How to make your taste buds disappear completely

Damn this stuff is bitter. I mean coat the top of your mouth make you pull a funny face, still in the back of your throat an hour later bitter. It makes even the most intense American hop bomb taste like a pint of mild. It's hard to see the point of it. I read a while back that plenty of rich malts were used to balance the intense hopping in this lightweight beer, and at the time this intrigued me. Was it possible to add that much hops to a beer of a mere 3.5% and make it any way balanced? The answer's no. The hops are so intense they burn, and the body gives up long before it has a chance to contribute anything. It does smell amazing though, and the pungent hops would make you think that you are in for a big heavy hitting alcoholic hop bomb.

Care should be taken when drinking this beer. After I finished the bottle I was ravenous despite having my dinner shortly before. The intense bitterness stimulated my appetite ferociously, and I found myself raiding the fridge before bed for just about anything I could get my hands on. Not one for the diet conscious.

I didn't enjoy it, but as an experiment this beer is superb. It highlights everything that is right with the new breed of craft brewer at work today.

Jack Russell not Great Dane

With all the hype around Brewdog's heavy hitting beers it's easy to forget that they produce beer of average strength too. Well, easy for me to forget at any rate because until recently I couldn't get my hands on any of it. This was happily remedied with a recent trip to The Drink Store of Dublin's Stoneybatter. A number of Brewdog beers have turned up there including The Physics and 77 Lager, both of which are lightweights compared to Brewdog's more potent beers, but they do not suffer in the flavour stakes and will stay in my memory just as long as their bigger beers. It is clear that the philosophy of packing in the flavour is avidly adhered to in these beers despite the pedestrian nature of the style, being far closer to the average beer on the street that Brewdog swore not to emulate.

77 Lager is unlike any other lager you will try. The hop choice is not one associated with a lager (Amarillo, I think) but the taste and aroma is very satisfying. I wouldn't class it as a lager on a blind taste and it likely only masquerades as a lager because of a period of cold storage that the majority of ales undergo anyway. It's certainly clean like a lager but the orange fruiy flavours probably undo the work of the lager yeast strain, if indeed one was used.

The Physics falls directly into standard British ale territory, but with more teeth in the form of a surprising bitterness. The malt that drives this beer is superb and probably the best I have tried in quite some time. Crystal and Caramalt is mentioned on the label. I will be seriously looking into this combination to get that juicy, chewy malt aspect into my own beer.

More Whisky Ale

My last encounter with an ale matured in whisky casks was very pleasant but left me with a few questions about this style of beer. I outlined a bit of the chemistry involved in whisky maturation, particularly the aromatic organic compounds produced during the toasting of old bourbon and sherry casks. I was still left with the question of where the tart character came from and whether or not the beer would be better without it. Fullers Brewer's Reserve has the same lactic like tartness so I am leaning towards the notion that clearly microbes can reside in ex whisky casks quite happily and impart their own character to beer that is matured in it. This ale is more complex than Tullibardine 1488, the darker colour suggests richer malts and there is a definite English hop character about it. The whisky flavour really kicks in at the end along with warming alcohol. As a bit of a experiment I took a dram of scotch with the last quarter of the bottle to see what this might do to my perception of the flavour. I was glad I did because the scotch reset my palate's perception of the whisky in the beer leaving a complex, well hopped English ale.

Brewdog have fully taken on this style of beer, offering three different stouts matured in whisky barrels that I am aware of. I picked up this Paradox Speyside Cask Matured stout in Edinburgh last year, much to my delight. My recent conversion to smoky beer leaves me hankering after some their Paradox Islay which I happily learned today has turned up in Ireland. I hope that it has more whisky character than this stout because there is little in this beer. There is no doubt that underneath it all a superb imperial stout is a work, giving rich roasted notes and pleasant warmth but it carries none of the tartness or whisky depth of the Fullers or Tullibardine 1488. Speyside scotch is renowned for its easy going nature, often touted as a good introductory malt for those starting out in the very rewarding adventure of single malt appreciation and perhaps this might explain the very mild whisky character to this stout.