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.

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.

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.

BrewDog/3 Floyds Bitch Please – a collaborative brew from BrewDog and Chicago’s 3 Floyds. Harking back to their older special edition brews, this is a oak-aged barley wine, reminiscent of the Devine Rebel they made with Stone (although not a patch on the Devine Rebel Reserve) and their own Tokyo. It poured a deep red with a creamy coloured head and a had big wood smoke nose with a hint of rubber and stoney mud. To taste it was coffee and dark chocolate to start, with a bit of very dry tannic red wine. As I worked through the glass it got slightly fruitier, with some malty sweetness appearing, as well as some black liquorice and some of the blackberry leaf fruitiness that I associate with barrel aged beers. I’ve got a couple more of these and I’m going to leave them to think about things for a while – I suspect this one may develop in the bottle.

Redemption/Kernel No.2 – my first beer of the night at last week’s Day of IPA at The Euston Tap. The Tap isn’t the biggest of pubs, built into one of the small gatehouses outside Euston station as it is, and as you’d expect from an IPA festival at one of the top craft beer pubs in London it was rather full. Anyways, being a fan of both Redemption and Kernel I jumped at this one, having missed out on cask Kernel beer every time I’ve had a chance of grabbing it in the past. This seemed to be a happy mix of Kernel and Redemption’s styles – big and malty with some comparatively restrained hops at the end. It was orangey in the middle and finished with a nice bitter mulchiness.

BrewDog Abtrakt:06 – the latest in BrewDog’s “release once and never again” Abstrakt collection, this time a triple dry hopped imperial black IPA coming in at 11.5%. This was one of the few kegs of AB:06 that BrewDog filled and I got in a half at the Day of IPA as early as possible to make sure I got some before it went. It was a very dark beer, in both flavour and colour, full of fruity black coffee and coffee grounds. As it warmed in the glass it developed some syrupy raisin sweetness but was dark and bitter, with the bitterness hiding most of the fruity hops that were hiding in the background. They reckon that it’ll age well, but I’m not sure how well the overpowered hops will hold up over time.

Auchentoshan Bourbon Matured 1975 – After replying to an email from the PR company looking after Bowmore and Auchentoshan I got a little parcel through the post containing a pair of sample drams. This first one is a 35 year old from Auchentoshan, bottled after 35 years maturing in ex-bourbon casks. With an out-turn of 500 bottles at 46.9% (which may well be the undiluted strength) I suspect this is a marriage of at least 3. It had a sweet nose of vanilla wood, lemon butter, green leaves, heather, floral scented candles and bourbon. To taste it started with some sour fruit (gooseberry?) and moved through a buttery wood middle to a long finish, with leaves (green tea and berry bushes), cardboard and tannic edges.

Bowmore 1982 – The second dram from the PR folks, this is a 29 year old whisky matured in Bowmore’s No.1 Vaults, the below sea-level cellars where most of the distillery’s on-site whisky lives. On the nose this started off quite vegetal – with leaves and a hint of peaty forest floor. This was joined by bubblegum, cinnamon and a bit of floral air freshener. To taste it started with boiled sweets (Tom Thumb Drops?) and quickly moved into floral territory, with woody pot pourri sitting in the middle. The finish was quite long and was very air freshener-like – as if you’d sprayed some and then accidentally walked through the cloud with your mouth open. It reminded me of the 21 year old Bowmore Port Cask I tried at Whisky Live this year, and neither of them are really whiskies for me.

Berry’s Own Selection Clynelish 1997 – at the last Whisky Squad Rob from BBR brought along a little sample of something that he thought we might like. He was, as ever, correct, although as I’ve yet to have a Clynelish I didn’t like it was a bit of a shoo-in, even if he did make me taste it before telling me what it was. On the nose this had wax (giving away its origins almost immediately – this was definitely a Clynelish), sweet fruit, pencil top erasers, Love Hearts, bubblegum and peppery spice. To taste it had sour fizzy fruit sweets and sweetened cream leading to a caramel covered woody finish. Water brought out milk chocolate, green apples and more sweetness in the finish. I didn’t get my whisky mule to grab me a bottle last time he was visiting the shop (although he did grab me some of the crazy Karuizawa from the last Squad) and I’m starting to regret it as there aren’t many/any bottles left…

Sheppy’s Tremlett’s Bitter – Last year almost every member of my family gave me booze of some kind. It’s as if I’ve got a reputation, or something. Anyway, my mum and step-dad nipped down the road to a local farm and grabbed me some cider, living in Somerset as they do. They picked up a selection pack of ciders from Sheppy’s, a few miles away from them on the south side of Taunton. The first one I got out of the box was a single apple cider – Tremlett’s Bitter. It’s a bittersweet apple with a big chunk of tannin, which pretty much describes the cider. On the nose it was sharp and medicinal, with some malic acid sourness and the traditional cider ‘hint of farmyard’. To taste there was an initial burst of sweetness that quickly turned to sour apple skins, which hung around for a tannic finish.

Name aside, the set is made up of four beers brewed to almost the same recipe, differing in only one element – which hops were used. Hops are an often misunderstood part of the brewing process, adding important flavours at various stages and varying a lot more between the various varieties than us beer laypersons normally think. I’ve stuck my face and hands into various sacks of hops over the years and generally they’ve all been fairly similar – some sharper and more vegetal, some more resiny, but all in all generally ‘hoppy’. As such I bought the beers with an expectation of seeing the variation between the various varieties of hop, but didn’t expect that variation to be all that much – I was Wrong.

The base recipe seems to be a new one dreamed up for the project (made with Maris Otter, Crystal and Caramalt malts) and the beer is both hopped during the boil (while the wort is extracting sugars from the malt, dissolving alpha acids in the hops and bringing bitterness to the beer) and ‘double dry hopped’ (which I assume means adding it at two different occasions between primary fermentation and conditioning, at which point the aromas of the hops are more important, as the bitter alpha acids are less soluble at non-boil temperatures. [Apparent 'having a Clue about brewing' thanks to home brewing wikis and Andy at Redemption]). The beers have one simple stated aim – to educate people about what the different hops actually add to the beer. While the blog post about the project is typically vitriolic towards brewing tradition it does get across the point that I think is important – to be able to understand the beers that you are drinking and have a better idea what to expect from future brews it’s good to know what flavours the individual components add.

The beers. On my balcony. And a mop.

First up I went for the Citra. This is one that I’ve become aware of in recent times thanks to the Kernel Citra IPA, which is one that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed from their range of single hops beers, and a hop that I normally relate with a softer citrus nature rather than the full-on green bitter veg of ‘traditional’ hops (by which I mean the unnamed/forgotten varieties that I’ve seen in hop lofts and cellars on drunken brewery tours in the past). Citra is a newer hop variety, part of the wave of American hops that is currently rolling around the world of both professional and home brewing, that seems to have appeared around 2007 and popularised through its use in Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo IPA. Used predominantly as an aroma hop (rather than to add bitterness during the boil) the home brew forums I’ve been reading suggest that it brings a lot of tropical fruit flavours – pineapple, passion fruit and mango – to the brew, but I didn’t get so much of that. On the nose it had some burned butter and caramel sweetness (that I attribute to the base recipe) with a more traditional green hop and cut grass aroma. To taste it was a caramel/butterscotch start leading to a savoury hop bitterness at the end, with lots of green flavours and a lingering vegetable note. The sort of thing that I’d normally expect from a big hoppy beer.

I then moved on to the Sorachi Ace, a Japanese hop traditionally used by Sapporo in their lagers but recently appearing in the USA and moving to the rest of the world. It’s described as having a uniquely lemony flavour, but I didn’t really get some much in that vein. On the nose it was big orange marmelade with a hint of pine needles. To taste that continued with lots of spicy pine needles and a long lingering bitter orange, burnt caramel and pine aftertaste. Sappy pine was the dominant flavour for me, verging towards the floor cleaner end of things (maybe cut with a touch of lemon) but never quite getting there. This was a very non-traditional hoppy flavour and one that I will be seeking out again.

Next up was Bramling X, the only English hop in the set. More properly Bramling Cross, it was developed in the 1920′s as a cross breed between Bramling and a Canadian variety. It’s a mainstay of British brewing, although generally used as a bittering hop. BrewDog describe it as underappreciated and based on the flavours in this beer I can see why. On the nose it didn’t really do much, revealing the rather boringly ‘beery’ character of the beer, adding only a hint of cut grass. To taste it was quite a shock – smokey, muddy and with dark berry pies – unsweetened stewed blackberries with blackbery leaves. It reminded me a lot of Islay whisky cask finished beer, bringing in woodiness as well as the smoke. A little bit of traditional hoppy greenness popped up as the aftertaste faded, but this was quite a departure from what I expected.

The last beer I tried in the set was Nelson Sauvin, currently sitting with Citra as one of the more popular new hops. This one comes from New Zealand and is another one said to bring big fruity flavours, although with a big alpha acid content it also works well in the boil as a bittering agent. On the nose it had mulchy, spicy hops with sap and twigs. To taste it was very savoury (maybe a touch of brocolli at the start?), moving through a little bit of caramel sweetness with baked cooking apples to a very vegetal and leafy finish with a slab of minerality – the smell of cold gravel (or at least, how I’d imagine that would taste). Much more towards what I’d expect from a big hoppy beer, but with spiciness that was a surprise.

Four very interesting beers and further examples of why I continue to support BrewDog despite their deliberately contrary nature and annoyingly over the top marketing. It’s a brewery that seems to be very much in two pieces – if you dig through the marketing front (courtesy of James Watt and his posse) you’ll hit some interesting beers brewed (by Martin Dickie and chums) with an eye towards innovation and education that home brewers have been pushing quietly for a while.

IPA is Dead (Citra, Sorachi Ace, Bramling X, Nelson Sauvin)
Scottish single hopped IPA, 7.5%. £2.49 a bottle from BrewDog’s online store (only Bramling X in stock at the time of writing and I bought a chunk of it…)

Piccy by Jason

I arrived at the field of battle with a couple of donations of my own and was rather alarmed to see a neatly fanned out arc of beer, carefully arranged in alcoholic-ness order. The alarm was not due the neatness of arrangement or anything so simple, but more due to the middle beer clocking in at around 7%. Glasses were obtained, snacks were put within in easy grabbing distance and battle was joined. My notes are non-existant other than the names of the beers, so here’s a list along with what I remember:

• Coopers Vintage Ale - Jason started us with a beer from his motherland, Australia. The vintage ale has a bit more to it than the regular Coopers Pale, which is a nice light ale, with a chunk of ‘leave me to mature a bit’ maltiness and a nice chunk of fizz. A good start.
• Brewdog Zeitgeist – a black lager that has more in common with a mild than Asahi black. Good and malty with a light fizz.
• Loddon Hullabaloo – the first of several that didn’t quite stick in my brain…
• Brewdog Chaos Theory – I assume this was a stepping stone on the way to the Hardcore IPA, with less hops (but still quite a lot) and more rich maltiness adding up to a rather tasty beer. I still have a couple of these in the cupboard waiting for a rainy day – it didn’t set the world alight but I will be looking forward to drinking them.
• Kernel White Ale? – I’ve tried it before and was rather pleased to have it again. It’s still a cloudy mix of wheat beer and ale with some nice citrus. I need to visit the brewery again soon to stock up.
• Hook Norton 12 Days – The HN Christmas ale and one I tried at The Strongrooms after work recently. It’s got a lot of fruitiness to it (fruit gums and other fruity jelly sweets?) and a nice rich back that holds off from being a full on Christmas ale.
• London Brewers Alliance Porter - I’ve opened one of my bottles of this and this one went the same: explode. It’s rather lively and we lost a chunk of the bottle as it tried to escape across the table (Dave took a more paranoid approach to opening his next beer, as the photo shows). However, the bits we did get in a glass were rather good – coffee and chocolate without too much sweetness.
• Brewdog Prototype 27 – one of my donations. It’s definitely changed a little since I opened my first one, with less hops and much more sour fruit coming through. I wasn’t too keen, but it went down well with everyone else.
• Monkman’s Slaughter – no memory of this one at all. I think it was one of the few that could mainly be described as ‘beery’.
• Dark Island Reserve 2010 – the next year’s edition of my Christmas beer and still rather excellent. Big with coffee, dark chocolate, red fruit and rich maltiness. I think I liked my one better after a year of aging, but I’ve no clue if that’s just the batch or the time in the bottle. Even though it seems to have gone up to close to £10 for a 330ml bottle I think I might try and find out.
• Brewdog Tokyo (12%) – one of the three Tokyo’s Jason brought and the only one we opened (the others accompanying him home at the end for reasons of palate fatigue). Unfortunately I don’t remember much about it, which is annoying as it’s the only one I’ve tried. Brewdog do seem to have stock in again, so hopefully I’ll grab one for myself soon.
• Kernel IPA Citra – I’ve had the Simcoe IPA but this one blew it away – rounded flowery hops with a touch of lemony citrus combined with the usual excellence of the Kernel IPA. Another one for the shopping list.
• Brewdog/Mikkeller I Hardcore You – another donation from me and one that I rather annoyingly missed out on buying again recently when they made a second batch. Big and fruity with ridiculous amounts of hops, yet worryingly easy to drink until you fall over.
• Aventinus Eisbock – strong and concentrated by freeze distilling (the process that Brewdog took a bit further when competing with Schorschbräu) this was a bit treacly in the glass with a very concentrated sweet beer flavour. Not my favourite.
• X33 – brought back from Prague this was a scary thing. My memory was slightly going by this point but I mainly remember the fear.
• Kernel Imperial Stout – Thick, dark, chocolatey – this was the LBA Porter with nobs on. I’m going to need a wheely bag when I next get to the Kernel brewery…
• London Pride – I reckon this one had been in the bottle too long. Musty and prickly in a way that didn’t inspire enjoyment. While some of Fullers’s beers age well, Pride doesn’t. Which doesn’t matter as bottles of it don’t last long in my house anyway.
• Brewdog Paradox Speyside – a whisky barrel aged dark ale that I rather like, although I’ve not tried the one matured in speyside casks – I’m not sure if they change the beer recipe, but every one I’ve tried has had a different flavour. This one had some nice fruit and a touch of whisky flavour that the other ones didn’t. I’d suspect that some of the whisky had been left in the barrel before filling but a) the excise man doesn’t like that and b) the Brewdog guys would have decanted it into their hipflasks before filling the casks.
• Harviestoun Ola Dubh 16 – similar to the Paradox, this is Old Engine Oil matured in Highland Park casks that had previously held 16 year old whisky. I’ve written about it before but having come back to it I rather enjoyed it. Being able to taste the difference between the base beer (which I’ve found a few times since I first tried the Ola Dubh) and this has been very useful as it shows the rounding effect of the wood and the various sweet and savoury notes it adds. I’m still not sure that the price differential from 12 year old to 40 year old maturing cask is worth it…
• Kernel London Porter – I tried this a few days earlier as the SMWS rooms in London now stock Kernel beer. It’s along the same lines as the Imperial Stout but with the sweetness dialled back a few notches. Dry and dark, much niceness.
• Yorkshire Warrior and Yorkshire Moors – beery. Not bad, but didn’t stick in the mind.
• Kernel Nelson Sauvin Pale Ale – shockingly this one also didn’t stick in my mind other than really liking it. Definitely one for me to find and try again.
• Meantime Lager – with the room starting to flag we decided to move onto something lighter and this fit the bill perfectly as well as running us out of beers that weren’t hidden away to fight another day. It was light and had a definite taste of grain and hops, rather than the often found lack of anything interesting in a yellow fizzy beer. I can see why it was used in the most recent Hugh Dennis/Oz Clark road trip to insanity program to prove that lager doesn’t need to be boring.

That was 24 beers, so we decided to round things off with another Coopers Vintage while we digested pork scratchings, considered toasted cheese sandwiches and generally cogitated. If anyone else needs help reducing beverage collections to help with house moving, please let me know – I can always make room in my schedule.

Jason has also written up the various shenanigans over on his own blog.
In my previous post I declared ‘whisky deluge #2′, however a weekend of not drinking after a week that included an embargoed whisky tasting writeup (so as to keep the blind tasting bottles secret for the next few sessions) mean that the deluge has been cancelled. For now.

(Yes, this is a tissue thin excuse for not being bothered to write my normal levels of obsessiveness, but give me a break, I’m still tired from all the sleeping)

BrewDog Eurotrash: picked up at the same time as my recent lot of Punk X, this is one of BrewDog’s prototypes that I hope appears more widely. It had the traditional BrewDog muddy hoppiness on the nose, but with an underlying sweetness that I wasn’t expecting. To taste it had a nice chunk of hops but was very much more a fully flavoured continental style beer – hints of Leffe and other big malty golden beers from the other side of the channel. It wasn’t quite as big as those beers, but was nicely balanced between hop bitterness and malty sweetness – one I’d like to get some more of.

Orkney Dark Island Special Reserve 2009 – I picked this up for Christmas 2009 but forgot I had it and have had it sat on the side ever since waiting for an occasion to crack it open. I went for it on Christmas day this year and was very pleased I did – it was rather special. It poured very thick and dark, pretty much opaque even when held up to my brightest lamp. On the nose it was heavy, with Marmite, slightly squishy apples and warm orange peel. To taste it was clinging with defanged Worcester sauce (not quite so astringent or salty, but still big and fruity with a meaty umami behind that), braised red cabbage with apples and vinegar, and a finishing mineral note. It had notes of my favourite heavy beers of the year, combining the strange fruitiness of Gale’s Prize Old Ale with the chocolate notes of Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout and the bitter richness of Kernel London Porter. I just wish I’d bought two bottles…

Clynelish 14 Year Old – picked up from Waitrose as my Christmas whisky this didn’t get much of a look-in on the day itself, although it has become my new favourite hipflask whisky now that I’ve run out of Longrow Cask Strength (which I need to find some more of). As is usual at Christmas it was sillily priced at £25 (I also picked up some The Glenlivet 18 and Aberlour A’bunadh batch 31 a few days later for similar prices – no more whisky buying for me for now) and is definitely worth more than that. On the nose it has the traditional Clynelish waxiness, with brine, sweaty boiled sweets, creamy vanilla, leather and a touch of meaty smoke – my note says ‘burning beef?’. To taste it’s initially sweet turning to sour wood by the finish. There’s vanilla, mint, menthol and sour sugar to start, and unripe red grapes and tannic wood to finish. Water adds more sweet and sour fruit to the start as well as a prickle of white pepper. Again, my slightly drunken notes add ‘more lemony if you burp’. I’m pleased with this bottle and it’s on my list of things that I should always have in the house.

Boisdales Mortlach – this is one I tried after the The Glenlivet tasting with Caskstrength, which I found to be rather pleasant. On a random wander into The Vintage House I saw a row of bottles of it hiding in their rather excellent independent bottlings selection and for £37 couldn’t really say no. On further inspection I noticed a familiar name on the back of the bottle – Berry Brothers and Rudd’s Doug McIvor, as they selected and bottled this for Boisdales. It’s the colour of golden syrup and the nose continues that feel with salted caramels backed up with a hint of smoke, shiny polished wood and lemons. To taste it has a big sweet caramel with raisins, cinnamon and allspice, balanced by unripe grapes and wood polish. The finish is short with sour wood and a hint of smoke. Water doesn’t change much, bringing out a little more sweetness and lengthening the finish. Easy drinking and very tasty, I suspect some more of this maybe sitting at the back of my cupboard soon waiting for next Christmas.

Hankey Bannister 12 Year Old – part of a Christmas care parcel from Lucasz over at the Edinburgh Whisky blog on behalf of Inver House. This is part of a range of blended whiskies that are now distributed by Inver House, although not all that easy to find in the UK, that stretch back to 1757, when Hankey Bannister & Co was founded in London to provide drinks to the locals. The 12 year old is the second in their range, with their Original sitting beneath it and 21 and 40 year olds above it. I’ve had a look and can’t find it easily available on the web in the UK (although TWE have the 40 year old available for £360 per bottle…), but it pops up abroad and in duty free from time to time. On the nose the 12 year old had acetone, pear drops, muddy smoke, apples, vanilla and a underlying meatiness. To taste it was quite delicate, starting with a quick burst of pine and moving through tannic dryness to fruity sweetness and a light creaminess. The finish was quite light and long with sweet wood and digestive biscuits. Water didn’t reduce the flavour very much and brought out more red fruit fruitiness and creaminess. It has the nose of a blend and is easy to drink like a blend but doesn’t have a heavy graininess like you get with some blends. Not stunning, but not bad.

anCnoc 16 Year old – anCnoc (with crazy capitalisation) is the brand name that is now being used by the Knockdhu distillery, also owned by Inver House, to distinguish it from similarly named Knockando. On the nose it has pink foam shrimps, refreshers and vanilla, with a slightly sweaty salty note behind the sweetness. To taste it was astringently woody with fizzy sherbert and woody vanilla leading to a sugary woody finish. It could take a good chunk of water bringing out sour Skittles, more creamy vanilla and a big sweet and sour fruitiness. I wasn’t a fan of this neat, but water brought out the some balancing sweet and sour fruit that I rather liked.

Anyways, welcome to the new year and here’s to twelve months of interesting imbibing.

Many thanks to Lucas and Inver House for my Christmas parcel. There were also a couple of Old Pulteney samples, but as I’ve written about those before and there’s a Twitter tasting coming up soon I’ve left them to one side for now.

BrewDog Euro Trash
Prototype golden ale/blonde beer, 4.1%. Not generally available.

Orkney Dark Island Special Reserve 2009
Orcadian dark ale, 10%. Not generally available.

Clynelish 14 Year Old
Highland single malt Scotch whisky, 46%. ~£30 from Master of Malt

Boisdales Mortlach 1991 (17 years old)
Speyside single cask single malt Scotch whisky, 46%. ~£37 from The Vintage House

Hankey Bannister 12 Year Old
Blended scotch whisky, 40%. ~£25 from Loch Fyne Whiskies

anCnoc 16 year old
Single malt Scotch whisky, 46%. ~£40 from Master of Malt

It was the first of their beers I tried, given away free at the February 2009 Twestival in London, and I rather like it, but things have moved on a bit since Martin and James opened their brewery – a couple of years of experience and recruiting means that not only do the bosses know more about making beer but they also have a team of people to work with when making new beer. As such they’ve had a reexamination of Punk IPA and brewed a new version, currently nicknamed Punk X.

Can you tell which is which?

I first tried the new beer in November at The Rake, where they did an evening with both on tap and asked for our opinions on which was better. A little while later some popped up in their online shop (and there’s still some left by the looks of things) and I grabbed a few bottles for reasons of ‘research’.

Punk IPA is an in your face beer. That’s its reason for existence, to be big and punchy as a calling card for BrewDog, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, again I assume as intended, it’s not a beer that everyone likes – I got to try a lot of it at the Twestival due to people having a sip, not liking it and then handing their bottle to me. When released it was very hoppy for a British beer and while hops are appearing in much greater concentration more recently (due to increasing numbers of hoppy US beers making their way over here, as well as BrewDog’s influence and the general cycling through of popular beer styles) Punk IPA is still up there. It’s not particularly balanced, with a big muddy hop swamping the nose and dominating the flavour. Behind that there’s an okay maltiness but as I’ve drunk more hoppy beers I’ve slowly gone off Punk. That’s not to say I don’t like it – it’s a nice beer on keg and cask, with a nice hop bitterness, and I usually have a few bottles of it in the fridge, but many of BrewDog’s other beers are nicer, as you’d expect due to it being their first.

Punk X is an altogether different beast, despite coming from almost the same ingredients (from what I’ve seen they’ve added a malt and changed the way they hop the beer, although using the same hops just at different times and in larger amounts). The bottles I have are slightly hazy and it pours a bit livelier than the Punk (although I suspect this is just due to it being closer to the experimental stage) but even on the nose it’s very different. There’s a lot more green hops on the nose, smelling like you’ve just rubbed a bundle of leafy hops between your hands – resiny and pungent. To taste a lot of that disappears, with the hops sitting quietly at the back of things. Up front is a lighter, more elegant beer, with some gooseberry-like fruit, apples, blossom and a pleasant dryness leading to the gently grassy finish. On tap it was, from my hazy memory, even more floral and fruity without quite so much of the overt hoppiness, and better than the bottles I have at the moment – something I suspect is due to it still being a changing prototype. The tap version was very much something I could see being a regular beer, but the bottle version I have at the moment is a bit less mainstream, with enough of the pungent hops in there to turn away regular drinkers. It’s interesting though, and has made me realise that I need to learn more about beer making yet again – this beer has even more hops in than the regular Punk IPA but the bitterness has been lowered from 68 to 45 IBUs. There’s more info on the differences between the beers in James’s post about the tasting at The Rake.

One of BrewDog’s ideas is to replace Punk IPA with Punk X, with the tastings they’re doing generally ending with everyone being asked to choose which one they’d want to be Punk IPA in the future, and after a couple of pints at The Rake I quite happily chose the Punk X – that version really was rather special. However, thinking on it in a more sober state of mind I reckon that’d be foolish. They’re very different beers and while I think Punk IPA could do with some refinement I don’t think Punk X is its replacement. I don’t want the Punk X to go away (and have already bought a few more bottles from the shop) but reckon that with a little bit of BrewDog’s brand magic they could have another beer on their books.

Punk IPA
Scottish IPA, 6%. ~£1.50 per 330ml bottle at the BrewDog shop

Punk X
Prototype Scottish IPA, 5.6%. ~£1.30 per 330ml at the BrewDog shop (while stocks last)