The BeerCast

The sometime-groaning BeerCast cupboard is looking decidedly bare as of late – apart from a mighty selection of Kernel Brewery beers for an upcoming podcast, only two bottles remained as of yesterday. Co-incidentally, they were both British imperial stouts over 7% – so a direct comparison sprang to mind, and a grim September night suddenly turns into an unexpected drinking fest. Pitted against each other are Sheffield’s Thornbridge brewery and Fraserburgh’s BrewDog with their respective St Petersburg (7.7%) and Rip Tide (8.0%). There’s a connection between the breweries themselves – BrewDog co-founder Martin Dickie originally cut his teeth in Derbyshire with the fledgling Thornbridge, before moving back North.

First up is the blue corner, and the Scottish entrant. BrewDog need no introduction, particularly on this website as our tag cloud highlights – 14 articles relating to the Aberdeenshire duo, compared with the next highest (Alloa’s Williams Bros) on 8 articles. Rip Tide is a nudge stronger at 8.0%, and – as can happen with BrewDog beers – totally overflows on opening and becomes a gusher. Pourwise it’s the expected deep black, with a thick consistency and a peaked tan head. The aroma is bitter dark coffee, which comes through on the taste – heavy coffee with slight smoky flavours, and a hint of liquorice before more bitterness and the alcohol punch follows.

The immediately notable difference when pouring Thornbridge’s St Petersburg is the carbonation – a very small fizzling head which reduces to a thin lacing. A strong aroma of liquorice and coffee comes off on the nose, and visually there is very little difference between the two – both dark and viscous as expected. Both are also very full, but St Petersburgh has none of the bitterness of Rip Tide, there’s a smoothness that runs throughout. A nice warming finish, with peaty smoke on the aftertaste – plus the overall balance – puts the English entrant on top in this particular comparison.

BrewDog
Thornbridge Brewery

Cloisters on Brougham Street can be one of Edinburgh’s busier pubs – and last night it was standing room only there, pretty good for a Wednesday night. The reason of course was that some of the guys from BrewDog were on hand to launch their latest Abstrakt vintage, Abstrakt AB:03 – so a high percentage of the Edinburgh beer scene were on hand. Also on offer, raffled tastings of their rarer beers – including the much-hyped 55% The End of History, and some of their barrel-aged Bashah series. With another five beers on tap, there was more than enough temptation to get the punters in – BeerCasters included.

We started off with 5am Saint (5.0%), their two-malt, four-hop red ale. It’s one that always seems to divide opinion – as red ales seem to do in general – with some liking the hop bitterness and others thinking the dryness is just too much. I’m usually in the latter camp – I can see what’s trying to be achieved, but every time I try to like it something stops me. Maybe it’s the combination of hops (Simcoe, Chinook, Nelson Sauvin, Centennial), but once again the nice redcurrant fruit was dashed about by the intense bitter aftertaste.

Moving through the BrewDog session beers, we upped the ante with one of their stalwarts, Punk IPA (6.1%) – which also manages a hefty IBU count, judging by the bitterness. I usually drink this one bottled, from the tap it’s much more bitter and strong tasting – but is really great stuff. From there it was onto the Edge (3.2%), which can be a rare specimen on cask. As a mild, or a 60/-, it has a pretty refreshing lightness combined with a healthy thwack of espresso. There’s some fruit in there too, but it all takes a back seat to the coffee.

The final warmup was Paradox Smokehead (10.0%) – a dark, syrupy beer with an astonishing oaky medicinal aroma. BrewDog cask-age their Paradox imperial stout in barrels from various distilleries, producing batches with notable differences. This particular one had absorbed the essence of Smokehead – a single malt from Islay. The specific distillery behind Smokehead is a guarded secret (popular rumour is Ardbeg) – but as their marketing is akin to BrewDog’s, they make a perfect fit. In taste terms, the beer is a monster – heavy smoky peat, cough syrup and masses of woody sweetness and alcohol burn.

For most, that would be the end of a decent night exploring some of BrewDog’s beers – but at this point the big guns were wheeled out. The reason for the night – Abstrakt AB:03 (10.5%) arrived – an imperial ale aged over two years in whisky casks with added strawberries and raspberries. It was a lovely red colour – as you’d expect – and the strawberries came out straight away, followed by a large dose of whisky. At the end, it was the raspberries that came out on the finish, which was interesting. It doesn’t taste anywhere near 10%, and is very fruity. You’d expect this to age well if put away for a decent amount of time.

Still three beers to go – unbeknown to us – and up next was the mother and father of all BrewDog beers – the 55% The End of History. We’ve talked about the implications of this monster before, and at several hundred pounds a stoat I certainly never thought I’d get to try some. But they were raffling tastings, and just a few drops made their way across my palate. What can you say? How do you judge a beer on a sip? It’s like reviewing a book from a single page. Anyway, it was some page. An immense aroma – for once BrewDog’s hyperbole seems well-placed. The empty glasses were being passed round so people could experience it.

The closest thing I could compare it to would be glue – it had that incredibly heady acrid aroma that makes you take a step back and look to open a window. On top of this were all kinds of things – paint, neat alcohol, whisky, a little fruit. The taste was even more confusing, it’s like every beer-related adjective distilled (no pun intended) into a liquid. Alcohol. Fruit. Wood. Vanilla. Lemon. Pain. I remembered the time we all tried Tactical Nuclear Penguin (32%) – it makes that seem quaint by comparison. It’s just utterly, completely insane. And we got to see the stoat as well.

After that, there really was nothing to follow. How do you top that? Beer as an entity is dead when a cubic centilitre of it forces all those emotions out. The next two drinks – Bashah Highland and Bashah Imperial – tried their best, but we could have been drinking Tennant’s by that point (and judging by how I felt the next morning, that might have been a good idea). Anyway, we featured Bashah in BeerCast 42 – the 8.5% American-style strong ale brewed in collaboration with the peerless Stone Brewery in San Diego. BrewDog boosted a batch up to 10% and then added raspberries to half (Highland), and tayberries to the other half (Imperial). Bashah Highland had a hint of whisky about it, but was mostly raspberries and other sweet fruits. It was the more bitter of the two, with a zesty quality to it. The pick was Bashah Imperial, which was dark and also really fruity – but it had a better balance. There’s still a strength from the 10% abv, but the highlight is the aftertaste – the dark malts combine with the tayberries to give a flavour similar to black forest gateaux, which is something pretty special.

Well, that was it – one heck of an evening. Eight beers and one hefty headache later the crowd started to disperse. In typical BrewDog style, the main event (Abstrakt AB:03) had been blown apart by all the other beers, lead by the steamroller of the End of History. Thanks to all at BrewDog for heading down to Edinburgh to showcase their wares…

Australian beer tends to get a bit of an unfortunate reputation, what with all the low-quality mass produced lager that floods the market. But brewers like Little Creatures and Bootleg manage to stand out (just about) from the morass, if you search hard enough. Straddling these two worlds is Adelaide brewery Coopers, who take up an impressive 3% of the Australian national market. That doesn’t sound much, but when two companies claim 95% domination, 3% looks halfway decent. As you’d expect, those other two are the lager-heavy pushers Lion Nathan (Castlemaine XXXX, Toohey’s, James Boag, Hahn) and Carlton & Union Breweries (Carlton Draught, Fosters, Crown Lager, VB).

Coopers were founded by Thomas Cooper in 1862, who saw a gap in the recently founded territory of South Australia for a decent brewer. Adelaide had several producers, but as he noted …”they all use a good deal of sugar and so on for brewing, but we use only malt and hops, consequently, ours being pure, the doctors recommend it to all their patients.” The current MD and head brewer is fifth-generation Tim Cooper, who trained as a medical doctor down under before heading to Birmingham to re-train as a brewer. These days they put out about a dozen beers, with their flagship being the 5.8% Coopers Sparkling – however it was their 6.3% Best Extra Stout that we managed to get hold of recently.

It pours like black treacle, with a tan head that disperses swiftly to leave a thin film of bubbles, and then almost nothing. It’s utterly black, with no highlights to speak of at all. The aroma is roasted malt, alcohol and prunes – very much a winter warmer or autumnal pick-me-up. The mouthfeel is very fizzy and surprisingly quite thin, given the oily blackness of the beer – but the flavours are really good – dark malts, iron, some coffee beans. The aftertaste is coffee and dark bitter chocolate – something astringent like a 70%+ choc – it’s really rewarding on the palate. A very impressive stout.

Coopers Brewery

These days the primary style of European lager that reaches these shores is the all-conquering pilsner (either Bohemian or German). But back in the day there were others that came from the Continent – Muncheners and Viennese lagers that were popular before the light-coloured beer from Pilsen took over. Slightly darker and less hoppy, these styles faded before the Bohemian wave of Saaz-filled treasures from the east. But they do still exist – and recently Lagerboy managed to find an award-winning Vienna style lager from the banks of the Thames – Meantime Union (4.9%). Founded in 1999, Meantime produce a consistently good range of beers, many of which (including Union) having been voted best in class at various year’s World Beer Awards.

The first thing you notice is that Union is extremely fizzy – it pours highly carbonated, with a swiftly dispersing head that leaves a regular rising stream of bubbles. The second thing of note is the colour – a clear coppery brown from the dark lager malts. There’s little hops on the aroma – as you’d expect, Vienna’s being more subtle than pilsners. In fact, the whole flavour is subdued, very dry and with some hops coupled with the malt, making it a smooth, easy drinker. There’s a slight caramel sweetness on the aftertaste that peters out pretty quickly, leaving the whole thing thin and uninspiring. It’s an excellent approximation of the style, but not a great style at that. Gentle, unassuming beers can be great – like Union – it’s just sometimes they leave you wanting more.

Meantime Brewing

Sooner or later everyone who writes about beer is asked one of two questions; ”What’s your favourite beer?” or ”How did you get into beer?” (the usual responses being ‘I can’t say’ and ‘I can’t remember’). The first question is tricky because it changes on a weekly – or if you’re particularly dedicated – daily basis. The second is tough because these moments of conversion are often lost in the muddled mists of time. However, they can resurface when a trigger presents itself – the return to a favourite pub, re-acquaintance with a beer fan who’d taken you under their wing – or in my case, a particular beer.

I don’t think I’ve ever answered the first of those questions above with Green Flash IPA, from the Green Flash Brewery in San Diego. That’s not to say it isn’t a great beer – it really is – but that I usually forget it’s importance in my beer journey when compared with notable stepping stones such as McEwan’s 80/- (the first non-lager I drank regularly), or Harviestoun’s Bitter & Twisted (when I realised there was a nicer alternative). I saw a bottle of Green Flash IPA in my local Edinburgh bottle shop the other day, and straight away it brought back memories of a chilly night in Tokyo, and nine strong IPA’s…

In October 2007 I was on holiday in Japan and just beginning to appreciate the depth and range of flavours available in craft beer. Five minutes wandering around the Tanakaya store in Mejiro brought home the Japanese attitude, with its astonishing selection and underground, secretive feel. Keen to find out more, I had discovered a Tokyo-based tasting group – the wonderfully named ’Beer Enjoyment, Education and Research Society’ (B.E.E.R.S.) chaired by a Canadian ex-pat named Tim Eustace, so I signed up. The society met on the third Tuesday of the month – so on the 16th I nervously made my way into a college room in Nihonbashi, and prepared for ‘IPA night’.

Of course, with hindsight I was totally unprepared for what happened next. In a room filled with an even mix of young Tokyo-ites and older westerners we polished off one strong beer after another over the course of a couple of hours. Each one was mightier than the last, and I frantically scribbled notes as my tastebuds struggled to keep up with the hop overload that my mouth was experiencing. I remember having brought Tim a bottle of Bitter & Twisted as a gift (all the way from Scotland), then being almost scared to hand it over following the onslaught of flavours we’d been through. Nonsense, of course – B&T is outstanding – but by that point I’d had nine beers over 6% and the grey matter had taken something of a pounding.

I still have those notes I made, hastily written on the back of a sheet of A4 filled with Japanese phrases I thought might be useful – Mo ichido itte kudasai: “Please say it again?”. The first beers we tried were from Japan – Shiga Kogen IPA from Nagano and Ise Kadoya IPA, at 6% and 7% respectively. Both were extremely good – ’really hoppy, dries the mouth out’ was my considered opinion of the latter. Moving on to American beers, we moved through North Coast Brewing’s ACME (’grapefruit…citrus’) and Full Sail IPA from Oregon – which I summed up with the tremendous oxymoron ’subtle…delicate…lots of hops’ – to the ’has everything’ Stone IPA, a comment I stand by to this day.

There was a short break at this point, which I filled by chatting to the two Japanese girls I had found myself next to, and trying not to fall over. This was very definitely my road to Damascus moment – the point at which I discovered the sheer joy of drinking rich, flavourful beer instead of tasteless mass-produced bilge. You can never go back. When Tim stood up and announced we were moving on to Imperial IPA’s – “well, bring it on” I thought. Hair of the Dog Blue Dot Double IPA (7%), Dogfish Head 90min IPA (9%) and Moylan’s Hopsickle IPA (9.2%) hammered the point home, one after the other. I described the Hopsickle as ’Bloody hell. Floaty, dark. Strong. Major. Triple hopped! Food pairing – blue cheese! (food pairings also being unheard of – aside from a packet of dry roasted).

The final beer of the night was something of a palate cleanser compared to the full-frontal assault of Moylan’s dark, floaty monster. It was of course, the aforementioned Green Flash IPA, which I scrawled as ’pine fresh. Nice for a last beer’ at the very bottom corner of the bit of paper. Then that was it – the B.E.E.R.S. club dispersed, I gave Tim my thanks – and the bottle of Bitter & Twisted – then stumbled off into the dark forgetting where I was. Eventually I made it back to where I was staying, and once the hangover had stopped shredding my brain I realised normal beer just wasn’t going to cut it any more. And so, several years later when standing in front of a beer fridge in an Edinburgh off-licence, I suddenly remembered the answer to the question ”How did you get into beer?”. An October night in Tokyo…