So, what is it? Brewdog describe it as a ‘Deconstructed Blonde Imperial Stout’ which, as with many of the Abstrakt range’s descriptions doesn’t tell you very much. It started off as a made-up collaborative beer, Luciferin – the Light Bringer, in an April’s Fools day video recorded by James of Brewdog and Greg Koch of Stone that appeared in 2010, before I was paying attention to their website. Here it is:

Brewdog then decided to go ahead and make it. The final product is even the same strength as the Luciferin…

Now, the idea of a Blonde Imperial Stout doesn’t really work, as the flavours that you get in stouts are in a large part brought in to the mix (as far as I know) by the malt, which in turn makes the beer a dark colour. So to keep the beer as light as possible you need to get all the stouty flavours in some other way, hence the ‘deconstructed’ part of the name. They did this by making a list of the sorts of flavours you get in stouts and then adding things that would add them – simple…

So, they added in some smoked malt to the mash and then aged it for six month with cacao, coffee beans, liquorice root and oak chips to give it the dark and smoky flavours you get in stouts. They also added oats to the mash to thicken up the mouthfeel and further add to the sensation that you are drinking a dark stout. At the Brewdog Camden tasting where I first tried it they handed out blindfolds before we given the beer and asked us to think about what type it was. Unfortunately I already knew and my expectations weren’t smashed, but many others around the room were – if tried blind (and even if not) it’s not what you’d expect from its appearance.

There were 6500 bottles of it released and it sold out in the manner of the other Abstrakt’s – very quickly (about a day?). However 6500 bottles is double the run of the first few editions, with 3200 being the standard until AB:05, which did 3600. Since then there’s been a ramping up of numbers (although it looks to dip with AB:07, but as that was aged it was made before AB:06 and thus still fits the curve) which suggests that Brewdog are responding to the popularity. Add to the regular demand another few thousand shareholders from the latest Equity for Punks and the fact that AB:08 was released to them (us) before the hoi polloi and you can see why they’d want to up the numbers. Well done them for doing so. Now all they need is a new brewery so they can actually brew enough of their regular beers without contracting them out…

So, what is the AB:08 like? On the nose it has lots of vanilla and coffee, like Montezuma’s Bean Machine chocolate in a glass, as well as heavy honey syrupy sweetness. To taste it’s got lots of sweet fruit to start, the ‘Fruit!’ you get from randomly coloured gummi sweets, crunchy nut cornflakes, thick dark caramel, used coffee grounds, some green hoppiness and milk chocolate. As the taste fades it has some tropical fruit (banana and pineapple?) before going very bitter with burned coffee, but with a lingering syrupy sweetness fighting it. If you didn’t know what it was, and when I open my next bottle it will be served to blindfolded people to test this assertion, it can come across as a dark beer, although I think (having never having properly tasted it blind) that it’s not quite right.

It has all the elements of a dark beer, but each of them isn’t quite right: the mouthfeel is too glossily syrupy, rather than just thick; the dark roasty flavours are obviously coffee, chocolate and wood, rather than heavily roasted malt; the sweetness is just ‘wrong’ for a stout – not wine-like as I find in many, but more sticky and sugary. That said, it is an interesting experiment, although not one that I’m distressed won’t be reappearing.

Roll-on Abstrakt:09 – the first beer I should be receiving as part of my joining the Abstrakt Addicts club…

Brewdog Abstrakt AB:08
Deconstructed Blonde Imperial Stout, 11.8%. £10.99 a bottle, now sold out.

We’ve been waiting for a while, along with rumours of incorrect licenses and general bureaucratic annoyance, but only a couple of months after it was expected BrewDog Camden has opened its doors. I went along a couple of times during the first week, including shareholder and bloggers tastings (accompanied by excellent chums Thom and Myk of the Thomyk podcast), and thought I’d better mention it up here. Spoiler alert: I really like BrewDog’s bars. If you want to ignore some gushing praise then skip forward a few paragraphs, as I also have tasting notes on some new beers that should feature slightly less gushing praise.

So, BrewDog Camden is very much a bar in the style of their Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen branches (now also announced as spreading to Nottingham and Leeds over the coming months), and is their first foray south of the border. There is exposed brickwork and beams, found materials cladding the walls (it looks like the floor of a school gym has been chopped up, multicoloured court/pitch/field markings and all) and a load of beer taps and bottles. The range is as you’d expect from BrewDog, with a load of their own brews as well as rarely seen beers from the USA and the obligatory Mikeller offerings. The bottle selection looks good and I need to return for some further investigation, including a bunch of very interesting Japanese beers that I hope last into the new year (Update: they did, and there’s a rumour that they’ll be having some of them on tap in the near future).

They’re also doing food, with pizzas and burgers, as designed by Masterchef winner and former Euston Tap manager Tim Anderson, on the menu. I tried a couple of slivers of pizza at the tastings, with both a seafood mix and nacho pizza being rather tasty (although not quite as good as the impressive spicy meat pizza I had at BrewDog Edinburgh), and have heard good things about the burgers, but more research is needed. Such painful research.

The staff are partly newbies and partly experienced bartenders shipped down from the Scottish bars, with bar manager Neil previously managing their debut bar in Aberdeen. As hoped they’ve brought along the same attitude to running a bar as they had up north, with a focus on education and getting people to try new and interesting beers rather than the snotty attitude towards stray Stella drinkers that you often find in ‘beer’ bars. Pete Brown wrote an article earlier this year about the Edinburgh bar that says it better than me, but in short: This is how to run a bar. I just hope they can keep it up and retain good staff.

They also have a door marked ‘Sex Dungeon’ downstairs.

Anyways, onto the beers. For the shareholders tasting they decided to run us through their current run of four prototypes, which they are currently asking for opinions on in an attempt to shake up their regular beer range next year. I’m fairly sure that the last time this happened, with Punk X, nothing happened, but I’m always pleased to try new and interesting beers so was up for a taste. They also ended on AB:08, the latest in the Abstrakt series, but more of that in a future post.

We started, after the regular Punk IPA and James’s usual Richard Paterson inspired greeting of the beer, with Blitz, the protoype that I was most interested to try. Recent changes in duty law not only mean that beers over 7.5% ABV now pay 125% of general beer duty but also that beers that are no more than 2.8% only pay 50% – Blitz is BrewDog’s 2.8% attempt at grabbing the tax break. While the duty changes will have, in my opinion, very little affect on public drunkenness and alcoholism (my soap box is stowed for the time being), the lower limit duty reduction has already inspired a few beers and as a fan of milds and low strength drinks of all kinds I’m very interested to see where this goes. Blitz is not BrewDog’s first foray into the arena, with their 1.1 and 0.5% Nanny State (which I don’t think even needs to have duty paid on it, as they’re less than 1.2%) produced as a response to the criticism of their ~15% Tokyo* beers, but this is the first attempt that might hit regular production and distribution. In an effort to get as much flavour in as possible they combine their usual ‘stick in so many hops that it can kill a goat at 20 paces’ approach with using 100% caramalt, a malt that is usually used as part of a mash to add body to a beer. On the nose it has the prickly smell of brewing beer, lots of malt, a hint of Marmite and stacked freshly cut grass. To taste it was quite thin, with sour tangerines, solid uncomplicated maltiness and a tea-like hop hit – not a big beer by any stretch, but a lot bigger than you’d think at such a low strength. I need to try this again to formulate a proper opinion, but there’s potential here for good low strength beer.

Next on the prototype list was Prototype 17, which I tried down at The Rake in the Summer. This is based on Trashy Blonde, usually a very nice golden ale and one of their only beers (maybe the only) to occasionally appear in a cask version as well as their regular ‘keg only’ dispense. The beer is brewed with Belgian beer yeast and a stack of New Zealand hops for lots of fruitiness, and to that they have added 150kg of raspberries to the conditioning tank. They also ran some CO2 through the tank while it sat to keep the raspberries moving and break them up a bit to extract even more fruity flavour. This is also a bit of a preview beer, as they didn’t empty the tank when bottling, leaving in some of the beer and fruit and then adding even more raspberries ready for a future release, potentially as an Abstrakt [Update: the Edinburgh announced that they had some 'Prototype 17.5' on tap in January 2012, so I suspect it's out in the wild already]. On the nose there was, as expected, lots of red fruit although it was quite crisp with some malt richness underneath. It also had the beginnings of pineapple and mango peeking in around the raspberries. To taste it was much drier than expected, with a burst of raspberry quickly fading, leaving leafy hops, a bit of pineapple, some juicy citrus and the sort-of-apricot flavour that I often get from Belgian beers. I reckon this would make a good summer beer, but I’m not entirely sure whether it’s one I’d want in the permanent line-up.

We moved on to another beer that I’ve tried before – Hops Kill Nazis. I’ve had a draft blog post hanging around for a while with some initial thoughts on the beer but in the end I haven’t got round to finishing it up, which pretty much sums up my feelings about it. The name was chosen through a poll on the BrewDog blog although I reckon that 5pm Sinner was the better choice, better reflecting the beer’s nature – a big red ale with lots of hop bitterness (80IBUs) bottled at 7.6%, rather than 5am Saint‘s relatively light 5% and 30IBUs. I picked up a few bottles when they released it originally and was surprised to see it in the prototype line-up as they already have Punk and Hardcore along similar lines, although it would sit between them in ABV, and was pleased to get another chance to try it. On the nose it was farmyardy, with mulchy hop lofts and straw, as well as rather fruity, with pine, tangerine and spicy mango that I assume come from the Chinook hops that they dry hop the beer with. To taste it was very malty with a load of sour fruit towards the end – pineapple, figs, grapefruit, passion fruit. It hung around a bit with some nice green hop bitterness and more fruit as the bitterness faded. Much nicer than I remember in bottle, but I’m still not sure whether it has a place in the crowded middle of the regular range.

Last was the other beer I hadn’t tried in the line-up – the Scotch Ale. The rather unassuming name is a bit misleading as this was, to me, the second most interesting beer on the card after the Blitz: a change from BrewDog’s usual hop led attack, instead using huge amounts of malt (10 different kinds including some smoked malt according to my notes from both tastings I attended, although the website says only 8), heather honey and nowhere near as much hops as they usually use, to produce a big and rich traditional ale. It was also, according to my notes, brewed using a lager yeast and fermented very slowly, due to it being quite cold up in Scotland. It looks to be a continuation of the ideas that popped up when making AB:07 (an oak aged Imperial Scotch Ale) but just toned down to a more easily repeatable level. On the nose it was dark and rich with a hint of porter, dry oloroso sherry, dried cherries, oats, fizzy jelly sweets and a lick of smoke. To taste it was thick in the mouth with lots of fruit, the expected slab of malt richness, cherries, pine needles, cocoa and some muddy smoke (almost peaty). This is the one that I think would be the best addition to the range, if the intention is to broaden it. It’s unlike their other beers, focusing much less on hops and going for big maltiness, and fills a gap that they have when it comes to catering to my tastes.

Anyways, in summary – go to BrewDog Camden. It’s ace. They might even still have some of the prototypes on tap. If not, they’ll have something else tasty…

Blitz
Low alcohol ale, 2.8%.

Prototype 17
Raspberry pale ale, 4.1%.

Hops Kill Nazis
Red ale, 7.6%.

Scotch Ale
Honeyed Scotch ale, 7.5%.

One thing you can definitely accuse Brewdog of is playing with beer. From the high strength Sink the Bismarck and the crazy packaged End of History and Ghost Deer to the recipe tweaking of the Abstrakts and IPA is Dead series, they like to do things which are both silly and interesting and Sunk Punk is no different. In short – it was brewed underwater.

There is, of course, a framing story, with tales of a fisherman cursed to wander the waves forever due to his drinking habits, but the idea for the beer was simple – fill a fermenter with the ingredients, get it going and then kick it off the end of a pier. There is, naturally, a blog post and video:

Recipe-wise it’s infused with sea buckthorn, and contains some fresh sea salt made from local sea water (based on the amount you can see James shaking into the wort in the video above, which I guesstimate at two 250g boxes of the poncey salt I cook with, and a sea water salinity of 3.5%, the middle of Wikipedia’s range, they would have needed to distill 14kg of water, which is much less than my cynical ‘they bought it in the supermarket’ thinking mind thought before starting this set of parentheses) and rum (added while wearing an eyepatch).

While I often get a bit ranty about booze packaging generally I give Brewdog a bit of free pass, in part because of labels like the one on this bottle. It’s a beautiful bit of black and white work by the excellent Johanna Basford, who also did the art for the Bashah Reserve that I have maturing on the side as well as several other Brewdog beers and a few t-shirts. I am tempted to perfect the art of removing labels intact and use this one to start a scrap book. She also sells prints (and has a Christmas shop) and I have some blank walls…

However, that is all secondary – what’s the beer like? On the nose it was very vegetal, with the usual Brewdog hoppiness, but very green – piles of fresh leaves, a hint of mulch, a bit of the ‘swampiness’ that I ranted on about recently as being the key ingredient of the old King & Barnes Sussex’s flavour. Balancing out the green-ness was a bit of malt and toffee sweetness and some, potentially psychosomatic, brine. To taste it was disappointingly flat, with sour green hops, some digestive biscuit malt and a bit of pineapple sweetening it up towards a very bitter end. All in all a disappointment – a not particularly interesting tasting beer with an overly bitter finish that hung around a little bit too long. At £10 a bottle it’s not cheap and unfortunately isn’t one that I’d count as a success. Ho hum, roll on the next marketing gimmick…

Sunk Punk
Scottish IPA, 7.1%. It was £9.99 a bottle, but sold out quickly.

At this year’s GBBF the Bières sans Frontières stand had grown considerably and been split up amongst a number of bars by country. I was very pleased to see that one of the countries that was well represented this year was Italy, a land that I associated until recently with fizzy yellow beer that tastes pretty good but always costs too much compared to the wine in the restaurant where you’re trying it. However, after reading Zak Avery’s tales of wandering around the beer spots of Rome last summer I realised that there was something I was missing about Italian beer, and I don’t like missing out. I had a long and drunken chat with the chap on the bar and he recommended me a few beers, including one that I chose mainly for the name – Bastarda Rossa.

Google translate backs me up on my assumed translation – Red Bastard. It’s made by Birra Amiata, who are based in the shadow of Mount Amiata near Arcidosso in Tuscany, about 100km south of Florence. The beer itself is a red ale made with chestnuts as an integral part of the brewing process. The area is known for its chestnut production, even having an IGP – Protected Geographical Indication, and the brewery buy them milled to a similar size as grain, using them in the mash as both a flavouring agent and a provider of sugars – the bottle says that chestnuts make up 20% of the ingredients by weight. The beer is normally sold in 75cl bottles, but it looks like they’re now doing 330mls as well, as that’s what I got. They updated all their labels sometime last year to make them more beer geek friendly, which is a good sign that they’re looking at kicking them out to the wider world, and it gives the following info:

• Alta fermentazione – top fermented
• Non pastorizzata – non-pasteurised
• Non microfiltrata – non-microfiltered (they just do a regular barrier filter to get rid of any lumps)
• Rifermentata in bottiglia – bottle conditioned (which I wish I’d known before pouring, although I don’t think my pouring in the yeast hurt any…)
• Hops: Hallertau and WGV (Whitbread’s Goldings Variety) in the boil
• IBUs: 18

Which is pretty extensive for a beer label. The website claims three hops, so I assume that they dry hopped it with something afterwards or just changed the recipe since my bottle was brewed. It poured a rather cloudy (I know now why…) orangey red and had a nose of freshly shelled roasted chestnuts, sweet malt and a hint of sour white wine. To taste it was quite nutty, but in a rounded, oily way rather than a bitter, nut skin-like one, with a hint of the forest (green leaves, dry leaves and bark), a big malty middle with controlled sweetness and a hint of sugary sweetness at the finish. Quite tasty and definitely not what I expected to appear from Italy until recently.

Hopefully I’ll get round to the rest of the Italian beers I picked up soon – I need the space for my Christmas supplies…

The vast majority of the beers I drink at the moment seem to be from Brewdog. The reason is simple – I don’t get the chance to go down the pub very often and I have a not inconsiderable stash from the Fraserburgh trouble-stirrers in the cupboard.  Unfortunately I’m an idiot and I recently found a stash of nice hoppy beers that really hadn’t survived their time in the bottle all that well, and as such I’ve decided to get through and drink a bunch of them rather than let them go all skunky.

However, in true contrary fashion this first one that I’m going to write about isn’t one of those, it’s a beer designed to sit and age – AB:07, the seventh release in the Abstrakt range.

I’ve written about a few of the Abstrakts on here before (so far only missing 1 and 5), but I’ve never actually bought a bottle. To make up for this I’ve recently become a member of Brewdog’s Abstrakt Addicts club and while that doesn’t kick in until the new year (securing me 3 bottles of each of the next year’s predicted 4 releases) I thought I’d better start off with the most recent one.

The Abstrakt series is a range of one-off beers, made in smallish quantities and discontinued after release. Some of the ideas get recycled into other Brewdog releases, but in general they’re high strength brews that are suited for bottle aging with interesting tweaks that make them a bit weird. AB:04 had coffee, chilli and chocolate in; AB:05 had toasted coconut; AB:06 was triple dry hopped; and AB:07 is a whisky cask aged Imperial Scotch Ale clocking in at an impressive 12.5%. The beer was brewed on December 21st 2010 and was filled into some whisky casks where it sat until early September 2011, when it was tanked ready for bottling. Their blog post from the day has more details, but it’s one of the least hopped beers they’ve ever made at 30IBUs (partly inspired by being snowed in and having their hop delivery delayed), which they made up for by packing in as much malt as possible…

I’ve not always been that much of a fan of the Abstrakts that I’ve tried, but they are always at least interesting. This one, strangely, is both my favourite and the most ‘boring’. On the nose it was like sniffing a vat of liquid black treacle toffee – sweet, pungent and with a hint of balsamic vinegar and Worcester sauce sourness. As it warmed up from fridge temperature it picked up some sticky dried cherry and lots of booze. To taste it was more of the treacle toffee, with a nice burst of coffee bitterness into the finish. As it warmed up it got thicker and richer, with some red wine and port fruitiness as well as fruit cake coming in with the balsamic and treacle. It’s a big dark beer, reminding me a lot of the Orkney Dark Island Special Reserve that I had last Christmas (and which I need to get some more of for this year), which will hopefully mellow out and get stickier and fruitier over the next couple of years. My plan for my remaining bottle is to drink it at New Year 2012/2013 – if it’s anything like the Orkney after a year and a bit in the bottle it should be fantastic.

Brewdog Abstrakt AB:07
Whisky Cask Aged Imperial Scotch Ale, 12.5%. Was £10.99 for a 33ml but sold out in about a day.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect and was rather pleased to be confronted by a much fuller room than I assumed would be possible. I’ve been out of the beer loop a bit for the last few months and missed a second explosion of brewers – a good third of the stands in the hall were from people I’d either not heard of or merely heard rumour of. Unfortunately this did mean I got a bit drunk and I apologise now to all the various brewers I tried to hug or waxed incomprehensibly at about how great beer was.

We started with drinking buddy Mr Rich’s most local brewery – Windsor & Eton. I’ve tried one of their dark beers before and I stuck with that plan by going for their Conqueror Black IPA. Moments after asking for it I realised that the evening might end up on a beery slide as it was not their regular 5% version but instead their normally-made-for-bottling-but-we-stuck-a-bit-in-kegs-to-see-what-would-happen 7.4% Conqueror 1075. They only filled seven casks and they brought one along to the show. I’m a big fan of black IPAs, although I find that generally they become hoppy dark beers or dark IPAs, rarely balancing in the middle, and this one was close but still on the hoppy dark beer side of things – sweet but coffee-like, with lots of burned sugar and a tasty green bitterness. Mr Rich was much more sensible and went for the first beer that they’d brewed – Guardsman. It’s a deliberately bitter best bitter, with a very traditional recipe bolstered by the addition of a lot of British hops. It was quite tasty, although bitter enough that you wouldn’t want to drink too many unless you’re a big hop head. It had a big grapefruity body backed up by lots of grain but not a lot of sweetness. They’ve been brewing since April 2010 (with the Guardsman going on sale on April 23rd, a mere month and a half after they started building out the brewery) and they’ve already started playing around with cask aging, strong ales, light ales and various other popular styles – definitely one to keep an eye on.

We then moved on to The Kernel, certain in the knowledge that they’d get a bit mobbed when the room started to fill up and not wanting to miss out on their beer. I continued my foolish dark beer choices with a half of Export Stout from the cask. I’ve tried it before from bottle and haven’t yet had a chance to try any of the Kernel beers from keg or casks so was keen to have a go. It was big and stouty, with lots of chocolate and dark chocolate malt, but also quite flat – when I showed brewer Evin my beer while starting my less-drunken lyrical waxing he was quite shocked that it was his beer, as it was meant to be a lot more carbonated, as it is in bottles. I didn’t care, as it was a great savoury chocolate milk of a beer. Rich went for the Citra IPA, which I’ve tried a couple of times and have always been very impressed by. Instead of its normal bottle delivery it instead came from a pressurised keg, although one that looked slightly on the homemade side and more like a 1940s fire extinguisher than a beer barrel. That doesn’t matter at all, though, as the beer was incredible – like drinking slightly bittered pineapple juice. Citra is great at producing tropical fruit flavours in beer and this was a lesson in how to do it right – my beer of the year so far. It was lucky we got there when we did as the temperamental keg started getting upset shortly afterwards and no more Citra appeared until much later.

We then skipped over to the other side of the hall to try out some beer from the East London Brewing company. Unfortunately I made my first faux-pas of the evening, confusing them with the also recently opened London Fields Brewery (who weren’t at the showcase). Luckily brewery manager (and head brewer, and delivery boy, and…) Stuart Lascelles is a nice chap who didn’t take it personally, especially as there weren’t any brewers near them when they started building this summer but now already have a few neighbours – they’re based off the Lea Bridge road in E10 and have only been up and running for a few months. They’ve got a brace of beers so Rich and I went for one of each. I had the Pale Ale, which was very floral with perfumed tea leaves, green herbs and lots of bitterness – really tasty, but again one that might get a bit much after a couple of pints. Rich went for Foundation, which was similar but without quite so much bitterness, an excellent session beer that at 4.2% won’t hurt you too much.

At this point I was already getting lazy so we just shifted one stand along to Redemption, one of the London microbrewing pioneers and home to thoroughly nice chap Andy Moffat. I visited the brewery last year and have been keeping an eye out for new beers ever since, and they had three that I’d not tried on the stand. I went for a Big Chief and having tried Andy’s more traditional beers a few times was surprised to find it to be the most modern American style beer that I tried all night, although the name made more sense after tasting. It had lots of red fruit, balanced leafy hops and tropical fruit leapt out of the glass as it warmed up – very tasty. Rich went for the Hopspur which I didn’t write any notes for, mainly because I really wasn’t a fan. I’d tried it before and assumed that it hadn’t been kept all that well, but it seems that it wasn’t really for me.

We then continued the easy circuit of the room and visited The Botanist, a brewpub in Kew that I’d not realised was there, despite being a bus ride down the road from my flat. The main draw on the stand before trying the beer was their bright pink painted kegs, which drew us in even before we knew who they were. I went for a half of the Kew Green, a fruity wheat beer that I described as a ‘very British Fruli’. It had strawberry and wheat with a balanced sweetness, but very little finish – the flavour just died in a slightly disappointing manner. Rich went for the 391, his first dark beer and my first beer with pretty much unreadable notes. From what I can make out (pieced together with my rubbish memory) it was dark and malty with a bit of an unfermented mash tang in the mix, and was quite nice. Having looked at the pub’s menu I see a fact finding trip in my future.

Barely moving we turned to the next table, occupied by the Ha’penny Brewing Company and Chris Penny (one half the brewing team, completed by Gavin Happé, hence the brewery’s name). I had a pint of their London Stone, a great sweet and sour beer with a nice chunk of malt down the middle, a nice contrast after the run of fruit and hops that I’d just had. The brewery is one of those that I unkindly think of being ‘not really London’ (although as I live on the western edge I should probably just keep quiet) and is on the Essex borders in Ilford. They seem to get out to lots of beer festivals so hopefully I’ll be able to have another go soon.

The next table round was a particularly new brewery – Moncada. Their website claims that they’re not up and running yet, but the beers on show demonstrate that they’ve got something working at least. They’re based at the Kensal Green end of Ladbroke Grove which I think makes them my closest brewery (beating Fuller’s and maybe even The Botanist) so out of loyalty I’ll have to keep an eye on their beers, because I wasn’t too keen on first taste. I tried their Bitter, which reminded me a bit of my one and only brewing experiment – it didn’t brew enough so there was a lot of unfermented wort in the brew, which this one seemed to have a bit of – yeasty and not quite there. I also tried the Amber, which had a fantastic nose of spiced fruit that wasn’t backed up by the quite light and boring body. I’m on the mailing list now, though, and will definitely have to get out and have another go when they’re officially up and running.

It was getting quite crowded by this time and I caught the eye of a chap with a satchel full of shiny bags who was weaving through the throng. ‘Would you like some Pork Scratchings?’ he inquired, not understanding quite what he had done. At the best of times I am a pork product addict, but after a couple of beverages I dream of burying my face in bags of fried pig and his appearance was perfectly timed. There seems to be no web presence for Crilly’s Chillis and my memory is shaky at the best of times, but I think the man with the sack o’scratchings was Mr Crilly and if so I offer him congratulations – they were excellent. Just the right amount of saltiness, more chewy fat than mass produced fare (a good thing), but still good and crunchy. Underneath all of that there was a little tingle of chilli, just the right amount to justify them being included in what I hope is a range of snacks from Crilly’s. Edit: It seems that rather than Mr Crilly (who is on Twitter) it was the excellent Mr Doug Bumpby who I met. Also, Crillys Chillis do have a website – Google’s not picked it up, but it’s the fairly obvious http://www.crillyschillis.com. It’s not quite up and running yet, but keep an eye out…

Pork need temporarily sated I wandered over to the Brew Wharf stand where I was offered a beer that my notes just list as 6 New Zealand Hops. I think it must be an evolution of their regular New Zealand Pale ale, but with even more hop varieties in the mix. However, with so many different hops flavours around they seemed to cancel each other out leaving a crisp and biscuity ale with a nice slab of citrus. I’d heard that Brew Wharf had started brewing but I haven’t visited since they opened, when they had a lot of Meantime beers on but none of their own that I remember – I will be returning on the strength of the NZ PA alone. Its proximity to TWE Vinopolis and Borough Market doesn’t hurt either.

The evening was definitely starting to move towards a close at this point, with the crowd getting obviously drunker and my beer token supply replenished thanks to a nice chap who declared that noone should have to buy beer that day. I decided to grab a pint of the one beer that I most probably wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else – the London Brewers Alliance Collaborative IPA, brewed together by the members of the LBA. The previous year’s beer had been a porter and I managed to grab a few of the small number of bottles they did (it was mainly put in casks but Evin from Kernel managed to get a bit which he bottled), which was tasty and memorable for its ability to explode whenever you opened one. This year they went to the other end of the spectrum and the gang of brewers put out an IPA. It didn’t taste much to me like I’d expect an IPA to be these days, filling its 5.9% with big toffeed fruit and chocolate, with a kick of hops but nothing extreme. It was reminiscent of the IPAs I remember before the new world hop invasion and quite nice with it – hints of a deadly Gale’s IPA I tried 4 or 5 years ago that make me wonder if Fuller’s John Keeling might have supplied the base recipe. This year the gang met at the Windsor & Eton brewery in September to produce the beer and I suspect that we’ve now seen the last of it – it’s definitely worth a try if you manage to find it on in a pub somewhere.

My new best friend. That is the fear of being hugged in his eye.

I then moved on to my last stand (although I’m sure I stopped at Brodie’s and By The Horns – notes were not at the forefront of my mind at this point of the evening and I have only a vague memory and a couple of blurry pictures to suggest I did) and drunkenness moved me towards the closest one I find, which I am very pleased I managed to get to – The London Brewery. The chap on the bar explained that they’d had a look and realised that noone had called their brewery that yet and decided to go for it, to which I say ‘Good work’. They’re based in The Bull in Highgate and it looks like most of their beer stays there. I went for a pint of their best bitter, Beer Street, and then may have gone a bit strange. I grew up in Horsham, home of King & Barnes and their Sussex bitter. It was a fairly unique beer and although Hall & Woodhouse now brew it (after they took over the brewery, knocked it down and asset stripped the beer range…there is still some bitterness in my heart over it) it’s not the same. The way I’ve always described the old version is ‘swampy’, but that’s not quite right. It’s quite vegetal, with damp grass and malt, a nice bit of restrained hop and a bit of a muskiness that I thought for years was a problem with keeping it, but was a distinct part of its taste whatever the cause. It is obviously a beer I view through rose tinted specs, but the Beer Street brought back a flood of sensory memory of my younger days drinking at home before moving up to London. It was at that point I started babbling about Proustian Memory and pseudo-madeleine equivalents at the poor chap behind the bar before stumbling away into the crowd and eventually out into the night.

All in all an excellent event, despite my inability to hold my beer these days. Luckily this points out a need for further practice and I did get quite a list of places that I need to visit during the afternoon, so all’s well that ends well. Which is what I’m still telling myself after getting home at 6am the next morning and having a two day hangover.

Drinking companion Dave also has a piece written up on Londonist.

Centennial is a New World hop, grown in the USA and bred in the 1970s by crossing a variety of British and continental European hops before it appeared on the brewing scene in the 1990s. It’s a multipurpose hop with medium-high alpha acid concentration (the main bittering agent within the hop) and a citrus/floral characteristic, and it is used as both a bittering and aroma hop, providing American beers with some of their distinctive bite for the last 20 years. Happily in the modern world of brewing it’s fairly easy (if there’s any left after the post-harvest auctions) to get American hops in the UK and lots of brewers have been playing with overseas produce (with the USA and New Zealand being the two that I’ve heard most about) for a while.

The Kernel’s IPA is one of my favourite beers of the last few years, no matter what hop is in it. I need to grab a bunch and do some more side by side comparisons (a bit like with BrewDog’s IPA is Dead collection) but for now trying the ‘same’ beer a year apart will happily do. Evin’s recipes are tweaked and fiddled with as he plays with ingredients and these two are definitely not the same beer, with the 100 coming in at 10.1% and the 2010 at 9.1%.

I started off by tasting the 100, brewed in May this year. It had Kernel’s usual chunk of sediment and I left it upright in the fridge for a few days to settle out, before leaving it to warm up a little bit before pouring – not too much, as I do like my big IPAs with some chill on them. On the nose it had damp and mulchy foliage with a big pungent green-ness, concentrated bitter orange, grapefruit and the tiniest hint of balsamic vinegar. To taste there was more of the orange and grapefruit from the nose, backed up by blackberries, strong tea, green leaves and a tasty sour bitterness running through the middle – green hops and dark stout-like maltiness. Another tasty IPA from Kernel and yet another hop variety to add to my ‘taste more of this’ list.

I then moved on to the 2010, aged (I assume in the bottle) since last year and with a big puck of sediment at the bottom – I was advised to keep it in the fridge for a while to settle out when I bought it, and the couple of weeks it sat there seem to have help me pour it cleanly. On the nose it was pungent again, like the 100, but without quite so much oomph – hoppiness does seem to sometimes disappear as beer ages (as a few foolishly ‘kept for a special occasion’ IPAs have taught me) and this may have been hit by that. However, this one had much more fruitiness, with red berries, sweet cherry and blackcurrants in the mix, as well as a quick whiff of stale armpit that didn’t detract too much from the rest. To taste the fruit jumped out again, with blackberries sitting around in the middle and turning towards sour berries as the flavour petered out. It started comparatively light, with malty Digestive biscuits and bitter orange, with hints of lemon and grapefruit popping up, as well as a nice almost gueuze-like sourness. A quite different beer, with the hops being more subdued than the 100 (although still as in-your-face as you’d expect from a Kernel IPA) and being replaced by big fruit. I don’t know whether that’s the effect of the aging or whether it’s just that Evin’s been tweaking the recipe in favour of a more hop led-approach over the year, but I was intrigued to see how it had changed.

Anyways, writing this reminds me that I need to stock up on beer. With my most recent BrewDog order left with a neighbour I don’t know (and who doesn’t live at the address given on the ‘Sorry you were out!’ card) my stocks are running low and despite the lure of whisky as the temperature drops, I have central heating and a fridge that will be running anyway, so a nicely chilled IPA is something I will be sampling in the cold months to come.

The Kernel India Pale Ale 100 Centennial
IPA, 10.1%. ~£2.50.

The Kernel India Pale Ale 2010 Centennial
IPA, 9.1%. ~£3.00.

BrewDog Alice Porter: I’ve got some bottles of this but the Holyrood 9A had it on tap – it was a draft stout with a nice balance of chocolate and bitterness.

Black Isle Porter – bought in response to my instruction of ‘get me something that isn’t Alice Porter’ – quite Guinnessy, but with a bit less coldness, more sweetness and less bitterness.

BrewDog Imperial Wheat – my first beer at BrewDog Edinburgh and the start of the night where I drank my way through the entire guest menu. I hurt the next day. This was a solid strong wheat beer, tasty but not massively interesting.

Stone Oaked Arrogant Bastard – this is where my memory started failing me on that first night, but I vaguely remember something a bit hoppy and fruity, with the regular fruit leaf flavours that I get from oak aged beer.

Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale – no clue. I only know what I drank that night thanks to making notes in my iPhone for later uploading to Untappd…

Mikeller It’s Alight – quite a dry and pond watery beer. Reminded me of King & Barnes Sussex in ye olden dayes, which is actually a compliment. It may have tasted like swamp water, but it was my local swamp water.

Mikeller Big Worse – this was the beer that finished me off. I have vague memories of big hops, fruit and a craving for a kebab…

Orkney Northern Light – found at The Bow Bar, a pub famous for its whisky and next door to where my mate Will was doing his show. A rather tasty golden ale that I’ve been looking forward to having again after drinking a lot of it last time I was in Scotland.

West St Mungo – Back to the Holyrood 9A for a pint with Will after his show, which was a special occasion as Will has given up drinking beer in recent times. He broke his self-imposed ban to have a brace of BrewDogs and I started off with the St Mungo, which has been much recommended to me by Mr Standing. I didn’t particularly like it – an overly malty lager that felt a bit cloying.

BrewDog Trashy Blonde – probably my favourite BrewDog beer and the one that they reckon tastes better on cask than keg. They’re right – all the taste of the bottled and kegged version, but with the lighter fluffier texture you get from natural carbonation.

Mikeller Exotic Punch – a strange thing for Mikeller: a straight forward and quite nice beer with no scariness or insanity to it. Nicely balanced hops and malt with a bit of citrus. Tasty.

BrewDog Hello My Name is Ingrid – another that I’ve had in bottles and one that I hoped they’d make again. It was good in bottle, even better on tap – big and fruity, with sour cloudberry (which they add to the conditioning tank) coming through along with the hops. I may have gone back for another taste of this one…

De Molen Op & Top – my least favourite of the beers I tried at BrewDog, dry and not particularly interesting.

The barman asked me if I was sure. I was. And drunk.

Mikeller 1000 IBU – I may have been drunk when I ordered this beer. Despite the International Bitterness Unit scale breaking down much above 100 this is still billed as being 1000 IBUs and it tasted like it. Massively hoppy, but purely with citrusy hop oil flavours rather than the mulchy hop that you get from other super hoppy beers. I shared the beer with Mr Standing and I’m pleased I did – it was starting to hurt by the end of the bottle.

8 Wired iStout – bought as an accompaniment to the 1000 IBU and at first I was worried that the residual destruction of that beer would mask this one’s flavour. I needn’t have worried – this was a massive stout with a perfect balance of coffee and chocolate flavours. I need to try some at a time when I hadn’t just worked my way through the guest beer menu. Again…

Stewart Edinburgh Number 3 – my first beer this trip from local brewer Stewart and it was a stout, the perfect breakfast as I sat down to watch some friends of my step-brother run through their show. I loved it but the lunchtime Fringe crowd are a conservative bunch and didn’t quite appreciate the combination of surreality and self analysis that is Brice/Stephenson. I also enjoyed the beer – a tasty stout with a nice creamy mouthfeel.

Stewart Pentland IPA – once I started on the Stewart beers I tried to keep on them, and the Canons’ Gait (nearest venue to where we were staying and centre of PBH’s Free Fringe) has a solid range as well as 10 gins. The Pentland IPA was a standard British IPA, by which I mean pleasantly hoppy but not on the scale of the current craze for hop monsters. Tasty and a nice reminder that you don’t need to remove the back of your head with hops to enjoy a beer.

Williams Seven Giraffes – lots of the venues had decent beer, which is surprise after my experience of London shows, and The Queen’s Hall, where we went to see Henry Rollins, was no exception. They had a range of Williams beers, including their blonde ale on tap, and the Seven Giraffes was great – a nice hoppy ale. Perfect accompaniment to listening to a hyperactive 50 year old man with a constant lust for new experiences.

Simon Munnery waiting for the table of four to arrive at his food free restaurant

Deuchars IPA – it wouldn’t be a complete trip to Edinburgh without a pint of Deuchars – despite its singling out by the BrewDog boys as an example of the boring ales that they are trying to destroy I rather like it. Similar to the Pentland: foamy, dry, fruity and quite nice. I had it at The Whiski Rooms while wandering between gigs (a show on the beach at Portobello for four of us ‘eating’ at Simon Munnery’s restaurant, La Concepta, and then some magic with time travelling Victorians Morgan and West), along with one of my only whiskies that I had on the trip (the only one outside of the SMWS rooms).

Connoisseurs Choice Lochside 1991, bottled 2010 – a rather Clynelish-like nose of candle wax and salted caramel, apples and vanilla; a palate of vanilla, cream, red fruit and woody cinnamon; and an interesting finish of pine, menthol and sugar syrup. I looked in the shop half of The Whiski Rooms but they didn’t have any…luckily we do have some at work and I’ll be grabbing a bottle soon (and writing a description for the website).

Mikeller Texas Barrel Ranger – a barrel aged version of the Texas Ranger and annoyingly one that I have no memory of.

Mikeller Koppi IPA – I tried this twice, once on tap and once from bottle. The beer is a single hop coffee IPA with a variety of different hops and coffees and the next day when I asked they couldn’t remember which combination the one on tap had been, although they thought it was probably the same as the one I had in bottle – Tomahawk hops and Odoo Shakiso coffee. The bottle one was rather nice, balancing coffee bitterness and hoppy bitterness, but the tap one was excellent – lots of chocolate flavours from the coffee and a beautiful sour berry hop that worked perfectly. I’ll be keeping an eye out for more of this.

And that was that for boozes. I also went to see some shows, including a couple of booze related ones, although not as many as the number of different beers I drank. Edinburgh is excellent for interesting beer.

Before the boozes though a couple of comments about the festival. Firstly: well done – it was one of the better GBBFs I’ve been to in recent memory. I didn’t have an off beer, the bar staff were all friendly and helpful, and the beer was managed so that it would last well through the week. However, the thing I was most impressed with was the stuff that doesn’t necessarily fall into CAMRA’s remit – foreign ale and cider. Rather than lumping them as two big bars like usual they instead spread them around a bit this time, with a couple of cider bars and at least two Bieres San Frontieres stands. The range of foreign beer was impressive, with the US cask/keg bar limiting themselves to ‘only’ putting on 27 barrels a day so as to keep things running throughout the festival, and there was enough expertise behind the bars that even when nothing I wanted was available (mainly due to not having been put on yet) I was still able to pick up a round that met the palates of my companions and I.

The only downer was the fact that many of the stewards are still arseholes. I had one threaten to throw me out within the first hour or so for the crime of trying to take a phone call and popping into a fire escape to do so. Yes this was naughty, no it didn’t require a threat of violence or swearing at me, especially as I finished my call, moved out of the fire escape and apologised as soon as I saw him walking towards me. I remember working at the festival and speaking to a number of stewards who were dismayed at the arseholeage of some of their companions – the idiot who shouted at me is one that I’ve seen at a number of GBBFs in the past and one that I will happily avoid in the future. I know the GBBF is staffed by volunteers (I’ve been one on a number of occasions and only wasn’t this year due to running out of holiday) but it’s good to be selective, especially with your enforcement division.

Anyways, beer. Me and the gang were on halves, apart from one that is noted below, and did some sharing around so there are significantly more beers below than were bought specifically for me. That said, I was a bit fragile on Thursday morning…

Bollington Best: A hoppy best bitter that was dangerously drinkable. Despite it being the first beer of the day (at about midday) it disappeared worryingly fast. (Winner of the Bronze medal in the Best Bitter category – discovered after purchase and well deserved)

Amber Chocolate Orange: Smelled of chocolate orange, tasted of soap and chocolate orange… I heard later in the day that the barrels of this were quite variable in oranginess – this one was quite orangey.

White Park Kellyhopter: My plan was to stick on the hoppy beers, this continued that plan – sticky and sweet without quite enough hops to stop it becoming floral and cloying.

B&T Edwin Taylor’s Extra Stout: Smells like chocolate, tastes like coffee…

Harvey’s Sussex XX Mild: My first darker beer of my own of the day and cheating because I already know I liked it. A chocolatey mild with an edge of astringency.

Clearwater Red Smiler: crunchy white unripe melon and honey.

De Molen Hot and Spicy: AKA ‘That Chilli Beer’. This is probably the most silly beer I tried all day – a 10%ABV smoked Imperial Stout with chilli. Big and dark, smoky and spiked with a strong green chilli flavour and burn. We discovered quite by accident that it matches very well with orange and chilli chocolate (if you like a lingering burning sensation). One to definitely try a sip of if you can – a half pint may be too much.

Mighty Oak Zephyr: An excellent combination of honey and citrusy hop. It was slightly too pine-laden for my taste, but definitely good for a half.

Cairngorm Trade Winds: One of my favourite beers of all time. Still pretty damn tasty.

Augustiner Edelstoff: A rather nicely balanced lager with a sweetness and hoppiness.

Wensleydale Semer Water: Tasted like a pond. And not in a good way. Very pondy.

Brampton Gold Bud: Sweetened grapefruit nose, sour grapefruit body. Made me yearn for St Peter’s Grapefruit, although this might be better.

Six Point Gemini: My first American beer of the day, recommended for me as the silliest IPA they had on. ‘Hop flavoured bubblegum’ say my notes. Sour oranges and big hops – silly and just what I needed. ‘A hop delivery mechanism’.

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale: Great when fizzy but even better from a cask like this was – fuller bodied and a little less bitter than usual.

Thornbridge Raven: My beer of the day – a perfectly balanced black IPA, with both big hops and dark flavours. How a black IPA should be in my book.

All Gates Mad Monk: Thick, deadly, tasty black beer.

Baird Kurofune Porter: One of the only Japanese beers I got to try (I forgot about them until I was leaving…). Big coffee flavours and exactly what I’d hoped a Japanese porter would be like – refined and elegant.

Raw Grey Ghost IPA: Sweet and grapefruity with a grapefruit finish. I like grapefruity beers a lot.

Windsor & Eton Knight of the Garter: A solid session beer but nothing lifechanging – malty with a nice hit of hop at the end.

Dorset Piddle Silent Slasher: My one punnily named beer of the day. Dusty hops and a buttery body.

O’Hanlon’s Stormystay: It tasted almost sherried with lots of fruit.

Franklin’s Dark: Not quite as sweet as it needed to be to be a good ruby mild.

Fuller’s Brewers Reserve #3: The beer that almost got me to go down on trade day – the third in Fuller’s series of barrel aged barley wines, this time finished in an Auchentoshan cask. I knew about it having met thev Morrison Bowmore (owner of Auchentoshan) master blender and former Auchentoshan distillery manager at an event a few weeks back and was looking forward to trying to grab some. They only had one cask a day at the GBBF and they wouldn’t tell me when it was going on, and when I wandered past and saw a massive queue I thought my luck was out. However, on a sortie to buy a round later I took my spare third glass just in case and found that they hadn’t sold out, which was nice. This was only served in thirds and was a rather pricy £1.80 a go but I, unlike everyone else on my table, loved it. I need to ping the Auchentoshan PR people and find out what sort of cask it was, as the beer had become almost entirely sherry-like and was very tasty – “Medium amontillado sherry with a hint of beer” say the notes. Random fact: the master blender in question, Jeremy Stephens, started off his career as a brewer at Fuller’s.

Newman’s Mammoth: Big malt and a sweet fruity finish.

Blythe Staffie: Excellently grapefruitiness.

Highland Dark Munro: Chocolate malt, cream and barley. A really easy drinking stout.

De Molen Rasputin: More from the mad Dutch lot who brought us Hot and Spicy – a rich Russian stout that is way too easy to drink considering it’s over 10% ABV. It was also not in the festival programme, which confused me a lot at the time. I had been drinking for a while.

Langham Hip Hop: Hoppy, golden. Boring, nice.

King’s Old Ale: My standard Christmas tipple, now being brewed in the same place but by a new brewer. Not quite as nutty as I remember, but I don’t think he’s done much recipe tweaking yet…

Hebden Wheat: A bit of a boring end, this was just a very solid wheat beer. Although as my palate was properly blown it could have been the best beer I’d ever tasted and I probably wouldn’t have noticed…

Anyways, I also swung by the Italian beer bar and have a number of interesting beers (including a chestnut ale called Bastarda Rossa – I really hope that means Red Bastard) to try over the up and coming months. Hopefully I’ll remember to write about them…

Along with a celebration of the new beers the day also had some significance in that it was the public release of the latest tranche of shares in BrewDog’s Equity for Punks scheme. It was originally designed as a one-off that allowed people to buy shares in the company(at about £250 each) to raise the cash for them to build a new bigger brewery on some land that they owned, as well as fund a number of other projects, and I kicked in some money. However, the other projects seem to have eaten all the cash and with BrewDog currently needing to up production to meet demand (with certain distribution channels closed down [including supplying cans of Punk IPA to any of my local Sainsburys…] to focus their stock on the on-trade and Meantime doing a little bit of contract brewing for them to fill in the gaps at the moment) they’ve now released another stack of shares to raise more cash to help the brewery become reality. I was at first slightly peeved that the money didn’t go where we were originally told it would, but with three BrewDog bars now open and a fourth appearing in Camden (as soon as licensing issues get knocked on the head) I’ve now reversed that peevedness and invested again. They’re still offering lifetime discounts for anyone who buys shares as well as money off in their bars, and they’ve dropped the minimum investment to £94 (for 4 shares – they did a stock split on the old ones). Details are over on the Equity For Punks website. Anyway, that’s enough pimping the company I own a bit of, on to the beer.

We wandered upstairs into what I’ve come to think of as The Tasting Annex of The Rake, where Martin Dickie, floppy haired brewer, and James Watt, shaven-headed front-man, led us through the beers they’d brought along. First up was a golden beer with a big hoppy nose that people were hmming and swirling around their glasses in an effort to work out what it was. I, surprisingly, got it right – it was Punk IPA, their regular beer, which due to it being free downstairs was the cause of the queue at the bar and also the large number of stumbly people about – BrewDog nights at The Rake do not end soberly. Rather than start us off with a special release they gave us their solid flagship beer, which I still seem to drink rather a lot of. Big green hops, lime, sweet orange and a bit of soapiness on the nose followed by lots of bitter hops up front in the mouth, sweet and flat in the middle and a tastily dry finish. Martin explained that the beer was put together as two fingers frantically waved at Deuchars IPA, a rather nice (in my opinion) beer that doesn’t really do the name of IPA any justice – it’s nothing like the heavily hopped, high strength beers that were shipped to India in the days of the Raj. To Martin this beer is all about the hops, with a stack of US and New Zealand varieties being added, including the brewing trade’s current darling, Nelson Sauvin, for tropical fruit and gooseberry flavours. Anyways, I still rather like this and have found that the consistency issues I’ve seen in the past (with bottles from the same delivery tasting different and dodgy kegs sometimes popping up) have disappeared. Anyways, I rather like this one and have a case of it sitting at the ParcelFarce depot waiting for me and my baggage trolley to wander over to take it home this evening.

Next up was the first of the new releases, Prototype 17. Harking back to the Prototype 27 that I got last year, this is their Lager 77 (a rather tasty and hoppy lager) matured in whisky casks with Scottish raspberries for four months. This is a limited edition beer for the summer, with only 8 casks (and 30kg of raspberries) being used. On the nose it had a big sweet and sour raspberry tang, with a hint of Haribo. To taste it started with clean sour fruit and finished bitter. In between there were hints of raspberry jam, raspberry leaves and a quick burst of syrup sweetness in the middle. This was pretty good and I suspect it’ll make a fantastic beer to quaff in our annoyingly warm late summer (organised by Mother Nature to give everyone a chance to whinge about there being no summer and then another to complain about the autumn being too warm), however it was a bit flat for my liking.

We then moved on to the beer that I’d come along for – EFP 2011, the Equity For Punks beer. Since becoming a shareholder there have been two occasions to visit the brewery and mingle with my fellow BrewDog fanboys, but on both occasions the world has got in the way – firstly my train to Aberdeen for the AGM in December 2010 was cancelled due to snow (although I later heard it went anyway and got through fine. However no trains came back for a while) and then I was trying to change jobs around the shareholders brew day, when the EFP was created. There was a discussion on the Sekrit Shareholder Forums about what the beer should be and on the day they created a black IPA. Martin described the difficulty with the style being balance – you want to create an IPA and not just a hoppy stout. On tasting it I’m not so sure that the balance swung in the direction that was intended, but I rather like it – the rest of the case of beer waiting for me down the road is EFP. On the nose it had a big coffee hit, with dark chocolate and a hint of vegetal hop. To taste it was rich and stout-like, creamy in texture, and bittersweet with a big coffee finish. Along with using a colossal amount of hops they also matured the beer on oak chips for 4 weeks to give it more woody oomph. This is one I think I need to try again at home to get more out of it, but it was tasty enough on the night for me to order some (exclusively available to shareholders for £1 a bottle), even if it didn’t seem as complex as the ingredients and construction palaver suggested it should be.

The final of the three new beers was Black Tokyo* Horizon, a collaboration between Mikkeller (brewer of Black), BrewDog (brewer of Tokyo*) and Nøgne O (brewer of Dark Horizon) – see what they did there? They got together to brew back in December 2010 and after some months in whisky casks the beer spent the last few in tanks with some ‘chocolate’ – 6kg of grated 100% cacao ‘Venezuelan Black’ from Willie’s Cacao (he of the Wonky Chocolate Factory). The beer poured like soup, dark and faintly evil looking. On the nose it had soy sauce & Marmite, dark chocolate, orange and a hint of creamy grains. To taste it very syrupy and sweet, with fruity chocolate syrup and a finish of Cadbury’s whole nut. Way too sweet for my palate but an impressive beast of a beer. They carbonated it to cut back some of the sweetness and lighten up the mouthfeel and I can’t quite imagine what it’d be without those bubbles – sweet chocolate malt ketchup?

I managed to drunkenly corner James for a couple of moments as I stumbled out, slightly less in my cups than the last time I met him at a tasting, and managed to extract some details of the next AGM – sometime in November. With my new job meaning that holiday time in November is non-existent I see some fun times ahead with Caledonian’s sleeper trains…

BrewDog Punk IPA
Scottish IPA, 5.6%. £1.59 per bottle or £1.49 per can

BrewDog Prototype 17
Whisky cask aged lager with raspberries, 4.9%. £3.99 per bottle

BrewDog EFP 2011
Black IPA, 7.1%. £1 per bottle, exclusive to shareholders (and £1.20 who can find it hiding in the BrewDog shop…)

BrewDog/Mikkeller/Nøgne O Black Tokyo* Horizon
Collaborative stout, to be released…