Rolling Rock flashbacks

I remember when I first caught sight of a bottle of Rolling Rock beer, imported from the USA, in a Perivale off-licence. It was probably some time in the early 1990s. This was a powerful exomnesia moment, a sense of nostalgia for something I knew I couldn't have normally remembered from this life.

The label was printed in white paint onto the green bottle; the pony's head, the cross-hatched plinth, above all the green, the exact shade of green, contrasting with the white and the blue. The typeface. Everything. An absolute guaranteed purchase.

But the taste? Did the taste summon immediate 'PAFF!' moment qualia flashbacks? Well, nothing memorable. Nothing as memorable as my first swing of Jever Pilsener, Worthington's White Shield (sadly killed off by the corporate bastards that owned it in 2023 after 194 years) or AleBrowar's King of Hop, for example. And yet, look at it. So familiar. Somehow this summer, I have been getting flashbacks to Rolling Rock beer. Yesterday, three. Is it the green of the forest that I see from my kitchen window at this time of year? Is it the green of the landscape through which I stroll?

Rolling Rock (which features in three of my flashback-dream accounts and short stories) was brewed between 1939 and 2006 in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. After that, Anheuser-Busch shifted production to Newark. But before that, in 1987, Canadian brewery, Labatt, bought the Rolling Rock brand from the Sundor Group, which had bought it from the founding family two years earlier. Labatt in turn was swallowed up in several more corporate mergers, each diluting the meaning, the relevance and the uniqueness of what originally made the brand what it was. Labatt introduced Rolling Rock to the UK market, around the time that it rebranded the Hammersmith Odeon rock venue as Labatt's Apollo.

So by the time I first tasted Rolling Rock, the visual branding might have been familiar, but the taste had drifted. Taste is a powerful memory jogger. I remember my first taste of coriander (cilantro), chorizo, pesto, and feeling instant familiarity. But not here. Early postwar Americana was not on the tip of my tongue. Today's Rolling Rock is brewed elsewhere; corporate owners no longer insisting that the bottled beer is brewed in glass tanks.

But how did Rolling Rock once taste? I prompted Google Gemini to come up with a recipe that would conjure up the precise qualia sensation of sipping a Rolling Rock back in the 1940s. The answer was surprising. Mixing Asahi Super Dry and bottled Heineken. Rolling Rock was unusual in that it was brewed not only from malted barley and hops, but also with adjuncts of maize ('corn') and... rice. Bottled Heineken would offer the "light, fruity, tang of dimethyl sulphide".  Served not too cold, either. So... "Mixing Heineken (bottle) with Asahi Super Dry creates a blend that effectively engineers-out the parts of both beers you don't want, while combining the traits needed to mimic mid-century Rolling Rock". 

ChatGPT is more specific: "I would expect the optimal blend to contain considerably more Asahi than Heineken. Heineken supplies some characteristics that Asahi lacks: a fuller malt centre, light fruity fermentation character and a grassy, slightly herbal bitterness. Asahi supplies the leaner body, pale colour, adjunct character and very dry finish. Heineken is an all-malt lager, while the current European-market Asahi Super Dry uses barley malt and maize starch. Try two parts Asahi to one part Heineken. That should soften Asahi’s rather severe, carbonic dryness, introduce a little rounded malt and herbal hop character and remain lighter and less distinctly European-tasting than a 50:50 blend. There is one important limitation. Neither beer provides the maize-and-rice combination of classic Rolling Rock. Asahi contributes maize starch but not enough rice in the current UK/European formulation; Heineken contributes no adjunct grain at all. The mixture might therefore approximate the weight, attenuation and bitterness, but not precisely the old beer’s faint mixture of corn sweetness and rice-derived lightness."

So there we have it! I shall have to try it out; Heineken is universally available in Poland (the corporation owns Grupa Żywiec), and Asahi Super Dry can be sourced in Warsaw if I look hard enough.

I shall let you know if any metaphysical magic takes me back to Kentucky or Ohio of 1950.

This time four years ago:
Sunset mysticism

This time seven years ago:
You've either got or you haven't got style

This time eight years ago:
Total eclipse of the moon, Warsaw

This time ten years ago:
'Others' vs. 'Our others'

This time 11 year:
Reducing inequality in Polish society

This time 13 years ago:
Llanbedrog beach

This time 15 years ago:
The Accursed Soldiers - a short story

This time 16 years ago:
Driving impressions of the Toyota Yaris
[Son still driving it to this day!]

This time 18 years ago:
Poland's dry summer

This time 19 years ago:
The UK's wettest summer ever

Local hellos and a farewell for 2024

A short post about what's changed in my neighbourhood over the past 12 months.

Pavement along ul. Wolska (below): excellent news for local walkers, especially on misty winter evenings. Road safety and civilisation go hand in hand. This gives me a new way to walk to/from the shops – longer than along ul. Wspólna; more paces. 

New way between Machcin II and Adamów Rososki: the situation where a local thoroughfare is both a public right of way and also private land might have been resolved, with a new track carved out from scrubland. parallel to the disputed one. Still unclear as to whether this will become an access road to a new house, or a long-term solution to the right of way issue.

The former BP petrol station on ulica Grójecka (otherwise known as the DK50) finally opened as a TransOil station in April. No real change over what was there before – I guess the same operator with a different franchisor. Same assortment in the shop; locals say petrol prices here are cheaper than in other petrol stations. Below: awaiting the green light to open, late 2023.

New housing: at least four new house-starts in my immediate vicinity this year, though only one is nearing completion. All are detached dwellings on their own plots. One exception lies further north, in Sułkowice – a four-story block of flats between the railway station and police-dog school (below). Construction started in the spring; interesting to see when the first residents move in.

A goodbye-hello this year to certain roofs in Grobice. Storm Boris hit Central Europe on 14 September bringing deadly floods to Czechia and the south-west corner of Poland. Here, a bizarre situation. In the neighbouring village of Grobice, a localised wind of intense energy tore the roofing off five or six houses and barns, and hurled garden furniture all over the place. Passing through today, I can report that repair work is almost complete, though the scaffolding is still up.

VeloMazovia: Signs have appeared indicating a new long-distance cyclepath for the south of the province. However, there's still no information online as to how it connects up, or how far it will go. Left: the route as it goes through Sułkowice, along ul. Ogrodowa, over the DK50, then along Chynów's ul. Główna. Then down to Warka? Find out soon!

Christmas lights in Chynów. Not much I know, but another spark of local pride, another reason to be cheerful at this dark time of year. And no need to translate the slogan – a sign of increased openness!

Luxor Kebab opened in October on ul. Parkowa, giving Chynów its first sit-down restaurant since the J&B Snack Bar closed in the summer of 2022. Three point five stars as per Google Guides – bez szału (no big deal). Not the best, but far from the worst I've eaten – but it's here! I go for the medium beef kebab with spicy sauce in thin pita bread, 22 złotys.

Discovering the forest west of Hipolitów and Sułkowice: not anything new, but a magical place that I only discovered this year; an unusual landscape featuring eskers (below). More here, here and here.

Farewell to Browar Perun? In summer, a neighbour told me that the local craft brewery in Budziszyn had gone over to part-time production, with workers laid off. Asking about its fate in Piwnica Konesera in Chynów, I was told that indeed the brewery has closed for good. This sad news is not shared by the Perun website as of today's date. In my time, I have supped back some truly excellent beers from this place. The key to survival in this business is good distribution (check out just how many restaurants sell wine by Winnica Turnau).

This time last year:
An Alternative Theology

This time two years ago:
From the Long Review of 2022, Pt IV

This time three years ago:
S2 tunnel under Ursynów opens

This time four years ago:
The first year of Covid-19

This time five years ago:
Last night in Ealing, twenty-teens
[A strangely prophetic post, suitably dream-like in quality]

This time six years ago:
The Day the World Didn't End

This time nine years ago:
Hybrid driving - the verdict

This time 11 years ago:
Pitshanger Lane in the sun

This time 15 years ago:
Miserable, grey, wet London

This time 16 years ago:
Parrots in Ealing

This time 17 years ago:
Heathrow to Okęcie

Drinking on the move

So here's the plan. I walk 15km from the działka to Warka station, catch an InterCity train with a bar wagon, buy myself a beer - and alight at Piaseczno just 22 minutes (32km) up the line. 

With the modernisation of the Warsaw-Radom line complete, there are now four pairs of PKP InterCity trains linking Kraków and Olsztyn calling at Radom and Warsaw on the way, along with other stations. Among the 23 stops along the route, conveniently, are Warka and Piaseczno. 

The four Kraków-Olsztyn trains are all named (Żeromski, Sienkiewicz, Kolberg and Orłowicz - the first two being famous Polish authors - the second two? Who knows?) and are operated by modern Dart rolling stock - which means there's always a bar. Other InterCity trains formed from conventional carriages pulled along by locomotives may or (more usually) may not have restaurant wagons. 

Below: the bar car of the Żeromski passing the end of my road on its way to Olsztyn, having left Kraków just before 7am. That's where I intend to be... in the bar car of the Kolberg, passing the end of my road.

... And indeed - here I am. Skipping forward four hours, this is the reverse shot - my road flashing by, snapped from the Kolberg's bar car (below). The red dot on the roadway is where I was standing when I took the above shot.

But that's jumping the narrative a bit - back to the walk to Warka. 

I set off from Jakubowizna as the Kolberg departs from Kraków Główny station. This will give me just under four hours; a comfortable stroll without having to hoof it, with time for a sandwich lunch along the way. I check the weather - I should be able to dodge the showers...

Below: leaving Jakubowizna, under a cloud. My journey will be parallel to the railway line for most of the way, preferable to busy roadsides.

Below: new asphalt along ulica Kolejowa, heading away from Chynów towards Krężel, the next station along the line.

Below: fields, orchards and forests, gently undulating landscape all the way to Warka and the river Pilica. Ancestral lands. My roots, man.

Below: a southbound Koleje Mazowieckie train departs from Krężel. Saturday traffic; a handful of people get on, three passengers get off. Bicycles, shopping bags, what have you. 

The trail continues unbroken with the exception of a short stretch that required walking along the tracks to avoid going through someone's backyard before reaching a local level crossing. From then, onward along more new asphalt towards Michalczew (below).

Below: eternal rural Poland, that has for centuries shrugged off invaders, occupants and oppressors. It abides. Michalczew.

Below: Michalczew station. The heavy clouds dropped rain ahead of me, and behind me, but I stayed warm and dry all the way. New asphalt where once was an unpaved farm track, new platforms where once stood little more than a pile of bricks

Below: south of Michalczew, the asphalt runs out, and a reminder of what it was like before the modernisation of the line; mud, puddles and ruts. A new Koleje Mazowieckie Impuls train runs northwards up towards Warsaw.

Below: the main Chynów-Warka road crosses the line at a recently modernised level crossing between Michalczew and Gośniewice stations. The remaining third of my walk will be along the main road between Chynów and Warka.

Below: quiet at the moment, but drivers, they do rush, and there's no pavement. This stretch was, until recently, paved with hexagonal concrete slabs - really unpleasant to ride a motorbike over.

Below: one station north of Warka - Gośniewice. Two staggered platforms set among orchards and fields, a station serving a village of 219 souls. I take a short diversion here from the main road, and have a short break to eat and check Google Maps. From here, it's just 47 minutes' walk from Warka station. No need to hurry. And look! Here comes the Sienkiewicz, right on time, on its way to Olsztyn.

Below: Is this Kansas? Are we in Ohio? No, this is the road into Warka. A town famous for brewing, a tradition that goes back to the 15th century. The modern brewery (right) is part of the Żywiec Group, which is turn belongs to Heineken. A little further along the road and I turn off into ulica Piwna (lit. 'beery street') and the station's just around the corner. But as I wrote recently, Warka station is a long way from the centre of Warka. Visible (just about) on the horizon, the statue commemorating Polish airmen who fought on all fronts during World War Two.

After three hours and a quarter hours of walking including a 10-minute break, I reach Warka station.  Waiting on the platform, I watch the progress of the Kolberg in real time on the Portal Pasażera app.

Punctually, it pulls in to the platform. 

I make for the door of the bar car, hop on, head straight for the counter and order a beer - (Śmietanka - a wheat beer from Browar Jan Olbracht Rzemieślniczy craft brewery in Piotrków Trybunalski). Cheers! Note the small glass - the big ones have all been used between Kraków and Radom and are sitting in the dishwasher. And the brewery's beer-bottle labels are all drawn by Polish cartoonist Andrzej Mleczko. Incidentally, śmietanka means cream, whilst śmietana means sour cream. The landscape comes out better with a glass of cold beer. Cheers.

It slips down a treat - the 22-minute journey is too short for a second, too short for any metaphysical contemplations of passing scenery, but the effect is there. Drinking in trains is a pleasure I first experienced when making my way to university interviews while still at school - to Lancaster, Canterbury, Norwich, Colchester and Warwick. A beer in the buffet car would transport me to ethereal realms of imagination and artistic insights... Alcohol (in moderation of course) and rail journeys go hand in hand.

As I sup up, the guard announces that the next station stop will be Piaseczno; the train starts to slow down. The pleasure is not cheap; the beer cost 15.90 złotys (£2.80), whilst the InterCity ticket cost 10.50 złotys (£1.85) and the train back to Chynów from Piaseczno (19km on Koleje Mazowieckie) 6.76 złotys (£1.20). A grand day out!

While crossing the footbridge to the get to the southbound platform at Piaseczno for the train home, I catch the following snippet of conversation between Pan Heniek and Pan Ziutek, both extremely refreshed:

"Znasz się na malarstwie?" [Do you know about painting?]

"Muszę kurwa coś zjeść." [I have to fucking eat something.]

"ALE ZNASZ SIĘ NA MALARSTWIE?" [repeated in an insistent, aggressive tone]

Just as in English, 'malarstwo' (painting) can mean decorating or art history. I never did find out whether Heniek wanted to know whether Ziutek could help out with painting an old lady's kitchen, or whether he needed a critical eye evaluating a still-life rescued from a skip, or to see whether Ziutek could engage in a meaningful discussion about Cubism with someone whose first reaction won't be "Fidel Castro".

POSTSCRIPT: It has occurred to me that I've walked all the way from my office in central Warsaw to Warka this year - from Świętokrzyska to Wilanowska, from Wilanowska to Jeziorki, Jeziorki to Jakubowizna, Jakubowizna to Warka, from Warka to the far bank of the Pilica river before Warka Miasto was built.

This time four years ago:
Grodzisk Mazowiecki revisited

This time five years ago:
S7 extension - last summer of quiet (not true, as it happened!)

This time six years ago:
Getting out of Mordor

This time 12 years ago:
Ćwilin, conquered

This time 13 years ago:
Sunset across the tracks, Nowa Iwiczna

This time 14 years ago:
The storm the forecasters missed

This time 15 years ago:
Peacocks in the Park

My local craft brewery!

Yesterday evening, I treated myself to a bottle of Licho nie śpi ('The evil one does not sleep'), an oatmeal stout, 5.2% ABV. From Browar Perun (browar = brewery), home to such other favourites of mine as Topór Peruna ('The Thunder-God's Axe'), a Polish IPA, 8.2% ABV (strong!) and Braggot, a barleywine, 12.4% ABV (really strong, but smaller bottle).

This morning, about to put the bottle into the recycling bin, I noticed the brewery's address - the postcode started with a 05-. Same as Jakubowizna... So glasses on to read the label - WOW! it turns out that the Perun brewery is located in Budziszyn, a mere 6.7km (4.2 miles) from where I'm eating breakfast. I dig deeper into the recycling bin and find three bottles of Topór Peruna - this summer's most-drunk craft beer on my działka. And one Braggot. And a Behemot Bafomet by Browar Perun, a Russian Imperial Stout (11.6% ABV). Must have blown my mind that one, as I have no recollection of having drunk it!

I decided to see the brewery (if only from the road, as it's closed on Sundays). After a morning visit from Student SGH, whose Politics, Economy, Society blog is the only English-language blog about life in Poland still going strong on my sidebar (after 11 and half years), I set off.

I reach my destination in just ten minutes! Passing Chynów and Edwardów, there it is (below), just past the sign marking the end of Budziszyn village, on the left heading south towards Warka. It might be a Sunday, but there are signs of life within - busy people evidently. Opened in 2017, same year that I bought Jakubowizna.

Great! Having located it, I shall visit during the working week and acquire a few bottles. But it's a Sunday... Which means that Piwnica Konesera ('the Connoisseur's Cellar') in Chynów is open (if nothing else, other than the petrol station). And here I can find a wide range of Browar Perun beers on offer. And so, on my motorbike with only a small rucksack, I buy a small selection. Noc Kupały (Slavonic feast of Midsummer's Night), a Polish Extra Foreign Stout (6.4% ABV). [Is it extra-foreign, or Polish-extra? Don't know - hyphens don't say.] Another Licho nie śpi and another Topór Peruna (both reliable), and a Behemoth Sol Invictus, a dunkel bock (koźlak).

I have the Noc Kupały with my supper. Excellent. Richer, stronger and more... rounded... than a Guinness.

In my worldview, beer should be brewed near where it is to be consumed. The idea of carting beer around the planet, burning fossil fuels to get it to distant consumers is wrong. And brewing as a global corporate activity does not breed genuine diversity of taste. Beers should be brewed by people whose passion is brewing - not by accountants, whose business is selling brands to please the shareholder, by offering beers that appeal to the broadest number of consumers. Lowest common denominator determined by focus group.

Small breweries, such as Perun (logo: Slavonic god's face, hop for beard, wheat for hair) are the future. 

Please do try Perun's varied and fascinating beers - I shall be delving deeper into their board of fare.

This time 10 years ago:
Time to change gear.

This time 11 years ago:

Spidery autumn

This time 12 years ago:
Early, cold start to autumn

Hops there for the taking!

I wrote about this last year and last week - it's that time of year again, when hops - wild hops - are growing in profusion around Jeziorki. I came across this bunch growing on a road sign on the corner of ul. Nawłocka and Dawidowska. On Saturday, I went there with a pair of secateurs and snipped about three kilo of plant down off the post, took it home and cone by cone removed the hops off their vines.

Now the interesting part - making a hop-based non-alcoholic infusion.

A bit of trial and error - make it too strong, and you can dilute it with mineral water, cold and sparkling. Difficult to go wrong, unless you let the pan boil dry. I took the biggest pan to hand, filled it with hop cones and five litres of water. Bring to boil, then simmer for half an hour. Allow to cool.

Then strain, through the finest sieve you have. Pour carefully so as not to waste any, then decant into bottles.

Left: this concept is on the market - Nachmielona Hoptimum by Browar Nepomucen. A half-litre of this beverage (0% alcohol, 0 calories) is available for 5zł online. If you have access to hops, you can make this yourself for the cost of the energy needed to boil then simmer the infusion. From the hops you can see in the photo at the top of the page (plus the ones you can't round the back of the sign), I made nearly six litres of concentrate, which when mixed 50/50 with sparkling mineral water (such as my favourite Muszynianka) gives you 12 litres of hoppy beverage that would cost you 60 złots to buy commercially.

How does it taste? A bit like grapefruit peel and newly-mown grass cuttings - in other words, planty bitterness. Nice, I like!

This time last year:
Two weeks and two days of travel

This time two years ago:
Final end to a local landmark

This time seven years ago:
Independence Day

This time eight years:
Out and about in Jeziorki

This time nine years ago:
Funeral of Lt. Cmdr. Tadeusz Lesisz

This time ten years ago:
Puławska by night

Polish beer cans - new stuff has come to light

Back in Ealing, enjoying the sunshine and earliest intimations of spring while walking around Pitshanger Park, up towards St Mary's church, Perivale, along the footpaths that cross Ealing golf club and back to my father's house. I notice something new (and I've lived here since 1970) - rats. Rats along the riverbank, rats on the golf course footpath, rats in the park. Great big, plump rats - the size of squirrels - much bigger than pet rats one can buy. "Did you realise this gaff's overrun with rodents?" Bit of a shock - at first sight, I thought it was indeed a grey squirrel with a a bad case of ogonopsypsypoza - but no man, this was more like a large grey rat. Will the council react? Or has the natural ecosystem of the banks of the River Brent been altered for good? I repeat - I've been coming here for 47 and a bit years and I've never - not once - seen a rat. Today - five sightings. (Having said that, my father says he has seen rats around here, many times.)

This is but a preamble. Litter, food remains - rats being feral, are attracted to the stuff. While walking the golf course footpaths, I came across many discarded beer cans. Nothing unusual, there have always been a great many here. Last summer there was a big tidy-up courtesy of the golf club, on whose property the cans tend to be tossed. But they are returning. And to my eye, what grates the most is the ubiquitous presence of Lech, Tyskie, Żywiec and Warka cans - Polish brands representing about two-thirds of all the beer cans strewn around this picturesque walk.

Before you accuse me of slandering the Polish nation, let me share with you a few observations.

Last December, I was in West Ealing, and walking down Melbourne Avenue I saw a group of inebriates, two men and one woman, hammering down the Warka Strong outside the library. Time - around 10:30 am. I assumed they were my fellow countrymen. They were not. I heard guttural accents from Glasgow; I was surprised by their choice of tipple.

A few days later, I was in Lublin, where I was in meetings with two of Poland's largest wholesalers of food to the 800 or so Polski skleps across the UK. Very successful and dynamically growing businesses. But there were two areas of trade that neither would touch - alcohol and tobacco. The owners of both firms told me that smuggling of both into the UK was rife, and that honest businesses (these guys are both way too big to attract the wrong kind of attention from HMRC) avoid cigarettes and beer.

But these commodities make their way into Britain's retail networks - via family-owned convenience stores, where low price works its magic. Brands that were once the exclusive preserve of Pan Heniek and Pan Ziutek, Sebek and Franek, have now made their way into the wider substance-abuse community across Britain.

My assumption - that the only people in the UK who drink tins of Polish beer are Poles - is wrong.

I have heard several times - in Manchester, in Derby, in Edinburgh - that for British teenagers, Polish beer is an attractive choice because it is a) strong, b) sweet and c) cheap. Cheap if it has come into the UK via an illegal route, cheap if excise duty is not paid on it, cheap if it's bought cash-in-hand from a dodgy outlet.

The Polish wholesalers in Lublin said that today many Polski skleps are owned by non-Poles, who bought out the original Polish entrepreneurs who founded the business, based on a supply chain out of Poland and loyal local shoppers. Greek Cypriots, Turks, Kurds, Indians, Pakistanis - there's a wide range of nationalities who today run shops serving the large central and eastern European populations of the UK. Indeed, last summer, I popped into Jay's Superstore off Northfields Avenue, ('Newsagents, Groceries, Off Licence, Polski Sklep') to buy my father some Polish bread, and discovered that it was owned by a Sikh. Full range of Polish products. Now, not being a fan of Lech, Żywiec, Warka or Tyskie (why drink any of these when Poland has become a centre of high-quality craft brewing), I can't say whether these particular brands were being offered by Jay.

[UPDATE 01.03.2018: The explosion in Leicester which killed five people last Sunday happened at a Polski sklep, a Żabka,owned by Aram Kurd. None of the people who died in the blast were Polish.]

My point is this. Polish beer can only compete with local brews if the cost of transporting it a thousand miles is countered by a competitive price at point of sale. This is why excise duty levied on beer makes sense - to prevent the futile transportation of a low-value, high-volume commodity to a country with higher production costs from one with lower production costs. But avoid paying that duty... and the consumer will find you.

The corollary to this is that because you see a discarded Polish beer can in the gutter on a park bench or in a school garden, there is no reason to automatically assume that if was left there by a Polish migrant. So there.

This time two years ago:
Lent, a time to cleanse and reflect

This time four years ago:
It was 50 years ago today... Beatles arrive in New York

This time five years ago:
Adventures in the Screen Trade - the truth about Hollywood

This time six years ago:
The sad end of Andrzej J.

This time eight years ago:
Today's dose of wintery gorgeousness

This time ten years ago:
First intimations of spring

All hopped up and ready to go

As I've expressed here in the past, I just love the hoppy taste of India Pale Ales, the craft beer revolution has delighted me. In London, my father stocks up with Lidl's own-brand IPA, Hatherwood's No. 2 Green Gecko, a consistently decent ale with good bitterness. Here in Warsaw, the profusion of craft-beer pubs (last week the London Boys had a get-together at Drugie Dno on Nowogrodzka) means my predilection for hoppy ales can be satisfied on a night out. I stuck to a beer called Modern Drinking from the Pinta brewery, and very good it was too.

Over Lent I was wondering when someone would come up with an alcohol-free IPA. And sure enough, I found this in Auchan...

Na-chmiel-ona. Hoptimum, by brewer Nepomucen, from Jutrosin (which lies between Rawicz and Krotoszyn). It has 0% alcohol, zero sugar, carbohydrates or gluten. It is simply hops and water. It is, however, not cheap, costing over 6zł, for a refreshing, thirst-quenching and very grown-up beverage.

Now this gave me an idea. Surely it is not beyond my wits to construct something similar? As it happens, round the corner there's a działka with some hops growing over the chain-link fence adjoining the pavement. Will these be harvested in coming days? The hop cones are big and ripe. I help myself to a few that are overhanging the footpath, so that I can conduct an experiment...

Around 20 hop cones. Half a litre of water. Nothing else. Boil vigorously for 30 minutes in a pan with lid. After half an hour, remove from heat, strain and allow to cool. The half-litre has reduced down to around 300ml of hoppy extract, which is mightily strong. This can be diluted with around four parts fridge-cold sparkling mineral water to one part hop extract. The result is something that has that the bitterness of IPA without any of the alcohol. And a taste that lingers around the mouth and tongue, refreshing, clean and sharp.

Medicinal properties of hops? Read this. So there we are - how to get the hoppy taste without the alcohol. Now - where to buy larger quantities of hops!

This time two years ago:
September song

This time four year ago:
A traveller's tale (reading this shows how fast Poland has progressed in transport infrastructure)

This time five years ago:
One for the record - hot September day (30C)

This time six years ago:
MOSTTOMOST

This time seven years ago:
The half-closed airport

This time eight years ago:
Last of the summer bike rides to work?

This time nine years ago:
My own Polish Adlestrop

This time ten years ago:
Laurie Anderson's chillingly prescient 'O Superman'

Polish India Pale Ales - the taste of now

Back in 2009, I bemoaned the state of brewing in Poland. Totally dominated by the Big Three brewers (SAB Miller, Carlsberg and Heineken), Polish breweries produced samey products aimed at a focus-group defined market of young drinkers considered to like their beer sweet, strong and cheap. There was hardly anything else around. So I did not drink Polish beer.

But then, sometime around 2012, the Craft Brewing revolution began to take root in Poland. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, a new breed of brewer emerged offering uncompromising products, not brewed down to a price, nor designed to appeal to everyone and no one. I remember my first glass of Polish craft ale - King of Hop by Ale Browar. And my second - Atak Chmielu by Pinta. Tastes that haunted me overnight and left me waking up the next morning wanting more of that taste.

By last year, Warsaw was full of excellent craft-beer bars.

The craft brewers are successfully going mainstream, making the leap from small hipster bars to the hypermarkets. At first it was regional brewers whose products were starting to appear on the big retailers' shelves. Novelty terms like 'unpasteurised', 'cold-filtered' or 'regional'  began to make their way onto beer bottle labels. Wheat beers, March beers, porters - and above all India Pale Ales (IPAs). Suddenly the days when 'choice' meant Żywiec, Okocim, Lech or Tyskie were mercifully over.

With Lent out of the way for another year, and warmer days ahead, it's beer time. I visited Auchan at the weekend, just after its internal reorganisation, to find the beer shelves extended yet again, and the 'premium domestic' section bigger than ever before. And here, the choice of India Pale Ales has grown yet again.

First there was Browar Witnica's IPA. Then came Kormoran's American IPA (not shown). Now, I find a further three, from Ale Browar, Perun and Browar Konstancin. These beers retail for between 6 and 8 złotys, so similar prices to the UK for a half-litre presentation. But more than double the price of regular beers.

"Honestly, I've only had a few ales..."

My favourite of these is Rowing Jack from Ale Browar; 6.0% ABV and 70 IBU (International Bitterness Units, the measure of that hoppiness that gives IPAs that satisfying flavour). The label is up-to-the-minute (compare how dated the Konstancin IPA label on the right looks), the taste existentially satisfying. Actually all four (and indeed the Kormoran ale) do it for me. These are all excellent beers, brewed in Poland, beers that can give the best of British craft brewing a run for its money.

A big thumbs-down, however, to Lidl - it's 'surprise and delight' strategy is just not working when it comes to beers. In the  UK, Hatherwood's Green Gecko No. 2 IPA (contract-brewed by Marston's) is generally available in Lidl stores. Here in Poland, Lidl's beer section is woeful - more like a museum of Polish beer-retailing from circa 2007. Left behind. Lidl's Argus own-brand beers in Poland come from south of the border the Czech Republic, though I suspect Poles are drinking what Lidl believes they like, namely the sweet, strong, cheap brews that the Big Three make here. I recently bought an Argus Porter (8% ABV); it was so sickly-sweet that only my penny-pinching miserliness prevented me from tipping the contents down the sink. Imagine a super-strong version of Mackeson's Milk Stout... Lidl might do well at selling reasonable red wines at an amazingly low price (I commend its South African Shiraz-Cabernet Sauvignon for example), but the beer selection is dire.

If you want choice in beer, Auchan's the supermarket to visit. If you want an even greater choice in beer, there are more and more specialist beer (and cider) shops opening up across Warsaw, including two on Ursynów's Al. KEN.

This time last year:
Lublin - pearl of Poland's East

This time three years ago:
70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

This time four years ago:
Tarkovsky's Stalker: a zone of my own

This time five years ago:
Warsaw's big billboards

This time seven years ago:
Pace of development falters

This time nine years ago:
Unusual formation of mammatus clouds over Jeziorki

The spread of craft beers - not just central Warsaw

A big thanks to Tim and Andrzej at RSK for suggesting a visit to Mam Ochotę, a klubokawiarnia in Ochota (which sounds like a suburb of Tokyo but in fact is Warsaw's Kensington). Not the very epicentre of the city, but a few bus stops to the south-west. Ochota literally means 'willingness' or 'desire'; mam ochotę literally means 'I want' or 'I fancy'. (A trendy Warsaw bar these days has to have a name with a double meaning - like PiwPaw or Same Krafty)

So, fancying a craft beer, we popped by for an ale or two. The revolution has spread beyond the city centre; although there was no artisan brew on tap, there was a fair selection of bottled ales from small regional breweries around Poland, many various brewing styles.

We plumped for two beers (above), Serce Dębu (literally 'oak heart') from Perun, brewed by the Zodiak brewery in Piaseczno, an American brown ale, 5.5% abv, a complex and multi-layered beer, a good mouthful with lingering aftertaste. Not as hoppy as an IPA, but richly rewarding. The second, Kujawskie, by the Krajan brewery from the Kujawsko-Pomorskie province, was intriguing, not for any intrinsic reason other than its taste gave me an instant flashback to the Polish beers exported to the UK in the 1980s. Żywiec used to taste like this before Big Brewing got its corporate hands on the process. Malty rather than hoppy, strong too at 6.0% abv.

We debated whether the Polish word for malt, słód, formed the etymological origin of the adjective słodkie ('sweet') [Wiktionary suggests that this is indeed the case.] In the days before sugar (cane or beet) became readily available in Poland, malt - germinating cereal grains - for brewing would have been (besides honey and fruit) the sweetest taste commonly encountered.

I must say I prefer my beers bitter and hoppy than malty and sweet, but the latter style is more prevalent in Polish brewing. Andrzej, who hails from Lower Silesia, made the connection between beer-drinking and coal-mining; a miner who'd spent a whole shift underground extracting coal would emerge dehydrated; drinking a litre and half of beer would always be preferable to the same amount of water or to a smaller amount of wine or spirits.

It is good that beer is experiencing a renaissance in Poland. Back in the late 1980s, in the dying days of the communist system, you'd go into a bar and ask naively for a beer - the inevitable answer from the sarky waitress was "we didn't have any beer, we don't have any beer, we won't have any beer". As soon as democracy was re-established the Polish Beer-Lovers' Party won 16 seats in the first parliamentary elections held in 1991. Small local breweries took off, beer drinking took hold in Poland. But the big, multinational brewing conglomerates had an eye on emerging markets like Poland with a large population, rapidly rising GDP and a lot of coal miners. So within 20 years, the Big Three (SABMiller, Heineken and Carlsberg) had a virtual monopoly of the Polish beer market, turning out beers like Tyskie, Lech, Żywiec, Warka Strong and Okocim that all tasted and looked the same, lacked character or conviction.

The revolution started a few years back - the big brewers were (and are) losing market share as regional breweries and craft brewers bounded back with interesting tastes, different styles, made by people with a passion rather than a focus on the bottom line and quarterly profits.

But step outside the metropolis, and you'll be hard-pressed to find this variety in a bar. Yesterday Śródmieście, today Ochota, tomorrow Piaseczno? And who knows - Jeziorki?

This time last year:
The Holocaust and the banality of evil

This time two years ago:
Snow scene into the sun

This time three years ago:
More winter gorgeousness

This time four years ago:
New winter wear - my M65 Parka

This time five years ago:
Winter and broken-down trains

This time six years ago:
General Mud claims ul. Poloneza

This time seven years ago:
Just when I thought winter was over...

On beer, consumer choice, and the Meaning of Life

Last night the boys from Błękitna Trójka (Third Polish Scout Troop from 1970s London) went for a beer or four at the PiwPaw on ul. Foksal, the splendid multi-tap bar boasting no fewer than 95 different beers on tap. This evening, a smaller delegation from the office visited the original PiwPaw on ul Parkingowa after work, which has a mere 50 different beers on tap.

These two bars are taking the multi-tap concept (as seen in Kufle i Kapsle on ul. Nowogrodzka and Cuda na kiju in the old communist party headquarters on Rondo de Palma) to new levels. Not 12 or 16 beers, but three times - eight times - more. Still, 12 different quality craft beers made by brewers passionate about making something memorable and excellent is a huge advance over what was the norm even three years ago. (Let us recall just how dire the beer was five years ago...)

The days when going for a beer meant a meagre choice between a small handful of mass-produced beers - made by industrial breweries and tailored for an aggregated consumer, defined by focus groups, produced down to a price not up to a standard - are over.

'PiwPaw' needs to be explained to non-Polish speakers. 'Pif-paf' is the onomatopoeic equivalent of the playground 'bang-bang' suggesting gun fire. The pronunciation 'peev-puv' and 'peef-puf' are almost identical. But there's another meaning. 'Piw' is the genitive plural of piwo (beer) - 'of the beers', or beers'. 'Paw' means peacock. So Piw Paw can mean 'The Peacock of Beers' or 'The beers' peacock'. As we can see in the logo (below).

The PiwPaw on Foksal has a range of ciders and perries at one end of the bar, dark porters and stouts at the other, and a wide spectrum of top- and bottom-fermented lagers, light ales, India Pale Ales and bitters in between. The PiwPaw on Parkingowa has a smaller range, though still massive by any measure (plus many bottled beers, so should you be unable to find what you like). You may think that all these unpasteurised* beers with their short shelf life would go off before the barrel's drained - but these bars are so wildly popular even on weekdays that the turnover of stock is satisfactory. [In stark contrast to the multitaps are traditional city-centre watering holes offering Lech-Żywiec-Tyskie; such places are either half-empty or totally dead.]

Helping you get that particular flavour, there's the option of a 1zł (18p) taster, a shot-glass filled with a beer sample. Try several, then buy a half-litre of the one(s) you fancy. Below: Atak Chmielu, ('hop attack') by Pinta, is a favourite of mine (along with King of Hop by AleBrowar). On the bar at PiwPaw on Foksal; in the background you can see around one-quarter of all the beer taps of this establishment.

Choice is what it's all about. The bar staff have been well trained in the stock; if you are after an American IPA with a high IBU (International Bitterness Units), you will be informed what does the trick. The Invisible Hand of the Free Market, which over the years has been denying choice through increasingly oligopolistic practices, has suddenly flipped and said to the consumer - sorry, this has been an anomaly, it's time to redress the imbalance.

Standing at the bar with a half-litre of Ox Bile, a beer from brewers Haust in Zielona Góra with an extraordinarily high IBU of 104, and a taste of, well, ox bile, I pondered on what this is all about - adventure, exploration, reaching out to try something new, pushing the envelope, learning. It is not about swilling back yet another meaningless glass of Tyskie. Which tastes like the last glass of Tyskie, which tastes like Lech. Or Okocim or Warka or Żywiec. [Note to bar person: Ox Bile is pronounced 'oks bajl', not 'ox bee-leh']

And how different the Ox Bile was from our previous round - Dupek żołędny, a dark IPA flavoured with... acorns, from Warsaw brewery Bazyliszek. Trying out such varied ales, made by tiny brewers who really care about giving the consumer something extra-special, become an infinitely greater event than just sitting about soaking in whatever product the global corporation thinks is right for our market.

The Meaning of Life? I think I stumbled upon it half-way through the second beer, but by the time I got home, I'm afraid I'd forgotten it.

* Louis Pasteur must be the only scientist to be name-checked for a process he invented and also for a product that has not undergone the process he invented! 

This time last year:
What's Cameron got against us Poles?

The time three years ago:
Anyone still remember the Przybyl case?

This time three years ago:
Wetlands midwinter meltdown

This time four years ago:
Jeziorki rail scenes, winter

This time five years ago:
Winter drivetime, Jeziorki

This time six years ago:
Kraków, a bit of winter sunshine

Shopping for food and dietary update

Competition is a wonderful thing. Now we have a Biedronka 'under the nose', a 12-minute stroll from home, and a Lidl a similar distance away, I cannot say that I have ever been so well provided with retail opportunities in my life. But despite the newcomers, I'm still true to Auchan Piaseczno - 15 minutes from home by bicycle, five by car. The pressure on Auchan is on, and Auchan is responding admirably.

At Biedronka yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to see Lavazza Qualita d'Oro priced at under 19 złotys for 250g - around two less than Auchan was selling it for. Until I visited Auchan today - when I found that the French retailer has responded to the Portuguese retailer's challenge and dropped its price for the product to below 18 złotys.

Same story for apples. Biedronka price for a kilo of excellent Polish apples - 1.75zł. Auchan - a selection of four different varieties of Polish apples all for 1.45zł a kilo.Wherever I look, I can see that products at Auchan are more keenly priced. And there's far more variety. Biedronka has started selling cider - hurray! One type - a brand named Desire. But Auchan now has three bays, each a pallet wide, stacked with around 15 different ciders, domestic and imported. And Auchan has Browar Witnica's staggeringly good Lubuskie IPA, along with over 150 other beers. Lidl, on the other hand, has still to offer a cider among its beverages section, mainly brewed to be cheap and strong.

My recent visits to Lidl have failed to impress; there's now only a handful of things I pop into Lidl for. Its excellent tinned fish, Nixe brand - finest quality mackerel and good tuna at a good price. Unbleached, undyed toilet paper that harms neither your bottom nor the environment. Beefmaster steaks from Biernacki (Biedronka does these too) and superb kiełbasa polska surowa długodojrzewają from Balcerzak.

Biedronka counters with 15-month-old mature cheddar at 4zł less than mature Kerrygold 'cheddar' at Auchan, and a slightly broader range of food products than Lidl. And when it comes to fresh fruit and veg, Biedronka falls behind Auchan. I bought a basket of cherry tomatoes on the vine at Biedronka - they turned out to be Italian and taste-free, nowhere near as good as the organic cherry toms grown by PGO that are the mainstay of Auchan's offering.

Unless an Alma suddenly appears on Karczunkowska, my food shopping needs are well catered for; hugely better than back in 2002 when we moved to Jeziorki.

Meanwhile, a question many people have been asking since January - when will Real supermarkets be rebranded as Auchan? Last week PortalSpożywczy.pl reported that the first Real to open an an Auchan did so in Opole. The rest will follow step by step as Auchan, who have taken over the Real chain from German retail groupMetro AG renegotiate rents with shopping mall operators. It will take a while before the Real in King Cross Ursynów becomes an Auchan. And just seven years ago, the same shop was a Géant, owned by French retail group Casino. Remember?

The Polish food retail scene is consolidating, but it's also moving upmarket. The growing number of small-format deli chains like Piccolo Italia or Kuchnie Świata is encouraging. Polish consumers (urban ones at least) are becoming more discerning and prepared to pay top prices for top products. The single European market is bearing fruit.

Meanwhile, I'm nearly at the end of my short, sharp post-holiday diet. Over the past two weeks, I have been eating only fish, fruit, vegetables, nuts and pulses. No bread, no potatoes, no rice, no pasta. No wheat products whatsoever. No dairy products whatsoever. No meat, no alcohol. It is hard to find variety in such a diet, but shopping at Auchan has allowed me to concoct interesting and tasty meals. I've just had for supper a large bowl of fresh prawns, fried with loads of cherry tomatoes, seasoned with garlic, provençal herbs, chilli peppers, garlic, chives and coriander. Wow. Wonderful stuff.

This has been a tough diet, though nowhere near a tough as the two-week diet that my colleague Marta and her husband Kamil recently underwent. Like mine, though without the fish, pulses, fried foods or coffee. I don't think I could cope with a diet that strict!

Back to normal on Wednesday. Plenty of excellent cheeses await (including a well-aged Pecorino Romano), and a bottle of Weston's Vintage Cider for the evening.

This time last year:
Photos from the Radom Air Show, part 1

This time two years ago:
Offloading PKP's risk at W-wa Jeziorki

This time four years ago:
Time to be stuffing yourself with fresh fruit

This time five years ago:
First notes of autumn in the air

This time seven years ago:
Large spider catches fly