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 »

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.

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!!!

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.

Tremendously excited about a beer named after a band I’ve held on a pedestal for over 50% of my life, I jumped on the chance to grab a couple of these when I picked up a few beers for a Soccer Saturday marathon and catch up with mates from my uni days. Trying to conduct a beer review in front of Jeff Stelling and co is never easy, especially when it isn’t the easiest review to write.

How To Disappear Completely - it's very complicated

How To Disappear Completely is something else.  To say its heavy on the hops is an understatement! The aroma and the first sip are larger than life, a complete juxtaposition with the Radiohead song it’s named after. This is, as the bottle suggests, is imperially hopped.  That’s something I can be pretty keen on, but of course with beers super charged with hops, balance is inevitably lost. My first reaction is that for the piney-hoppy-dark-malt fest that this beer is right from the start, this isn’t alcoholically strong, begging the question where does this taste come from (or where does the alcohol go?!).

BrewDog’s beers are generally very drinkable, especially considering that they are usually above average strength, and How To Disappear Completely is deceptively light. And considering the immense bitterness this beer exudes, it is sort of drinkable…relatively speaking. But if I’m honest I just didn’t enjoy it anywhere near as much as Punk IPA or Chaos Theory.

It’s not a bad beer by any means, there’s a depth of flavour that I found quite overpowering and perhaps a bit OTT, something I find with Stone Ruination IPA – a beer of such character that it can barely get into it before it’s tripped me up and spat my back out. How To Disappear is similarly hopped, I’ve no doubt the ascerbic power of this beer will take you by surprise and the off-the-scale theoretical IBU count of 358 (or something) will have your taste buds screaming for mercy and jumping ship like lemmings.

It feels like a seasonal beer, something suitable for the autumn and winter, not one of the last hot and sunny days of summer, watching the football results with accumulator in hand. The flavours are astonishing – I’m sure that cocoa, cigars, grass, fruit and leaves all hit me at different points when I wasn’t stunned by the bitterness. The malt manages to make brief, fleeting appearances and adds a smoky, roasted flavour …but blink and it’ll disappear. The flavours of the beer do disappear and intertwine like the do in the same way, just in a much cruder way.

How To Disappear Completely by BrewDog

My friends Jimmy and Jay were not at all impressed, this being too far flung from the safe arms of Birri Moretti and Erdinger, about the fanciest they get. Their first reactions were knee jerk – this was just way, way too much to handle.

And I’d agree to a certain extent. For me I like the idea and I like it that a milder beer (ABV wise) can be amazingly complex. But How To Disappear Completely didn’t strike me as interestingly intricate, I found it difficult. For me its balance is lost and the hop/malt struggle within this beer isn’t a tug of war of the taste buds but more of an uncoordinated rabble that peters out leaving an uncomfortable aftertaste. The stormy brew doesn’t ebb and flow, the flavours crash and erode, leaving your senses a little worse for wear. That’s if you’re able to get through the bitterness and find those flavours!

Let’s put aside the hyperbole and verbose descriptions for a second. When it all boils down, How To Disappear is a beer I’ll try again. Maybe my taste buds will become attuned to it, maybe I’ll find something else in it,  but it’s not one I could drink regularly, and certainly not something I could convert friends to easily.  Like the song, which wasn’t my favourite on Kid A to start with, it really took a lot of effort to get under the skin of it, and I still don’t fully get it. But I love the song now, so maybe the beer is a grower?

If I had to choose, if I could have only this beer or the song of the same name, then I’d have to take the song every time.

But being an optimist, I’d definitely take the song and the beer if that was an option, even if I’m never able to quite enjoy it or get it.

I learned something pretty important whilst tasting this 7.8% flavourful powerhouse from BrewDog this evening; strong alcoholic beverages (say…6% plus) are NOT designed for quaffing in much the way you do with a mild beer, or weak lager. My history of drinking alcohol is littered with examples of me not particularly enjoying strong beers, wines and spirits because of the light trail of fire the high alcohol content leaves on my tongue and throat as it washes it’s way into my system.

Ok, ok: I should have learnt by now that that is not the way to deal with these offerings. They should be sipped and savoured; explored beyond the taste of the alcohol.

Straight from the bottle, Dogma oozes aroma. There is a sweetness to the scent that reminds of wild berries and somehow defies the dark golden straw colour of the body.

The bottle label promises a whole range of unique ingredients: honey, guarand, poppy and koala nut. After my first oversized gulp, all I could taste (and feel) was alcohol; that warm, overpowering rush that overwhelms the back of the mouth and lets you know that it has been there for a good while afterwards.

So in attempt to find the promised flavours, I went on to smaller sips. This worked wonders. Left to linger in the mouth, Dogma shows it’s sweeter side with the aforementioned berries and honey being noticable. I also sensed a hint of spiciness in there as well, reminiscent of cinnemon. I couldn’t tell you if there was a Koala nut in there as, quite frankly, I’ve never heard of them let alone tried them!

Despite finally working my way through to the flavours in Dogma, I still found it quite a tricky 330ml to get through. Sipping takes a long time and it remains a beverage for those for whom the warmth of a high ABV is a pleasure and not a chore.

If you want to sample some of the new wave of high-alcohol, high-flavour ales coming out of the brat-pack breweries, this is by no means BrewDog’s finest offering, but a great example of how new flavours are being blended into bottled beers with interesting and exciting results.

Now that I’ve discovered a way of drinking strong beverages, I’ve always fancied trying to appreciate whiskies…

BrewDog goodie box

I got a very excited text from my girlfriend earlier on today, informing me that a rather large box had arrived from a certain Scottish brewery.

I have to admit I was really looking forward to getting home and opening it, so it’s typical that I didn’t get back home until about 8.30pm thanks to work, my own incompetence and a quick trip around Ikea (the downside of living so near one is its so easy to ‘go for a quick wander whilst it’s quiet’!!)

So, I was delighted to get home and realise that Sarah hadn’t been exaggerating, it really was a large goodie box that had arrived!

Unfortunately, the lovely folk at BrewDog might have selected a box that was a little too big, and as I eagerly opened my grandly wrapped package I was greeted with the smell of very strongly scented soggy cardboard and a distinctly beery smell. Read the rest of this entry »

Punk IPA by BrewDog

Punk IPA was the first BrewDog beer I ever came across, on the supermarket shelves of Tesco, Lincoln whilst Sarah was living there earlier this year.

I’ve had it a few times but never written anything, and it’s not far off being in that category of beers that are the hardest to review – those you’ve had many times before.

The first thing that struck me on the first taste back one Friday in Lincoln, and again yesterday when I picked it out specifically for review from my all new beer cupboard, was it’s North American influences. Having mulled over US reviews of Punk IPA, many people comment how English it is, so I guess they might get quite a shock if they picked up a pint of Greene King on tap! The revival of IPA by craft breweries in the States has led to some notable IPA interest in the UK, and in Punk IPA there’s a clear swing towards the US style of IPA , one much more floral and aromatic than those of it’s homeland.

Punk IPA by Brewdog - transatlantic India Pale Ale

Read the rest of this entry »

My first sips of Zeitgeist didn’t blow me away. I had sort of been expecting a revolution. I think a little bit of hype, excellent design and lots that I’d read had built up my expectations, and that I was expecting a Road to Damascus style realisation that pale lager could not quench my thirst and that black lager would suddenly take me a higher level.

Well, the first sips didn’t go down well. I found it flat and uninteresting, completely underwhelming and disappointing.

Zeitgeist Black Lager by BrewDog

But within a couple more sips I realised that I’d drunk half a bottle within about 53 seconds.

Wow, this stuff is drinkable.

And then I noticed its subtle complexities. And they are subtle, but highly enjoyable.

The darkness of the taste is refreshing. I love dark milds and in the right mood I can devour stouts, but they are styles I turn to only when in the right frame of mind. Zeitgeist offers much of the dark coffee that I love in beer (but hate in coffee!), and hints of biscuity, chocolately, nutty joy that dark beers often revel in, whilst being one of the most drinkable beers I’ve ever tasted.

I use drinkable quite a lot when I’m reviewing. It’s very indicative, simple yet effective at conveying the fact that a beer slips down the throat whether light or not.

Zeitgeist is the former, in abundance. They could advertise this stuff next to Malteser’s and even with the weight of the bottle the dark liquid would easy outfloat it’s hollow chocolate counterparts.

At 4.9% Zeitgeist is deceptively, deceptively strong, and from an uninspiring first sip, it is really a very interesting beer.

My first bottle of Zeitgeist developed from an unassuming start to the point where I couldn’t believe it was finished and I ended up craving more. This is a beer that might not tickle your tastebuds like a hop monster, but will go some way to satisfy my darker, thirstier urges that is very, very, easy to drink!

Scottish micro-brewery BrewDog has hit the headlines this week with its claims about the impact of its new beer Tokyo*, which founder James Watt claims is “providing a cure to binge beer-drinking”.

His claims are based around the idea that anyone that wants to get inebriated will turn to stronger beers (such as his brewery’s 6-unit, 18% ale) and appreciate the flavour so much that they will not need to turn to “mass market, industry brewed lagers that are so bland and tasteless that you are seduced into drinking a lot of them”.

Of course, this is patently untrue – and it is more than likely that Mr. Watt knows this.

BrewDog, in its brief two-year existence is quickly becoming the rock n roll star of the micro-brewery world. As reports this week have reminded us, the company has previously flirted with controversy over a name given to one of its products that refers directly to drug-use (apparently; I wouldn’t have known said term if the BBC hadn’t informed me!)

But all publicity is good publicity and this is clearly the case here. BrewDog are now probably the most discussed brewery in the country and that can’t be a bad thing for them. I personally, love their manifesto. The aim is to target the younger market and turn them on to quality Real Ale and away from the cheap, common lagers popular amongst this demographic. In terms of Real Ale popularity, it is great achievement that such a young company, run by two clearly enterprising individuals, is taking the corporate alcohol producers head-on.

What they have also done with these statements is to highlight an issue that has plagued Britain for years; we don’t know how to appreciate alcohol consumption, certainly beyond the high-culture of fine wines.

We have never had the ‘café culture’ found abroad, where alcohol is consumed in a more respectable manner, and it is this side of the BrewDog argument that is strong. Growing up in the UK, drinking beer, wine, spirits and so on, is often more focused on quantity as opposed to quality. Although specialist bars and ale houses are growing in popularity, much of the city centre remains dominated by low-standard, low-priced alcohol which has ultimately become the norm.

Therefore, if companies like BrewDog are brewing special ales, such as Tokyo* – a run of three thousand units, of which only one thousand will be sold in the UK exclusively on the firm’s website – is this really such an issue?

All this debate has done is to highlight the country’s insecurities about its own drinking culture. BrewDog won’t change that, but at least it is putting the control back in the hands of consumers to try new and innovative ales, no matter how strong they may be.