Tag Archives: brewdog

Brief Encounter With Beer

The beer list at the Wellington pub, Birmingham.

When the train from Penzance spat us out in Birmingham on Friday, on the way to Warwickshire for a wedding, we found we had time for a pint or two between trains. Is there anything sweeter than an hour in the pub stolen from a day which is otherwise not your own? (Would ‘more bitter’ be appropriate?)

The entrance to the Post Office Vaults pub, Birmingham.The Post Office Vaults is a windowless basement pub a short walk from the back entrance of Birmingham New Street Station. It smells, as cellar bars often do, a little earthy, but those first pints of pale’n'hoppy ale (Salopian Oracle (4%) and Ossett Citra (4.2%)) were just what we needed to revive us. The Hobson’s Mild (3.2%) with which we followed those tasted a bit… mild. Too much crystal malt was in evidence for our taste, but there was no doubt it was in excellent condition. The finisher, a bottle of Stone IPA, was anything but mild, though its taste didn’t quite live up to its in-your-face, marmalade perfume.

On the return leg, we arranged a slightly longer pause between trains, and managed to dash to the Wellington, an old-school ‘beer exhibition’ with fifteen cask ales on offer. Mid-refurbishment, it felt tatty, but not unpleasantly so, and the real-time beer list on a flat-screen was a distinctly modern touch. At one point, we watched the landlord pull a tot of golden ale into a half pint glass and hold it up to the window, turning it on his fingertips and peering with narrowed eyes, like a diamond dealer inspecting a stone for flaws. We were in the hands of professionals.

The star of the show at the Wellington was Oakham Citra (4.2%), though we couldn’t have managed a long session on it, and if we’d have been staying for the afternoon, we’d have stuck with Abbeydale’s Exodus (4.3%) — also very pale, also ‘floral’, but more balanced, and without any tooth-jangling astringency. Abbeydale seem very reliable to us and we wonder why they’re not better known; their understated (homemade-looking) graphic design can’t help.

Finally, we fit in a brief stop at a largely deserted Brewdog Birmingham. Cocoa Psycho (10%), a chocolate stout, had a big hole where some flavours should have been. The same was true of a fairly bland IPA hopped only with Goldings from Kent (6.7%). Neither was ‘fizzy’ or ‘cold’ — just lacking depth. The same IPA with Slovenian Dana hops, however, was a startling, freakish eye-opener that made us laugh. Our immediate thought: roast lamb! On dissecting that, we decided we were tasting something like thyme, mint and ‘onion flowers‘. We’re not sure we liked it, but our taste-buds appreciated the wake-up call. Someone should go all out and use Dana in a Rauchbier, or even a meat stout.

The local CAMRA branch seems to be pretty clued-up and active. Their magazine is a slick publication which, in the current issue, includes a nice article on Antwerp, as well as sneer-free news of Brewdog’s opening. Their free ‘real ale map’ of the city is excellent, too. Brewdog’s staff, for their part, were doing an excellent job of educating interested punters without patronising them.

It’s us, not you, Brewdog Bristol

Always the last to any party, we finally made it to a Brewdog bar on our trip to Bristol.

Shiny, new, and in the ‘organic corporate’ style pioneered by sandwich-chain Pret a Manger, it certainly isn’t a pub.

The bar staff were, to a fault, helpful and cheerful. The advice they were giving when asked was sound, too, though unfortunately laced with bright-eyed, cult-like statements such as (paraphrased) ‘Brewdog were the first to have the guts to do something different’, etc.. If the decor reminded us of Pret, then the spiel reminded us of a Hare Krishna cafe.

Beer was priced as we expected, with our favourite Punk IPA at (if we remember rightly) £4.20 for two halves, and tasted just as delicious as it does from the bottle. 5AM Saint was… what’s that phrase? ‘Liquid cardboard’?

Around us were students who’d ordered ‘whatever lager you have’, drawn, we guess, by the coolness of the bar rather than the beer; middle-aged men who wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Wenlock Arms; and parties of thirtysomethings not yet especially into beer apparently there for an experience. In case you were wondering, they’re the people who buy the super-strong beers in spirit measures at £6 a pop. From where we were sitting, they got their money’s worth, talking animatedly, swapping glasses, and finding much to marvel at: ‘It tastes just like sherry — I wouldn’t think it was beer if I didn’t know.’

It is certainly an interesting addition to the city’s beer scene and will thrive. We’ll no doubt pop in again if we’re passing (assuming we’re still welcome) but the fact is, there was no chemistry between us and this bar.

Do Brewdog use CO2?

UPDATED after comments from our readers. Short answer: who knows how the hell Brewdog are carbonating their beers.

Every day, between five and ten unique visitors find our blog with the search term ‘do brewdog use Co2′. No kidding.

Because it pains us to imagine their disappointed little faces when they discover that we don’t actually answer that question anywhere, we decided it was time we did.

We take it that the question is really (a) “Do Brewdog artificially carbonate their beer?” or (b) “Are Brewdog’s beers ‘real ale’?”

To which the answers are (a) yes sort of, maybe and (b) no hardly any.

It seems most of Brewdog’s beers are carbonated in closed fermentors; have most of their yeast filtered out; and are then ‘topped up’ with CO2 to get to the right level of carbonation. All of Brewdog’s beers are carbonated using carbon dioxide injected into the beer.

They made a fuss about ceasing production of cask do not currently produce any ‘real ale’ — that is beer which is conditioned (carbonated) ‘naturally’ in the bottle or cask by yeast remaining in the beer — but do produce a very small number of limited edition beers which are conditioned naturally in the bottle. Those are technically ‘real ales’, we guess, though they wouldn’t like to label them as such…

Does that make their beer better or worse? Does the use of some added CO2 make their beer worse? Can. Of. Worms.

We also get occasional visitors trying to find out if John Smith’s smooth is real ale: it isn’t, but John Smith’s Cask (rarely seen) is.

A Household Name

A lot of what The Scottish Brewery does only makes sense when it occurs to you that they have one aim: to become a household name.

They simply don’t care if they’re loved or loathed, as long as they can break out of the beer geek ghetto and become the kind of brand that ‘normals’ have heard of. Their eyes are fixed firmly on the goal.

It explains their partnership with Tesco, which otherwise compromises their ‘punk’ brand, but gets their products and logo seen alongside Carlsberg et al; it explains their attention-at-any-cost approach to PR stunts;  and it explains this needy tweet which emerged at the height of the Diageogate PR triumph yesterday, when their story was trending worldwide:

We have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, what they’re doing to get where they want to be is pretty much constantly irritating; on the other, we’ve yet to see a British ‘craft brewery’ crossover into mainstream consciousness. If they make it, it might be a good thing in lots of ways, as long as they don’t pull the ladder up behind them.

Updates, Notes and Responses

Oh, by the way — this post absolutely counts towards our 1000 by Wednesday, so there.

A standard upon which to improve

This starts off as a post about books and bread but bear with us, there’s beer at the end.

If you really want to know about snobbery, Jeffrey Steingarten is your man.

Nothing in the food world is chicer than salt, and despite an excess of God-given modesty, I must admit that I got there very, very early… [I] acquired a little walnut box and filled it with fleur de sel. I bring it out only in Europe… My salt sophistication has only soared since then.

Somehow, though, he gets away with it, perhaps because of the self-mocking with which he laces his articles.

In his second collection of articles, It Must’ve Been Something I Ate (2002), Steingarten talks about Parisian baguettes. He observes that, in the past, beautifully made, fine-tasting baguettes were what everybody ate. At some point, a new type of baguette made using strong bread flour — fluffier, whiter, easier to produce in large quantities — came along and took over. In recent years, however, the real thing has started to make a comeback.

Although he then goes on to recommend various small bakeries across Paris, he also says something surprising for a food snob: that the versions of the traditional baguette being made by chains of bakers such as Paul (currently appearing across the UK) are pretty good too and certainly a good thing.

There are French food lovers who fear that… branded baguettes may bring standardization to the world of handmade bread. Having wandered in the baguette wilderness for 20 years, I will feel that I’ve reached the promised land if… [they] set a minimum standard that innovators can strive to exceed.

Is this what beers like Blue Moon are about? Or is this the niche Brewdog are beginning to fill? They are, let’s face it, a pub chain and supermarket supplier these days, but if their Punk IPA is what counts as pile-’em-high Tesco discount fodder, then that’s got to be a sign that things are looking up in terms of the basic standards people expect from their beer.

There have been quality control issues with Punk this year — we had a bad bottle in the summer — but, at its best, it is bursting with flavour and yet also very accessible. Needless to say, it continues to be a shame that they can’t let the beer speak for itself without the tiresome marketing nonsense.

We can't be trusted

Here’s why you should never take our tasting notes seriously (we certainly don’t).

We were sitting in the garden having a drink in the sun. We started with our own Centennial-hopped pale ale and followed it with Brewdog’s 77 lager, described as a pilsener. We thought 77 tasted like a good Franconian pils — noticeable malt flavour with bitter bite at the end, but with quite restrained, herbal hops.

Reading Barry and Velky Al, however, we realise that this cannot be. Surely we should have spotted the Amarillo hops a mile off? But they were drinking this alongside German and Czech versions, and we were drinking it after having had our tastebuds bludgeoned with c-hops.

Tasting is absolutely relative.

We really enjoyed it at any rate, and will be getting a bit more in for the summer.

Question: have Brewdog stopped making Hoprocker?

More BrewDog reviews

morebrewdogs

We’ve had a few Brewdogs in the cellar for a while now, and only just got round to drinking them, having pitted the IPAs against each other a while ago.

“The Physics“, a “laid back amber beer” didn’t really work for us – it’s got a gorgeous smell, and it’s pleasant enough, but it doesn’t have a lot of complexity of flavour — crystal malt and that’s it.  Tasted like one of our homebrews.

Riptide, a “twisted merciless stout” is pretty good though — one of those beers that’s so well balanced it’s hard to pick out particular flavours.  There’s cocoa (rather than chocolate) and a slightly sour cherry note.  If you gulp it, there’s a hint of smoke.  It’s 8% and has a lot of body. Drinking this feels like a real treat.

Paradox Smokehead (batch 015 in Islay casks) is an impressive drink. You’d give it to people to make them go “wow, doesn’t that taste like whisky”. But, if you don’t like peaty whisky smells and flavours then forget it.  There may be other exciting ingredients in there, but if there are, they’re hard to spot.  We like it but it’s almost an ordeal to get through half a bottle.

Isn’t BrewDog’s marketing strategy just ace?  Cool-looking bottles that you’d happily give to non-beer-geek mates.  Limited edition batches, like 90s indie singles. Lots of publicity in “taking on” the Portman group. Getting on Oz and James helps, too. Of course the beer should speak for itself, but with their strategy BrewDog are aiming for the mainstream market, and you have to be impressed with that ambition.

Beers of the Year

An irrelevant photo of an old Guinness marketing gewgaw in Clapham, South London

An irrelevant photo of an old Guinness marketing gewgaw in Clapham, South London

This year, we’ve been all over the place, including almost a full month in Germany, so we’ve had plenty of opportunity to stretch our palates (corrective surgery scheduled for the New Year). After some bickering in the pub, and in no particular order, here are the 10 beers we’ve tried and enjoyed the most in 2008.

  1. Uerige Alt — like a British ale, but not, thanks to some subtle, intangible quality of the yeast and the wonderful, alien manners and customs of the Duesseldorf pub scene.
  2. Oakham Hawse Buckler — dark, strong, heavy, hoppy as Hell, with that combination of chocolate orange/coffee and grapefruit people either love or hate.
  3. Zywiec Porter — was this sticky, treacly Baltic porter as good as we thought, or were we just delighted to finally get our hands on it after a couple of years hunting?
  4. Brewdog Punk IPA — smart marketing means we’ll be seeing this being swigged from the bottle by trendy types all over the country by next Christmas. And a good thing too, as it’s full of flavour and full of life.
  5. SternBrau-Scheubel dunkel-rauch — the highlight of the first Zeitgeist beer festival, organised by Stonch and Biermania, was this smoky, amber wonder which was so good, we drank them dry.
  6. Mahrs Brau Ungespundete — our return trip to Bamberg was a bit of ticking session but this is one beer of which we wanted second-helpings: dark, cloudy, spicy and liquorice-like.
  7. Vollbier, Brauerei Meister, Unterszaunsbach — this dark, ale-like dark German beer tasted great, although that might have been something to do with the fact we’d trekked over most of Franconia to get to it, and because the lady in the pub was nice to us…
  8. U Fleku, Prague — treacly sweet and fruity sour, the black beer here is a wonder; shame the pub’s such a world-class hole.
  9. Kout na Sumave desitka, Prague — we’d never have found this one ourselves — Velky Al recently described is as the best lager in the Czech republic.  Haven’t had enough Czech beers to compare (can one ever?) but this was a beautiful easy-drinker with an impressive hop flavour.
  10. Frueh Koelsch (but not out of a bottle) — we weren’t that impressed when we first tried Frueh at the brewery tap in Cologne, but have now been back twice — it’s so subtle and so perfect that it’s become our favourite whenever we’re passing through Cologne.

Velky Al has been rounding up his beers of the year, which is where we nicked the idea what inspired us.

Battle of the Brewdog IPAs

Thee Brew Dog IPAs sitting on a wall

Thee Brew Dog IPAs sitting on a wall

Do we need to say how good Brewdog Punk IPA is? Even the hard-to-please Tandleman is a fan. It’s obviously influenced by hop-bomb American IPAs, but the thinner body makes it seem rawer and fresher

We thought we’d try it again, together with two other Brewdog IPAs.

Storm IPA is 8% and is aged in a whisky cask. It smells just like whisky and tastes like a bonfire. Actually, it’s quite harsh up front, but that does mellow into a nice rounded malt flavour. We couldn’t taste any hops beyond the smoke, so this is a totally different beast to the Punk. Absolutely fascinating, but we’re not sure we’d drink loads of it. Maeib wasn’t a fan either, but some people do like it.

Finally, we tried “Hardcore IPA”, an “explicit imperial ale”. It probably has the same level of bitterness as the Punk, but the malty flavours come through more. It’s 9%, but still tastes like a watered down Goose Island — that is to say, it’s not as special as a 9% beer should be. It’s jolly nice, but there are even nicer beers that do less damage to the liver…

We’ll probably stick to Punk.