizzy, just enough pop to keep it goldilocks.

If there is one French beer that I wish was available in Ireland, it's this one.

Anosteké blonde from Brasserie du Pays Flamand is far less interesting, though is still a decent beer. There was little going on beyond strong grapefruit and sweet candi. I think part of the problem was the carbonation was just too high. The finish is quite bitter. At no point did I get the feeling I was drinking another 8% beer.
I wonder if I had left it long enough for the carbonation to die down, would it have developed more character....

Well now, we come to an interesting tasting. The labels for these beers required translation as I did not know what they meant. The girl* behind the counter had to look them up herself. Both are from Brasserie Bourganel and both were the strangest beers I have ever come across. It should be noted that these are speciality beers, they also produce normal beery beers.
On the left we have Myrtilles which is essentially a blueberry beer. So much so that it tastes like a blueberry soft drink. Thin but tasty. You know it's beer, just about anyway. High in  Fructose and mouth puckeringly tart with some sourness. As if that's not weird enough, the other beer is green and not because it was dyed for St Patrick's day. Verveine velay is a sort of green tea beer. If green tea was a beer, this would be it. This is a cold sugary, fizzy green tea. Awful stuff, I can't think of any market for this. I just wish there were other beers from this brewery to try for a more balanced assessment. Both were 5% by the way.

Back to some sense of normality with a dark wheat beer dry hopped with Nelson Sauvin. And why not eh? Cuvée d'oscar is actually from De Proefbrouwerij in Belgium and not French at all. That said, it's contract  brewed for Craig Alan (he did one of my take-home beers). This was recommended to me by Cécile though so I don't recall if I picked it up from the French section myself or not. This 7.5% beer is absolutely lovely, though I'm afraid am now at the stage where taking tasting notes is a challenge. If sour grapes was a beer, this would be it. We both loved it.
No doubt there is a level of complexity I found it hard to appreciate after the taste bud rapage before it but if you come across this beer, buy it without hesitation.

I think my palate had recovered somewhat by this stage. Perhaps the cheese plate helped in that regards. Both are from the Lancelot brewery.
Telenn du is a dark oaky beer with a fair bit of lactic sourness. In fact it was the sourness that made me fall in love with this beer. It's also packed full of chocolate and a little espresso bean. the body is quite thin and has a very lively carbonation and impressively, my wife, who hates stout and porter type beers loved it as well. Probably because it's not actually a stout/porter, I think it's a dunkel weisse (de blé noir). At 4.5% its sessionable too.
The other one is called Morgane and is a 5.5% organic blonde. There is a slightly sour aroma mixed in with that of honey. the mouthfeel was a little thin and honey was clearly evident as well as a herbal/floral quality. Again the carbonation is lively and it was quite tasty and easy to drink.

And now the final two beers. On the right, we have Perle démenthe from Bière Artisanale Artzner. Possibly the most boring of all the beers I tried but there was nothing wrong with it. Aroma of cereal grains and caramel, again a slight sour fizz. I was surprised that it was not very carbonated, the level was just right. It was a little on the thin side but that just makes it easier to drink. At 4.6 % you could have a session on it if you like, it's not less interesting than many a English pale ale.
Lastly bring us full circle back to the brewery I started with.
Fleurac La Noire is oozing with character. On the nose I got plenty of prunes and muscovado. In the mouth? Coffee and lots of it. The finish is slightly spicy with a hint of liquorice. I would almost think there was coffee in the beer but there is no mention. A lovely beer and I wish I had grabbed the rest of the Fleurac beers to bring home with me.

And that's it. A long day drinking beer in an absolute gem of a drinking establishment. It was new years eve so we eventually ended up in The Frog and Rosbif as I already mentioned.

* I have referred to "the girl" a few times. I think her name was Cécile and I got the impression she owns the place. Anyway she is very helpful and clearly loves beer.


*1 We actually arrived before opening, we were told we could go in and look around but we decided to go to lunch. Unfortunately we made an error in lunch destination and picked a restaurant at the end of the street that like to rip you off. I contested the bill and got some money back, I was still short by €5 by my reckoning but by then it was past time we got to Brewberry.


So under no circumstances should you eat in L'Atlantide. Not unless you are a local as they will probably rip you off otherwise. The food was fine (Moules-frites) though.