TAG | Scotland
The Great British Beer Festival is on at the moment in Earl’s Court; and I visited on Wednesday afternoon and evening – on a very hot and muggy day. Here’s what I had… all thirds of pints (and from about 3.30pm till 10.30pm, so I certainly wasn’t drinking fast!)
Vortex IPA (7.4%)
Fort George Brewery, Astoria, Oregon
I should have probably spotted the “IPA” and not “APA”, which is why I was disappointed with this first beer. Fruity aroma, I wrote, but almost unpleasantly bitter – not an enjoyable drink. It quickly sold out, which is concerning!
Fine Raisin Beer (5.1%)
Cain’s, Liverpool
An amber beer which I’ve only ever had at the GBBF, and ensure I have every single visit. It’s splendidly lovely – creamy, fruity, with a tiny little nod to a dark raisin taste. Excellent stuff.
Liverbird Ale (4.3%)
Cain’s, Liverpool
A light beer, made with American hops. Light, bitter, citrussy, thirst-quenching.
Wandle Ale (3.8%)
Sambrook’s, Battersea, London
As splendid as I remember it – a wonderful, fruity, citrussy, splendid beer. I only wish this was on tap near me; sadly, I’ve never seen it. (Excitingly, it was on the Wetherspoon’s “Bar Nouveau” stand, which bodes well).
A drop of Nelson’s Blood (3.6%)
Farmer’s, Essex
Nothing too special – amber, full flavoured, but a bit dull. But a nice name. But a bit dull. Nice name though. But dull. Name good. Beer dull.
An APA from Italy
(sadly, the programme doesn’t recall it, and neither do I)
I’ve never been impressed with Italian beers, but this was a good American Pale Ale, and I enjoyed it.
Lia Fail (4.7%)
Inveralmond, Perthshire
Frankly, bought because its name was funny (hello @llia). A nice, amber, beer – though not particularly special; typically less sweet, as Scottish beer generally is.
West Fest Ale (3.8%)
Malvern Hills, Worcestershire
Light, blond ale: the favourite of @agrumbri who was there in the evening and stuck with this all night. Very nice beer, and not too strong either.
Twisted Spire (3.6%)
Hobsons, Shropshire
Not quite as nice as the West Fest Ale, but fairly similar. A nice, non-heavy, end to the evening.
With more than 450 ales, ciders and foreign beers, even if none of these sound to your taste, you might like some you’d find; and join CAMRA when you get there, too – it’s good for the soul.
This beer’s slightly scary label was created by a Scottish art student, Heather Brennan, who was at the launch of the dark lager tonight looking slightly awestruck – meeting with beer writers and bloggers (even Roger Protz was in the house, scribbling notes) – despite the fact that this was her first real day in London: she’d spent much of the day going to see the sights and photographing them. This was the first time she’d actually seen the beer bottles with her design on them; and the first time she’d tasted the beer, too. She won a competition organised by the brewery.
Heather was dressed in purple, echoing the bottle’s colour: but it seems even this has a story – the original plan was for the label to be in green, not dark purple, but the printer had run out of the right colour ink.
There’s a story everywhere. James Watt (no, not the radio presenter from Stray FM, but the managing director of the brewery) was especially impressed at the new, soon-to-be-launched website for the beer. Apparently, if you buy a case for delivery on the website, you get a code to be able to post a blog entry on the website. This is a clever wheeze – the website encouraging a community feel from Zeitgeist beer drinkers. It’s like social media, but around a new beer.
Brewdog understand the web completely. The beer’s even on Twitter; and the only reason I was there is because of a blog posting I made recently about the brewery which was noticed by their PR man.
And, naturally, it’s backed-up with a solid beer. Zeitgeist is a black lager (it’s how lager used to be), with a nice light chocolatey/coffee taste. At 4.9% it’s not too scary, being the same kind of strength as a standard lager. Not just does it taste better than a Kronenburg, it’s less fizzy too. And while the MD of the company was slightly uncomfortable with the temperature of the beer (he cradled his bottle in his hands, attempting to warm it up, while telling us good things about the flavour), he was very pleased once he saw the beer beginning to go down well. It’s the first black lager to be produced in the UK; and pinches its successful formula from Germany, where schwartz-beers are a favourite taste for many.
This type of marketing is perfect for the launch of any brand; and perfect for any radio station to learn from. Local interest from a competition; stories all over the place to ensure a good, long-lasting story; proper, sensible use of tools like Twitter and blogs to monitor what people are saying and reach out to their audience; and backed up with a solid product that doesn’t look as if it’s been market-researched into bland oblivion.
A triumph for Brewdog; but something to learn for any marketer, too.
I’ve discovered plenty of great beer coming out of Scotland recently. It looks though the innovation’s not yet finished: Brewdog are launching a new interesting beer this week which sounds really very good indeed. More on that later this week.
But tonight, I tried this – The Laird’s Liquor, a beer from Traquair House Brewery. Traquair is Scotland’s oldest inhabited house, apparently, and the brewery was originally made to brew beer for the house itself. It fell into disuse in 1800, and the brewing equipment gathered dust until it was “rediscovered” in 1965.
This 6% “Scottish Ale” (there’s actually no such type of ale) is, um, probably an acquired taste. A dark beer (seen above in my CAMRA 2006 glass), it smells as if they never bothered to take the dust out of the brewing vessels. It really does actually smell of dust. Really.
Ignoring the fusty smell, it tastes like a Belgian brune beer except with almost no sugar. The result is a beer that tastes rather like the type of salty liquorice you get in Scandinavia – there’s no sweetness in this beer at all, and the dark aniseed taste almost makes your mouth feel cooler rather than the expected warming effect of the alcohol. While, to my taste, beer from Scotland is less sweet than that from other places, this is not to my taste at all.
The label claims it’s ‘perfect for winter evenings and plotting rebellions’. I’d rather beg to differ.
I managed to snag myself a ticket to the recent London Twestival – spurred on not just by the desire to meet people who follow me (and who I follow) like @jemimah_knight, but also because there was beer on offer.
And not just any beer.
The lovely people at Brewdog had donated rather a lot of what is fast becoming my favourite beer, Punk IPA. And it was this fact that pushed me into getting a ticket from a secret, twice-the-price, stash that had been left back just for disorganised people like me who knew who to twitter.
Realistically, “Pale Ale” can be anything from a pint of bitter (or ‘heavy’ in Scotland), to very different varieties. In order to stay fresh all the way to India, IPA (India Pale Ale) was made much hoppier, with the hops acting as preservative. A good IPA (Greene King IPA being the one you’ll find in pubs most often) is hoppy and bitter, but a session beer nonetheless.
“American Pale Ale” is very different. Far hoppier still – very bitter, very tasty. Sierra Nevada – increasingly available in British pubs from the tap – is a prime example. Light in colour (that’ll be the ‘pale’ bit), the similarity to a lager disappears quickly when you taste it – bitter enough to make your face pucker if you’re not expecting the taste.
I think Brewdog’s “Punk IPA” is, whether they like it or not, really an American Pale Ale – though this 6% ale probably uses English hops rather than their American counterparts. I say ‘probably’ – the label and the website appear to be fairly coy about the type of hops they use. It’s a slightly smoother taste than Sierra Nevada, but still blisteringly bitter and tremendously refreshing.
Brewdog hasn’t been going for long. They only started in April 2007 – in Aberdeenshire, of all places, not somewhere I’d have thought of as a beer mecca. They’ve managed to get their beer in many places – not just in Utobeer, the nicely stocked beer shop in London’s Borough Market, but also into – of all places – Tesco. And it was here that I first discovered it: as they discontinued Sierra Nevada, Punk IPA cannily came to take its place. I’d much rather buy British than buy American, after all – even if US craft beers are closer to my taste these days – and this is a worthy substitute.
And not only has Brewdog got their distribution sorted, they’ve also got their copywriting sorted. The copywriting on the bottle – some of which you can see at the top of the page – is brilliantly done. When James May and Oz Clarke met the Brewdog team as part of their Oz and James Drink to Britain series, the Brewdog team were waiting for them in a park – passing over their bottles in paper bags, deliberately rebelling against drinking laws. As the label says, Brewdog is all about breaking the rules.
I would recommend it, and should the splendid people at Brewdog wish to send me their other beers to “test”, I’d be delighted, though the chances of that are less than zero, naturally.
See Brewdog Pale IPA at beeradvocate.com
