Innis & Gunn Smokin’ Gunn: have I&G found another niche?

So, I got back from work last night to find a tan-coloured paper bag wedged down the side of my shed. Strange, I thought – it’s not like I’ve been in there for months; our front garden was chemically castrated recently by a professional weedkilling team – and I don’t venture anywhere after dark where spiders might be lurking, eyes watching my neck with intent, eight legs braced, ready to pounce. But there the brown bag was, in the six-inch gap by the brickwork, down which countless terrors lurk, unseen, senses heightened by toxic defoliant.

Once my other half had retrieved the bag, inside I discovered a small box from Edinburgh-based, Glasgow-based Innis & Gunn, and remembered that their new beer – Innis & Gunn Bartenders’ Choice: Smokin’ Gunn, was being released that night, at their West End offices. I don’t often write about I&G – which on the face of it is strange, because they dominate the flavoured beer sector here in Scotland, and elsewhere (particularly in Canada, where their sales figures are simply staggering).

The reason I don’t often feature their beers is that essentially I don’t really like them. Sticky and involved, instead it’s the things they do that are different that appeal – such as the launch of their ‘craft’ lager, which turned out to be exactly what I was expecting. This latest project was the result of a competition – over three hundred bartenders came up with ideas for a new beer for Innis & Gunn, and the winner had their concept turned into reality at I&G’s corner of the Wellpark facility.

That winner was David Ashton-Hyde – head barman at the Hind’s Head in Bray, owned by Heston Blumenthal. Maybe he bounced his idea off the bespectacled uberchef over half a Staropramen; who knows? It came out on top, though, a 7.4% ‘rich, robust and complex smoked beer’, inspired by David’s love of American whiskey, pancakes with maple syrup, and rainy afternoons in Glasgow. The malts were fire-smoked, the beer was then aged in bourbon barrels, and with I&G’s chip-cannon, the Oakerator, before maple syrup was added. The whole thing was aged, in total, for two and a half months.

So, how is it? Well, if you had the word ‘sweet’ on your Innis & Gunn review bingo card, you can mark that off with your dabber. However, it’s not solely sweet – there’s an aroma of woodsmoke, campfire, toffee and stone fruit. It looks a treat too – a lovely deep caramel bronze, like the colour of a fairground toffee apple. Tastewise, there’s plenty of sweet oak, a touch of Brunswick ham, and a mid to heavy rising maple tackiness. It’s more BBQ sauce than Frazzles, but it’s good. Nothing dominates; the tickle of smoke helps with the sweetness.

Although the name sounds like it should be advertised by Burt Reynolds lying on a shagpile carpet, Smokin’ Gunn is well-packaged, as all Innis & Gunn beers are (the box, I mean – the bottle is resolutely clear-glass). It isn’t intended as a rauchbier clone, despite Bamburg being name-dropped in the label copy. It’s made with oak-smoked ale malt, rather than beech-smoked rauchmalt, for one thing. There’s more of a sherry feel about it – and I’m sure it would work with a slug of whisky, or whiskey, knocked into it.

It’s interesting that Innis & Gunn came up with the idea of a Bartender’s Choice competition, entrants from which came from the UK, Sweden and Canada. The three largest markets for I&G, that most front-facing of all Scottish breweries. The undisputed point-of-sale kings. Yet, it got me thinking, though – maybe the sweeter offerings of Franconia are a legitimate style for I&G to take on – they could really work, given the set-up and brand history Innis & Gunn have. What price a Beecherator, at the Wellpark?

Full Disclosure: thanks to Steph for the review sample of Innis & Gunn Smokin’ Gunn. Also, I love spiders. Honest.