World’s Bitterest Beer?

Are you a huge hop head? Do you crave Humulus Lupulus in your sleep? Maybe you even struggle to wake up after a few “double IPAs” and a night asleep on a hop pillow?!

Well one Oxfordshire brewer has taken on the challenge to create the world’s bitterest beer, and his strategy: yeah you guessed it, he’s thrown a silly amount of hops into his brew.

Pitstop Brewery are hoping to hit the Guinness Book of World Records with their bitter bitter

Pete Fowler of the Pitstop Brewery near Wantage rose to the occasion after a friend reckoned he couldn’t match the bitterness of US craft beers, and in Mr Fowler’s words ‘that was like red rag to a bull’. The beer (or barley wine) has over £100s worth of hops plus additional hop additives for one 9 barrel keg of the beer compared to a usual £5 worth.

Bearing in mind the brewer himself hasn’t tried it yet and is expecting it to be in the region of 500 IBUs* (a theoretical number which scares the pants of my tastebuds) it raises interesting questions on innovation (or should I say ‘innovation’).

Is this an ‘extreme beer’? Or is it simply a boisterous take on the traditional British bitter, tongue in cheek and one finger up to the extremists? Or just a bit of fun?!

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Tactical North Bar Penguin Tasting

Brewdog Tactical Nuclear Penguin - the world's strongest beer

BrewDog Tactical Nuclear Penguin Tasting at North Bar, Leeds

One of the best things I’ve found about living in Leeds, or a larger city for that matter, is the variety of events that take place that you don’t always find in less adventurous urban areas (maybe I was just brought up in a particularly boring town?!).

Zak with the Penguin

In the three years I’ve made Yorkshire’s modern capital my home, I’ve enjoyed Leeds International Film Festival, the West Indian Carnival, the Christkindelmarkt, a couple of League One Play Off Semi Finals and (less fortunately) a huge Robbie Williams concert at Roundhay Park (don’t ask) and countless other dates in the diary that are a feature of dwelling in a cosmopolitan city.

As well as these large scale events it’s actually the smaller opportunities that appeal to me most: being able to see Almodovar films in the ancent Hyde Park Picture house, attending a Flying Dog beer and food evening and the chance to see actual rock stars whilst playing 5-a-side (if you classify relatively obscure post-rock bands as rock stars!).

So when Zak Avery asked me if I’d like to take part in a live video tasting of the newly released and lavishly expensive Tactical Nuclear Penguin by BrewDog, the strongest beer in the world, not only did I jump at the chance but I carved another notch on my list of reasons to live in Leeds… Read the rest of this entry »

The Winners: Sainsbury’s Beer Competition

It feels like I’ve been writing about these Sainsbury’s beers for a long time. To be fair it is, but once I’d started I wasn’t giving up!

The actual competition finished quite a while ago, and it’s probably a good idea to round up what happened.

Barnstorming beer from Bath Ales

In 2008, Sainsbury’s first launched their beer competition. Breweries provided the supermarket giant with their finest new ales, a selection of which would make it through to the final, where the beers would find themselves in stock and on sale in stores nationwide.

The top selling beers would win a nice big order from the Sainsbury’s to be stocked on a permanent basis, a veritable cash cow and holy grail for many brewers.

The first year saw Bath Ales Barnstormer and Doctor Okells IPA (both very good!) take the title.

This year Scottish brewers dominated the challenge, with no less than 7 of the 15 finalists in stores across the country coming from the industrious BrewDog and their contemporaries the brothers William.

Finalists in the 2009 Sainsbury's Beer Competition

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Chaos Theory and the Complexity of Life (and Brewing)

BrewDog Chaos Theory

Complexity in the universe is often based on simple, fundamental rules. We don’t know all of the rules but we understand some of them; however despite this, life is still, at our level, an unpredictable and seemingly random existence.

Deep Simplicity by John (and Mary) Gribbin is one of the best science books and makes my head hurt as much as a few bottles of BrewDog's Chaos Theory does

Chaos theory helps us get our heads around this (and then in the next breath turns our perceptions of ‘thought on its head). It also suggests that systems such as our universe are completely deterministic…in theory. But unfortunately we have to pinpoint the exact starting conditions of the system, which is a little more than tricky when every single tiny particle in our universe system was compacted into an unimaginably small space, a little over 13,700,000,000 years ago (plus or minus about 14 million years!).

This chaotic nature has parallels with the brewing process, where we calculate the mix of initial ingredients, follow strict processes and end up with tasty beer at the end. But we can’t always predict the exact end result and consistency and quality in a brew can be more difficult than just throwing the ingredients together and sticking the heat on.

As you might have guessed there’s a parallel between all this and BrewDog’s last beer in our Sainsbury’s beer competition series. Chaos Theory is an ode to chaos theory (although at 7.1% it doesn’t really help me get my head around the physics much!). Read the rest of this entry »

A big beer day: nuclear penguins, smoking blogs and golden twits

A big beer day

Some days just seem to have everything. Big stories, ferocious debate and your own personal news. Such as yesterday…

In the news, BrewDog pulled another stunt, this one making me laugh out loud and actually consider parting with some of my hard earned cash.

Tactical Nuclear Penguin takes beer naming conventions to a new level and pushes the boundaries of beer production. Whether or not it’s any good I might never know (I’m hoping the other Real Ale Reviews lads will chip in for a bottle as I don’t think I can justify getting one just for myself). But thanks to James and Martin for dressing up in silly costumes and brightening up the beer world for a morning.

Smoking ban - what is the real effect on pubs? Photo by wsogmm

And to the ferocious debate: Is smoking cool? Smoking may look cool when Paul Newman is hustling and Jean-Paul Belmondo is ambling through Parisian streets but it ain’t always cool when you’re trying to eat your tea or sip a pint (or stand at the bus stop on a windy day folks!). There’s a serious health side to still as well as questions of economy and heritage: will the smoking ban contribute to killing traditional pubs off once and for all?

Who knows, I can understand both sides of the argument – I smoked for a 3 or 4 years from the age of 17, giving up when I went to uni (yes, I know it’s weird that way round) – and I can’t stand the smell now. And I much prefer my clothes not reeking of stale smoke the morning after a night out. But I don’t hate smokers or smoking, I respect people’s choice to do it, and I appreciate smokers who are considerate of non-smokers (just like I appreciate drinkers who don’t smash my wing mirrors off and people who are generally nice). I sure hope that the country is a bit healthier because of the ban – but how can we ensure that it doesn’t impact negatively on our pub culture and people’s personal freedoms?

It’s a debate I almost don’t want to get too involved in as I don’t have the solution, and judging from other posts I’m not sure a unilateral agreement is on the cards! So moving swiftly on…

And then in personal news, we had some unexpected success last night, as Real Ale Reviews were awarded not one, but two commendations in the inaugural Golden Twit awards organised by The Drum magazine… Read the rest of this entry »

Artisan beers – beer reviews and X Factor

It all started with an off the cuff comment on Twitter (as so much does these days!). I mentioned on my personal twitter account that I had ’some cracking beers in’ but wasn’t really in the mood for sitting with pencil and notebook. Not that I don’t enjoy sitting with an artisan beer disecting all of the tastes and fancy words I can conjure up, but I simply wanted to forget all that and just get lost in the beer.

Because I was contemplating some fantastic beers that I’d been waiting to open for some time. These were beers I’d heard about, read about and almost dreamed about opening.

Paradox Isle of Arran pours very, very dark

A few other beer bloggers wearily heading back from beer festivals and Scoop singing the praises of BrewDog’s RipTide I headed for the beer cupboard but all I really wanted were my staple favourites to drink, beers I can always fall back on as discussed in my post on emergency beers – a Goose Island Honkers, a Brooklyn Lager and a Peroni Gran Reserva were exactly what I needed. But with encouragement from other beer tweeps and Reluctant I crumbled! Read the rest of this entry »

BrewDog’s Dogma and the BrewDog dogma

Last weekend I was pretty much off the (online) radar compared to usual, and in the 2 days I left the twitterverse to its own devices it seems it all went a little BrewDog mad. With the revelation that BrewDog stitched themselves up deliberately over Tokyo, some people congratulated them on a point well proved whilst others bemoaned their tactics and deception.

I understand and to a point commend BrewDog for standing up to some of what the Portman group do, and appreciate they are not the perfect, unbiased solution – for instance I’m not sure that BrewDog’s labels incite anti-social behaviour as much as a Taste The Difference lasagne does. But, I am annoyed that they pulled last week’s stunt: firstly because they ignore the fact that the Portman group is an alternative to state legislation; secondly that they went out to actively ask people in the beer community to defend Tokyo, knowing damn well they’d sent the letter, and thirdly, does it really help an industry that some days looks like imploding in on itself?

As I’ve found with BrewDog recently, the sentiment and passion is no doubt there, but sometimes, execution lets them down.

BrewDog have moulded themselves into a bit of a cult brand, and one that is gradually making inroads into the wider population, with a rebellious brand persona that many supermarket shoppers and beer drinkers will enjoy and tap into. After all, BrewDog are still unique compared to the traditional brewers available in UK supermarkets.

I say cult because there is something dogmatic about following BrewDog, and I’ve no doubt that people hold BrewDog in high esteem. Much in the same way that they look forward to their favourite bands new release or the next big book by an author, people wait in keen anticipation of every move BrewDog make, regardless of what that move might entail.

Which leads us nicely onto Dogma, the second BrewDog beer review in our Sainsbury’s Beer Competition series (especially as it’s the 13th post in this series posted on Friday the 13th!)

Dogma: brewed by a Scottish druid?! A wonderfully sweet and exciting concoction but not everyone's cup of tea

Dogma is the reincarnation of Speedball, the heather honey infused beer that gave BrewDog their first really big PR piece just before we kicked this little blog off. Read the rest of this entry »

British beers are bland and boring, aren’t they?

Well, that’s what the general consensus isn’t it?

I’ve heard this comment twice in the last two weeks. A week ago, my friend Sam was on business in northern France, where he was accosted by a local spouting rubbish about how all English people drink is Stella.

Yes, in Yates. But not everyone. And today, one of the breweries pioneering the exact opposite of bland and boring beers, Scotland’s BrewDog, were interviewed by The Full Pint. Both parties agreed that the perception of British beers is one of ‘uninspired session ales‘ and James went so far as to say ‘pretty much all the small UK brewers make the same boring 4% ales’.

Now hang on a minute.

I get where these perceptions come from. When Greene King IPA is the most exciting beer in a pub this country’s brewing scene is in trouble. And I can understand how the US craft brewing scene can consider the UK beer market uninteresting. But to say that British brewers all make the same beers with the same hops – that’s simply not true.

Yes there are predictable beers. Yes there are predictable breweries. And it could be argued that the British beer scene has been in the doldrums over the last 30 or 40 years perhaps?

But not anymore. Perhaps we should thank the craft brewing scene across the Atlantic for been a catalyst? Maybe the UK really are fed up of the monotonous shite of Carling and Fosters? But there’s no doubt that beer and brewing is in the beginnings (or even well in the middle?) of a renaissance.

Boring? Halcyon and Jaipur? Golden Champion?

Uninspired? Gadds No. 3? Summer Lightning?

The same hops? Unpronounceable IPA, Ring of Fire?

Look, I’m a massive fan of American ales, my top ten beers would be full of North American pale ales and hop laden concoctions. But I will say that there are British breweries just as bold and daring as many other countries around the world. And I’m  a massive fan of BrewDog, they push boundaries and are fun to drink.

We should not be distinguishing between beers across borders and classifying countries as bland or boring. We should be praising those beers that do dare to be different, those that shine above others when you’re tasting, and those that you’ll always come back to, because when you need a beer, when you’re desperate, they are the beers that you will come back to time and time again.

Equity for Punks – Brewdog Shares With All

After a  few days of anticipation and some debate as to whether or not to make the journey to London for Brewdog’s grand announcement, we today learned exactly what James Watt and Martin Dickie had in mind when they proclaimed last week to their mailing list that Brewdog were about to change the World.

There was much speculation on forums and message boards but now we know. If we want our World changed alls we need to do is exchange £230 of our hard earned for a 0.0009 share in what is admitedly one of the UKs most innovative and exciting craft breweries. The aim of Brewdog is to raise a couple of million in order to expand to larger premises that will be, depending on the capital raised, as ecologically neutral on the surrounding environment as possible. I can only assume it is this ecological dream that is the world changing aspect because I know that shares can be purchased in The Black Sheep Brewery which, although not directly comparable with Brewdog, is certainly not a large listed company of the Scottish & Newcastle type.

The first thing I considered when trying to decide whether or not to try and scrape together £230 is what chance there is of seeing any return on my investment. Realistically anyone popping £230 into Brewdog is likely to lose some of that capital upon disposal, that is if you can sell the shares at all (although Brewdog have said that they hope to allow shareholders to trade on their website which would certainly boost liquidity of the shares). But, unlike if you were going to invest in Black Sheep (or any other brewery in an attempt to make profit), this is largely irrelevant.  Your £230 is buying you access to an idea, the Brewdog idea, and I will not be investing because I don’t want to throw that sort of money down an idea. Many people will feel otherwise and good luck to them. For there committment to the cause they will earn a vote at the AGM, the opportunity to exchange views and ideas on a shareholders forum, a 20% discount in the Brewdog online shop and the opportunity to go to the bar and bring back a round of drinks from ‘their’ brewery.

All of these are nice touches and if the opportunity existed for £50 I would be falling over myself to get some of the action. The problem is that I cannot reconcile spending £230 on a novelty that offers only remote chances of (most likely extremely) long term gain. So why did Brewdog not offer the same deal for a smaller shareprice? Simples. They have set themselves a target and this is how much they need to meet it. Credit to them, the Brewdog way is to grab the bull by the horns. Convincing 10,000 people to part with £230 might be harder than they think and my head is telling me that they might be stretching themselves too far too quickly. My heart on the other hand tells me that, with the business knowledge and experience that has come on board, plus some belting brews and the balls to take the plunge, Brewdog might just be able to pull this one off. I certainly wouldn’t take the £230 and bet against them making a job of it.

Anyway, there might be 10,000 people out there who don’t think £1,150 is too larger target for recouping the full £230 in the Brewdog shop!!!

Hardcore IPA by BrewDog

The first BrewDog in our Sainsbury’s Beer Competition series is one that we’re relatively familiar with. So far we’ve only got around to reviewing Punk IPA and Dogma, but we have quite a few ‘Dogs ‘in stock’ and it’s about time we wrote something about them.

Hardcore IPA is one of those beers that has a little bit of the ‘wow’ factor (or the ‘woah’ factor depending on your taste buds).

It has a crazy, tropical Um Bongo aroma that’s sweet and exciting. It smells like sweet, e-number fuelled heaven trapped in a bottle.

Hardcore IPA by BrewDog

Fruit salad penny sweet smells give way to a bitter overload, hops completely dominating and filling your mouth. Aromatic beers usually mean bitterness, but the pineapple aroma makes you expect something with an exotic fruit taste.

Beers with an imperial tag usually come at a certain strength and richness. Hardcore has the strength but it’s hidden treasures are perhaps just a little too inaccessible.

If you can work through the IBU frenzy you will get some of that, but boy does that take some acclimatisation.

This is a big beer. Drink it too fast and it becomes medicinal, but sip it slowly and it’s a world of hops, passionfruit and titilating tongue tingles. Oh, and it’s strong as hell to boot, so don’t down one before bedtime.