The BeerCast

Well, the dust seems to have settled slightly around the blogosphere following the latest announcement from Fraserburgh’s BrewDog a few days ago. I’ve been reading as many articles on the forthcoming Sink the Bismarck (41%) as I can, and have been digesting the various opinions on the Aberdeenshire twosome re-taking the strongest beer in the world title. Seeing as we’re a Scottish-based beer website, it would be remiss of us not to add to the collective murmuring. We’re big fans of BrewDog here - mostly - and have written about them on many an occasion. In fact, they have been tagged more on the BeerCast than any other brewery, which is no doubt a reflection on their forward-thinking marketing and ideas.

But have they gone too far with their latest stunt? Stunt is definately the word, James Watt has admitted they wanted to get back at the German Schorschbrau for out-trumping the 32% Tactical Nuclear Penguin with a 40% ‘Schorschbock’. You can read our thoughts on TNPenguin here, and it clearly divided opinion. Personally I liked the dark, rough smokiness but at the time wasn’t sure of the target market - which obviously holds for Sink the Bismarck. I think BrewDog are in danger of flying too close to the sun here - a Teutonic tit for tat is harmless enough (the director of Schorschbrau has said he thinks the whole thing is hilarious), provided of course it doesn’t interfere with their other beers.

BrewDog do some outstanding beers - they just seem to be pushed into the periphery by the charging press releases about TNP and now Bismarck, together with the ongoing feud with the Portman Group and the frankly embarrassing self-complaint over Tokyo*. Stick to what you do best boys, please. Atlantic IPA, Punk IPA, Trashy Blonde are all outstanding. These should be the core beers they shout about. When the mischievous glint appears in their collective eye, you end up with things like Nanny State (1.1%), or the objectionable How to Disappear Completely (3,000 IBU’s). Their collaborations with Stone have produced some interesting results - Bashah went down really well. Hopefully there’ll be more in the offing from that partnership.

The key to all this is publicity. BrewDog’s share option is due to close at 11pm tomorrow (the 19th), and at first it was really struggling. Headlines in the majority of British papers and practically every beer website (including this one, now - fashionably late as ever) can only help their cause in tempting investors. In a post on the Beer Advocate forum, James wrote that they had dispensed with any PR representation in December - so clearly they feel they’ve got the hang of this publicity thing. I wouldn’t bet against them, that’s for sure. They managed to reach their minimum target for subscribers, and hopefully will do well from the flotation. Plus they piss off the Daily Mail, which is never a bad thing.

So we’ll have to see how Sink the Bismarck does - I’d love to give it a go, but it’s £10 more expensive per bottle than even TNPenguin, so maybe a special occasion might tempt me to get the BeerCast wallet out. The name is a bit tasteless, they could have gone with any of several ways to poke fun at the Germans - but by all accounts the beer is a massive hop hit. Which I imagine it would be if they quadruple-hopped it. For me, the recent news that they are relaunching Hardcore IPA is something more enticing - their (paltry by comparison) 9% staple was re-thought after some consideration, which is great as it was pretty good beforehand. Humility and 41%abv in the same paragraph? Can only be BrewDog…

…oh, and the rivalry with Germany is set to continue - Schorschbrau MD Georg Tscheuschner has said they have a response in mind…“We’ll just brew another, stronger one,” he said. “Forty-five percent shouldn’t be a problem and we have beer enthusiasts waiting for it.” Who’s going to be first to 50%?

Sink the Bismarck Press Release

There’s really no escaping Fraserburgh’s BrewDog at the moment. The unorthodox twosome from the Aberdeenshire coastline must account for more column inches than all other Scottish brewers combined. Of course, we’re no different – we’ve featured and reviewed several of their beers over the last couple of years. With our recent 2009 Beer of the Year Show being recorded, I decided to spring a surprise on the other panellists by slipping in a fifth beer at the end of the recording session – BrewDog’s (and now arguably British brewing’s) most infamous beer, Tactical Nuclear Penguin, at 32.0%abv currently the world’s strongest beer.

As one can imagine, the mainstream media are in uproar. Even the beer media got involved, with CAMRA’s head scribe Roger Protz falling foul of the internet army who rushed to defend James and Martin for their imagination/irresponsibility (delete as applicable). To create Tactical Nuclear Penguin, two separate phases of barrel ageing were followed by flash freezing the beer in a local ice-cream factory. ‘Eisbocks’ might not be a new style – but it’s certainly an effective way to ramp up the alcohol. The frozen water is discarded, and the concentrated solids refrozen to repeat the process. Apparently as the proteins and hops are retained it is still a beer – they would be removed during distillation if you were after a spirit.

So eventually it turns into a tar-black 32% monster. We sampled it as was intended, from shot glasses as a de facto spirit. Without doubt it got everyone’s attention – and unsurprisingly opinions were mixed. The spirit drinkers tolerated (or even liked) it, the non-spirit drinkers found it hard to get past the massive upfront smoky tastes. You can ask the question who would buy this beer – at £30 for a 330ml bottle it’s totally out of reach of the average beer drinker. But then BrewDog’s mission statement is not to cater for them. ‘Experienced’ beer drinkers might also balk at the £5 a shot pricetag, but would possibly try one out of curiosity. I’m not sure many would go back – it’s that kind of thing that you’d try once just to say that you had. In the end we were reduced to taking photos of each other’s screwed up faces while drinking it. But maybe that says more about us than the novelty status of Tactical Nuclear Penguin.

Richard
“It’s got that massive peaty smokiness about it, and the ‘legs’ run down the glass like a whisky. In context (with a Burns Supper?) it would be very good; otherwise this one is definitely a sipping beer.”

Paul
“This is a winter beer because it’s warming – it burns when it goes down the oesophagus. You feel like you should be drinking it as a beer but really it should be sipped over a couple of years.”

Jess
“I can’t stand the smell but the taste is OK. I have to hold my face when I swallow it though.”

Grooben
“It’s like chewing logs from the fire, I really don’t want to finish it but it’s so expensive I’m going to – you could buy a bottle of single malt for that price.”

MrB
“Oh my goodness, it doesn’t smell like beer, and it’s six pounds a sip! I don’t drink spirits so I’m quite scared. It’s so smoky, it’s like peat in a glass.”

Andy
“As a man who often drinks a sherry or port I can appreciate this. It’s closest to whisky but is more palatable – I like the smokiness and peatiness. I can imagine Russians drinking this.”

Paula
“It’s pretty disgusting, it’s like a very malty peaty beer but with a shot of Laphroaig in it.”

BrewDog Official Website

We like to run a democratic ship here on the BeerCast, so when panellist Grooben requested a chance to go foraging for beers, we gave him full reign and unlocked his cage. He managed to pull together four ales – all varying styles – so we cobbled together a podcast in his honour. We begin with a gluten-free beer, Green’s Herald (4.0%), to see how these special ales for people with intolerances actually taste. Next we head to the US to sample Juju Ginger Ale (6.0%) from Left Hand Brewing. Our third beer is the first of a BrewDog double-header. The Fraserburgh duo have been much in the news of late, so we try their 1.1% protest beer Nanny State, before we finish on a stronger one brewed in collaboration with San Diego’s Stone Brewery - Bashah Imperial Stout (8.6%). On the panel this time are Richard, Shovels, and of course Grooben.

1. Green’s Herald (4.0%abv)
Green’s Gluten-Free Beers, Shipley, West Yorkshire.
500ml glass bottle

Coelic disease is a very serious disorder of the small intestine whereby sufferers are intolerant to a gluten protein found in wheat. Of course, as a result of this beer is something off-limits to most. However, these days there are a number of producers who create beers specifically for people who can’t drink beer made the traditional way. Green’s of Shipley are one such company, using ‘pseudo-cereals’ such as sorghum, millet and buckwheat instead. They have a range of ales and lagers, including a Belgian-style dubbel and an amber ale. Herald is their English-style bitter, although there’s little information as to exactly what it contains.

What They Say - “Inspired by strong European beers and developed to a closely guarded secret recipe, the specialist beers are brewed with a strong body, crisp taste and a refreshing flavour, losing none of the taste but all of the allergens.” [Official Website]

What We Say…
Grooben - There’s a reason why barley was chosen to go in beer 5
Richard - Not particularly nice, tastes as if something’s missing 4½
Shovels - It smells like apple strudel and tastes like cheap cider 3

2. Juju Ginger Ale (4.0%abv)
Left Hand Brewing Co, Longmont, Colorado.
330ml glass bottle

On Christmas Day 1990 Dick Doore was given a homebrew kit as a present by his brother, which began a passion for brewing. Three years later he moved to Colorado and met an old school friend called Eric Wallace. The two of them founded a brewery in November 1993 in a former meat packing factory in Longmont. Naming themselves the Indian Peaks Brewery after some local mountains, they were undone by copyright issues and renamed themselves after local historical Indian chief Niwot – ‘Left Hand’. We sampled their Imperial Stout in BeerCast #34, and this time take on their subtler ginger ale, Juju.

What They Say - “Juju is a pale ale brewed from a relative low gravity, with some of the hops which would normally be used in the beer replaced by freshly ground ginger root. The beer is light in body, lower in alcohol, has a distinct ginger aroma, and has a very crisp finish. It was initially brewed as a refreshing alternative to the plethora of wheat beers which are popular in the summertime. Popular demand turned it into a year round beer.” [Official Website]

What We Say…
Shovels - Sweet, sticky ginger taste, it’s quite smooth 7
Grooben - Toned down a lot, I was expecting sharpness 6½
Richard - Ginger can overpower anything but at least it’s subtle 5

3. Nanny State (1.1%abv)
BrewDog, Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire.
330ml glass bottle

There can’t be a more newsworthy brewer in Scotland (or maybe the UK) at the moment than Fraserburgh’s BrewDog. James Watt and Martin Dickie started the operation to counter the establishment, and with regular wacky press releases and PR stunts they are certainly being talked about. Their strong oak-aged imperial stout Tokyo* (18.2%) hit the headlines for it’s hefty abv, so as a two-fingered gesture Martin and James produced a protest beer called Nanny State, which at 1.1% is below the legal classification of beer, and so not subject to duty. This podcast was recorded on the night that James announced he had complained to the alcohol industry watchdog Portman Group about the strength of Tokyo*, in a publicity stunt to highlight what he thought was their double standards. BrewDog have since announced they are producing the world’s strongest beer, Tactical Nuclear Penguin (32%). As of 03/12/09 the Portman Group recommended British retailers removed Tokyo* from their shelves.

What They Say - “Nanny State is an extraordinary little beer. It contains more hops than any other beer we have ever brewed. There is over 60 kilos used in our tiny 20HL batch. It contains more hops than any other beer ever brewed in the UK. It has a theoretical IBU of 225. It is jam packed with our favourite hops and already tastes amazing.” [Official Website]

What We Say…
Shovels - Still tasting it even though I finished three minutes ago 6
Grooben - It’s like drinking lemon juice, but isn’t all that bad 6
Richard - I would urge everybody to try it as an experiment - is it a beer? Yes. Is it nice? No 3

4. Bashah (8.6%abv)
BrewDog, Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire.
330ml glass bottle

The second beer from BrewDog on the podcast tonight was brewed in conjuction with one of the heavyweights of the American craft-brewing scene, California’s Stone Brewery. Seeing as they currently top our BeerCast rankings with the peerless Ruination IPA, we were certainly expecting something from their collaboration - a Belgian black double IPA.

What They Say - “This particular beer has refused to succumb to the illusion of meaning or allow capricious parameters to have any influence on it’s own fermented fate.” [Label Tasting Notes]

What We Say…
Richard - Combines a nice strong alcohol kick with sweetness 8
Shovels - Strange one, it’s very hoppy and portery and maybe it should be one and not the other 6
Grooben - It’s a lot to take - I’m just not sure it’s to my taste 5

Panellists - (clockwise from top left) Shovels, Grooben, Richard

BeerCast panel verdict
Bashah (19/30)
Left Hand Juju Ginger Ale (18½/30)
BrewDog Nanny State (15/30)
Green’s Herald Gluten-Free (12½/30)

Fraserburgh’s BrewDog are without doubt one of the most adventurous brewers in Scotland, a fact that earns them a huge amount of publicity on beer websites and blogs. However, they back this up with a variety of good beers – Hardcore IPA made it into our Beer of the Year Show for 2008, we’ve also written about Cult Lager and it’s replacement 77 here on the BeerCast. Never ones to rest on previous achievements, the Aberdeenshire duo have steadily pushed out new beers over 2009 – and we recently got the chance to sample two of those newer brews. As ever with Brewdog, they certainly generated some strong feelings.

First up was their self-styled ‘Imperial Mild’ - How to Disappear Completely. Casual drinkers selecting it on the basis of the 3.5%abv will be in for a severe shock (which one imagines is exactly what BrewDog would like) – this thing is a monster. Mash-hopped, then wort-hopped, and then dry-hopped, How to Disappear Completely reaches an astonishing 198 IBU’s (theoretical IBU’s, as this high we’re off the scale). A hop monster, it’s a great idea – an Imperial IPA without the 8%+ abv. Many times on the BeerCast we’ve tried a bitingly strong beer and just wished it could be that flavourful but at session strength.

Unfortunately, this beer is not it. After a lovely strong hop aroma and inviting dark golden colour, the taste is frightening. “It’s insanely, insanely bitter – it just completely messes you up” says the tasting notes on BrewDog’s website – and I’d say this (unusually for them) was something of an understatement. When the smell is the best thing about a beer, that’s not a good sign - How to Disappear Completely is empty, unbalanced, and ultimately undrinkable. It’s spoiled by the agonisingly bitter aftertaste. Other brewers (most notably California’s Stone Brewery) use similarly aggressive warnings about how unpalatable their beers are, only you can at least force them down, even if you don’t enjoy the bitter bombs. This one is a great idea, but so acridly bitter and unpleasant I ended up pouring it down the sink.

Next up was the culmination of a real experiment in brewing. Atlantic IPA (8.5%) is the first genuine sea-aged IPA produced since the days when they actually were shipped to south Asia. As usual for BrewDog, it’s a fantastic idea – and as usual, they aren’t shy in letting us know - “…a project which is typical of the scale, audacity and boldness characteristic of BrewDog in its quest to take the UK beer industry by storm, [Atlantic IPA is] one of the most ambitious brews by any drinks brand in over 200 years”. The IPA in question was bottle-conditioned for two months aboard a mackerel trawler in the north Atlantic, re-creating the maritime influences of the old-time pale ales lost to history.

They have a point in some respects, as co-founder James Watt reasoned - “Today the term IPA has lost its meaning and UK brewers mainly use it to describe beers which are neither particularly hoppy or high in alcohol, Duecher’s IPA [sic] at 3.8% being a prime example of the complete butchering of the style. It’s sad to see the great IPA heritage in this country come to stand for nothing more than a sparingly hopped low ABV blonde session ale.” Brewing has indeed moved on and forgotten the historical aspects of the IPA style (in the UK, at least). But the real ale drinkers do enjoy the balanced hoppy new generation IPA’s, and they aren’t really ‘butchering’ the style any more than brewers who have stopped charging different amounts of shillings for their barrels of ale.

Anyway, Atlantic IPA really sits up and demands to be noticed, largely due to the best label I have ever seen grace a beer bottle, from a beautiful commissioned drawing by Johanna Basford. It also makes an impression on the wallet, weighing in at a hearty £10 a bottle. You’d expect a pretty special beer to result from that price tag – and thankfully that’s what you get. It pours with a very strong chestnut brown colour, giving an indication of the strength from the alcohol and the conditioning. The smell is fantastic - pruney, malty, hoppy, ethyl alcohol pushing through - it’s a great beer to savour before you even start sipping.

The taste is bitter at first, to be expected with the hops and alcohol. There follows a brief but very welcome syrupy sweetness, before the aftertaste of further bitterness takes over. It’s fascinating, the sugary middle – almost like a strong alcoholic nectar – bookended by a bracing bitterness. More prunes and alcohol come out in the taste, and after a while I remembered where I’d sampled a similar beer – it reminded me of Sinclair Orkney’s Skullsplitter, which is no bad thing. Whether this is a resurrection of a lost brewing style, or just another BrewDog barleywine in a different (and striking) bottle is a moot point, but Atlantic IPA is really worth trying. Just get someone else to buy you one…

BrewDog Official Website

A couple of months ago, Lagerboy reviewed BrewDog’s Cult Lager, which went down rather well. A beer typical of the Fraserburgh duo, it was a pilsener with knobs on. However, the use of past tense is deliberate, as Cult Lager - together with another of their fizzier offerings Hop Rocker - were discontinued in favour of a new beer. Why? According to their website “…our lagers so far have been a little off the mark…[they] became too mainstream and ended up a half-hearted compromise. We also got the branding badly wrong, starting off as Hop Rocker, changing to Cult and wavering allot in between them. All this has been resolved and both these beers very much put to bed. They will both be replaced by a brand new beer; 77 lager.”

Taking it’s name from the registration number of co-founder James Watt’s fishing boat (the Ocean Quest BF:77), their newest lager is an unpasteurised offering made with whole leaf hops. Shunning preservatives and fixers, it apparently took six months to come up with the concept of what sounds like a very pure pilsener - and presumably to make the decision to throw Hop Rocker and Cult Lager overboard. Anyhow, it pours with a thick head that disperses quickly - as you’d expect given the deliberately basic ingredients.

It wouldn’t be a BrewDog beer if it didn’t batter you over the head with hops, and 77 is no exception. There’s an unusually huge lemony hit that you don’t normally get from a lager - it’s similar to some of their other beers that (I’m sure they would say) won’t be pigeonholed into a specific style. Trouble is, some of them fall through the cracks as a result. Not 77 though, it’s a genuinely interesting lager that tastes like a citric pale ale. If two other brands were discontinued for this, I’d consider that a more than reasonable trade.

BrewDog’s James Watt and Martin Dickie discuss 77