The Hop Press: Dangerously Bitter

I’ve been lazy with my Hop Press blog recently but I’m back on it this week. Essentially it’s a re-hashing of a blog which I wrote early last year (an important post which made me realise that beer was more than just a taste experience) with a few tweaks. It’s about how bitterness is innately a warning of poison and how this increases the enjoyment of hoppy beers.

Here’s the full post.

What do you think? Am I a bit crazy here or is there something addictive about big hops that keeps you going back for more? That smack of bitterness which craves sweetness - the unending cycle of drinking for pleasure and ‘pain’ that makes a great IPA.

Some NewDogs

You know me; I want to try each new BrewDog with such voracious thirst that I don’t think twice about ordering every time a new beer is released. I’m not ashamed by this and in actual fact I love that a brewery can build up the same sense of anticipation that a blockbuster movie or new CD from a favourite band can, and that’s cool. At the weekend I finally got my paws on the newest BrewDogs: bashah and Nanny State.

Bashah first, brewed in collaboration with Stone. The eyes vote first and they give a massive thumbs up for the awesome bottle label. In the glass the thumbs rise again: opaque brown-black with a lacing tan head. Then it’s the aroma of chocolate and spice, an earthy bitterness, fruity hops with hints of pineapple and candy sugar. It’s a nose that makes me do those olfactory summersaults, loving it more with each sniff, dipping my nose so close that it comes out with a drip of beer on the end. And then the taste: chocolate, roasty and spicy, earthy then into those fruity hops, teasing and intriguing instead of thump-you-in-the-head, then a cakey sweetness and more fruit and all the time that chocolate. And that fruit. What is that fruit? I love that fruit. The only thing I’d question is the style - a Black Belgian Double India Pale Ale – but I quite like it, it’s very… BrewDog and Stone. I’ll happily go all out and say that this is one of the best beers I’ve had this year. But then there’s Nanny State. If bashah fingered the style over substance button, this beer full-on fists it. And I’ll be honest: I was wary. I said in this post that I would’ve loved them to make a 1% beer with moderate bitterness that I could happily drink a few pints of and not fall over after. I understand why BrewDog made this beer, I like why they made it, but I don’t like what they actually made. Firstly, it tastes like How To Disappear Completely. I was impressed that they used a lot of hops the first time, the second time it’s like an inferior cover track. Secondly, it’s just too bitter to be drinkable and the whole point of a 1.1% beer is for it to be drinkable (unless it’s ‘point’ is to provoke…); I put this one down and felt hop-stoopid and soporific as if I’d just finished a 9% DIPA without the boozy warmth. Thirdly, it’s great that this beer is weak enough that it doesn’t qualify for booze tax, but why didn’t that pass on to me? I paid £2.49 a bottle, which is the same price as bashah. If it’s that expensive because of the number of hops used then it’s a waste of hops and I just wasted money on a publicity stunt.

Not everyone likes BrewDog, I understand that and they surely understand that too. Personally, I love them, but sometimes you have to tell the ones you love that you don’t like it when they call you ‘pudding’, or when they always put your things away in different places every bloody time they put them away. Bashah is one of the best beers they’ve made, in my opinion, and it proves just how good they are be at brewing (see also: Tokyo*, zeitgeist, Zephyr). Nanny State shows how Punk marketing isn’t enough to make a good beer and, after all, it has to taste nice above anything else.

Their latest hullabaloo kicks off tomorrow in London. I will commit my guesses to the page, just in case I’m right: they offer to sell ‘shares’ in the brewery so we can be part owners, or they open up their doors for license brewing so that beer from around the world can be made and distributed quicker and cheaper in the UK (hopefully the 'new dog' in town will be from Dogfish Head...). I will be there tomorrow, I can't wait.

Please, Sir, I Want Some Moor?

Moor Beer’s JJJ IPA is a beer that I’ve heard a lot about; it’s got one of those reputations that pushed it up high up my must-try list. It’s an elusive brew unless you live in Somerset (I don’t live in Somerset) and as UK beers go a 9.5% triple IPA (albeit brewed by an American) is a terribly rare thing. So when I heard that beermerchants were getting a pallet-load up from the West Country I rubbed my grubby little hands together in preparation of an order. The beer finally arrived at mine last week after a voracious wait with nights of wild thirst (ooh, if you’ve read Oliver Twist you’ll now see that the title of this is not a totally tenuous allusion after all!). The first thing to know: everything about JJJ is BIG. This is not a pussy-footing, pretend imperial IPA. This beer is balls-out and in your face and it’s not scared of what it is; to be honest I think it revels in the fact that it’s harder than every other beer. The big bomber bottle is a good looking thing to start and who can resist a handsome looking beer? Out of the bottle it pours a deep copper red with a thick and creamy head. Sometimes you can look at a beer and know that it’s going to be something special; this beer looks like that. Dip your nose in but don’t expect it to be an olfactory hop-festival, no, that surprise is hidden away. You get the big malt, the toffee, some nuts and almonds, a boozy warmth as it grazes the nasal passage and a distant spicy whiff of those green grenades. And then you drink. For me the greatest joy of a beer like this is the mystery of it. There are moments during a gulp of beer when you don’t quite know where it is or where it’s going next and there’s a thrill to that see-sawing balance. JJJ’s body is huge and strong, creamy and smooth and mouth-filling. It’s huge caramel sweetness first and then comes one of those ‘moments’ where what happens next is a mystery. It’s a split second. It could go too sweet, it could flip-over and shrivel out or it could take off. This takes off. But it takes off slowly, gradually building up, wrapping itself around your tongue; bitter, floral, earthy, spicy and then more bitter and sweeter again with over-ripe tangerines, pine forests and roasted fruits and more bitterness, growing all the time, then the swallow leaves behind the dryness which grips tightly and hangs and pulls you up back for more sweetness; it’s that essential kiss-on-the-cheek, slap-on-the-bum of big malt and big hops that makes very bitter beers so drinkable (you get a malt kiss then you get the slap, but you want another kiss, but the kiss is attached to another slap, then the slap starts to get fun…). And it drinks so well too; I finished a bottle in no time and loved every sip. I had a Stone IPA before it which I chugged with dinner and the combination of that and JJJ left me with the stupefied, hop-stoned beer buzz. And I love that feeling; it’s just totally relaxed and chilled out and happy; it’s the ‘ahhh’ of finishing a beer followed by the calm afterburn. But don’t expect an IPA as you know it. It’s not one of those 9% American hop bombs; this is more of a super-hopped barley wine given the fullness of the body, the roasted caramel maltiness and the fruit. It’s really very good, you know, and there isn’t much like this being brewed in the UK right now either.

You can also get two other Moor beers from beermerchants: Somerland Gold and Old Freddy Walker. I’ve just finished a Somerland Gold (5.5%) now and I’m impressed again. Here’s the important stuff: it’s golden in colour, but you’d expect that given the name; the nose has a sweet, cakey creaminess to it topped off with citrus, tangy apricot skins and very distant pine; the taste is superb, a big mouthful of clean pale malt, smooth and crisp and sweet and then the tropical fruit bitterness rolls up and attaches itself to the insides of your mouth, clinging on for dear life as you swallow. It reminds me of Thornbridge’s Jaipur in many ways and it’s fantastically drinkable. JJJ IPA is a triumph of a beer, Somerland Gold is a classic-in-waiting and beermerchants is the only place you can buy these bottles. You really should drink Moor beer.

As-Live Tasting: BrewDog How To Disappear Completely

17.10pm. Evening all. It’s been a bloody lovely day here in Kent, I’ve just got back from Whitstable and now I want/need a beer. And it’s a new beer tonight – BrewDog’s How To Disappear Completely. A 3.5% imperial mild-slash-imperial IPA with a theoretical 198 IBUs. Yeah, 198!! This surely renders all hope of balance out of the question!?

17.14pm. It’s poured and the picture’s been taken. It’s darker than expected; a deep caramel colour. Time to get in there and see whether a superheroically bitter beer can work at 3.5%!

17.16pm. Wow, what a nose!! It’s an immense monster; a billowing tower of olfactory pleasure. The hops are properly condensed and turned up to way beyond 11. The first and most startling aroma is fresh tobacco and tea leaves; it’s a musty sweetness, intoxicating. Beyond that it’s grapefruit and tangerines roasted to just before burning point. There’s also caramel too, in a toasted sweet bread kind of way and possibly overcooked vanilla custard. It’s really something to dig your snout into.

17.19pm. Before I dive in, a word on balance. Balance in beer is good. It’s that delicate see-saw between sweet and bitter. Anything that tips the scales at either extremes loses some of its enjoyment, in my opinion. It’s pretty tough to get body into a 3.5% beer, and not that easy to get a heck of a lot of sweetness but it is easy to make it bitter by adding a lot of hops. What the hell will come of this beer?! I’m going in, watch yourselves tastebuds!

17.22pm. Oh my goodness… The words are in there but not coming out… need another mouthful… woah that’s HUGE! Bitter yes, but it’s got such a great mouthfeel (how much crystal malt did you use?!). It’s toasty grain for the smallest fraction of time before your tongue gets beaten into a hop submission. And it’s unabashedly unrelenting. It doesn’t roll in, it smashes in. It’s that super-condensed kind of bitterness, a tangy, clawing, fill your mouth bitterness. But I think it works…

17.26pm. I’m feeling a bit dizzy with that hop-induce fug of calm. This is another intoxicating brew from the furthest reaches of outer Scotland. It’s intoxicating because it flips your head inside out. It feels like 8.5% not 3.5%. It’s as bitter as a beer can go. And it’s got a roll-around-your-tongue thickness. Have you had Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo IPA? It’s like that in the mouth.

17.30pm. I just read the BrewDog blog about this beer and it was mash-hopped and first wort hopped, two virtually unheard of practices. The dry hopping was pretty epic too; 15HL of beer was abused by 20kg of hops! And it really does showcase the raw brutality of the hop in its most condensed form.

17.33pm. I said in a previous post that this is brewed with the same hops as Stone’s Ruination IPA (Columbus and Centennial) but that it’s half the ABV and double the bitterness. It doesn’t taste like Ruination IPA. It doesn’t taste like anything I’ve had before.

17.36pm. My Grandad, my Dad’s Dad, used to smoke a pipe. I remember going to his house and pretending to smoke it as a young boy. It had a very distinct smell. It was him, plus the pipe, plus its leathery case, plus the sweet flecks of tobacco. It’s a surprising olfactory madeleine; a re-enactment of 15 years ago and a memory which I didn’t know I had.

17.41pm. I’m listening to Radiohead’s How To Disappear Completely. It seems only right as that’s what the beer is named after. The combination of beer and song works strangely well in a juxtaposition kind of way; it’s a contemplatively haunting song while the beer is a 1,000 mile per hour hop rocket which makes you dozy. The lyrics have a haunting similarity too. Strobe lights and blown speakers, fireworks and hurricanes, I’m not here, this isn’t happening.

17.48pm. I’m fascinated by this beer. I love bitterness and its potentially innate physiological powers, which I wrote about here. It’s a beer which commands your attention; the fear is that it might just be able to kill you. But I like it (of course I do, it’s a BrewDog for goodness sake). I like how it has got just enough sweetness to make it drinkable and I love how it hovers just below the that’s-too-bitter threshold; it’s an unbalanced balancing act.

17.55pm. I can’t decide if I want another now or not? Half of me does (the pleasure-pain loving Id) and half of me doesn’t (the sensible side, the Ego). I can smell the barbeque from where I sit so I probably won’t; it’s possibly the least food-friendly beer I’ve ever tasted (remember the Hardcore IPA As-Live?). Just don’t bother having it with dinner unless it’s a meal you hate.

17.58pm. As the BBQ is getting nearer I think I’ll open a bottle each of 77 lager and Zeitgeist to eat with it. And if you didn’t read it, check out the latest food and BrewDog stuff that I did here (believe it or not it’s 77 and Zeitgeist with a BBQ!! – what a coincidence!). Oh yeah, you can buy How To Disappear Completely from the brewery here. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Bonus Features... I also shot a video of me opening this beer which I have posted on my youtube channel. I’ll probably start uploading a few videos over there which I don’t put on this blog. There are some pretty cool video beer reviewers out there on youtube and they are worth a look.

How To Disappear Completely

That’s the name of BrewDog’s newest beer. I heard about it in an email from BrewDog’s James at the weekend. He twittered (@BrewDogJames) about it today and it’s now reached the ratebeer forums so I thought I’d give it some hype too. Plus I want to see what you guys think of it.

It’s a double IPA hopped with Columbus and Centennial (the same two hops which make up Stone’s Ruination). So far so good. Well, it’s 3.5%ABV and 198IBUs!! Shit. That’s just insane. For some perspective, this beer will have twice the bitterness of Ruination IPA and half the strength. If I thought the Hardcore IPA (9%ABV and 150IBU) was a brute then this one will be a proper monster of a beer.

I think this could be the most unbalanced beer ever brewed. And definitely one of the most bitter (check out this list to see some of the biggest IBU beers around, including Mikkeller’s theoretical 2007IBU beast). I have no idea whether it’ll work but I know that I want to try it. I really want to try it. And at 3.5% I’m sure I could manage a few pints, whether my tongue will be able to handle it is another thing. Bring it on!

Update... I’ve had a quick edit to add the picture and because a little while after I posted this BrewDog posted their own blog about it here. The beer sounds ridiculous, the hops are everywhere but the grain bill makes it sound wicked. And you can also pre-buy it here (I need to set aside a BrewDog fund each month I think!).

FAB POW! Stone's Ruination IPA with Spicy Belly Pork

Here’s my Food and Beer Pairing of the Week!

I’ve been on a bit on an IPA bender of late. The last few weekends have just been all about the hops and I can’t get enough. Last weekend I was drinking it all day and bought as many bottles from Utobeer as I could carry, so it looks like my IPA-a-thon will continue unabated. Right in the middle of all this fun I had the big dog.

And I finally did it, I finally found something to go with Stone’s Ruination IPA. I think. (I've written about bitterness and this beer here)

I wanted to open this beer on that fateful night whatever happened and drinking it would’ve coincided with dinner so I thought I’d try again to put them together. The thought process was something like this: the food has to be BIG and rich and fatty and meaty and spicy and sweet and earthy. So the choice was obvious. Spicy belly pork with chilli and garlic roasted butternut squash. That’s it.

I roasted the belly pork with chilli, paprika, loads of pepper and cayenne pepper and a touch of five spice. Then the squash was just cut into wedges, oiled and seasoned, smothered in crushed garlic and chilli and smoked paprika and roasted until soft. The result was surprising good: the crunchy crackling starts it all off, then the layer of mouth-coating fat, then the juicy meat and peppery spice (that’s a lot going on, flavour- and texture-wise) and the beer pours in and glides over the fat, it pulls the sweetness from the meat and the spice and tingles the heat of the chilli, blending it all with the huge caramel base of the beer. The fragrant squash is a buffer of earthy sweetness to soak up the hops and give a delicious fruitiness while still retaining all of that palate cleansing/stripping bitterness. It had me eating then drinking then back for more pork then more beer in a sexy and vicious circle of spice, meat and hops. I had a ball.

But I said that I think it works. Even now I’m not certain that it actually did work as a brilliant match. Maybe I got something which just dulled the bitterness stopping a monsterous palate pile-up but not actually giving a great match-up, or maybe my bottle was a bit old and had lost some of its kick. I don’t know. For me it worked a treat and I’d pair it again happily. Plus, belly pork is a favourite food of mine and Ruination is a favourite beer, so…

Anyone had anything great this week? Or has anyone had any luck trying to pair a dish with any extremely bitter beers?

A Beer Night

Beer nights rock. A few of us get together, everyone brings a few different bottles, we share them, discuss them and then for a little bit of competition we score each out of 10 to see which beer ends up the highest. It’s a great excuse to drink a load of quality beers with your mates.

There will always be a few expected stars in there and a few duds (that’s how we do it), but you never can predict just how well any particular beers will do and often completely different styles of beer receive similar scores. You do find yourself basing marks on the other scores you’ve already given (‘how many did I give the last beer? Because it wasn’t as good as that…blah blah blah…’). There’s nothing too scientific about it, it’s just guys drinking beer and awarding each individual one they drink a score.

Here’s what we had in the order we had it. We didn’t plan an exact route through the beers, although certain ones were placed at certain points for comparative reasons. And we saved the really big boys until the end. There were three of us - Me, Matt and Sean – and we were in Matt’s flat.

1. BrewDog. Chaos Theory. 7.1%. Matt’s choice.

We all loved this IPA but it was marked fairly conservatively as it was the first one up (you don’t want to set too high a benchmarch). It’s hopped with just the Nelson Sauvin and all that mega concentrated fruit flavour booms out the glass. It’s got that addictive IPA quality about it. This was the prototype version.

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 7.5
Sean: 7
Total: 22

2&3. BrewDog Zeitgeist Prototype vs. BrewDog Zeitgeist ‘Real’. 4.9%. Everyone’s choice.

Us three Men of Kent spent the previous evening knocking back Zeitgeist at the beer’s launch so we wanted to do an immediate comparison between the old and new. The new was smoother, with a greater depth of flavour and topped off with those citrusy hops.

Mark: Prototype: 6, Real: 7
Matt: Prototype: 5.5, Real: 7
Sean: Prototype: 5.5, Real: 7
Total: Prototype: 17, Real: 21

4. Westvleteren 8. 8%. My choice.

I’ve had it in the cupboard for a while now and thought I’d crack it open to share (beers like this are so much better to share with fellow beer lovers). I wanted this early in the night while we were still fresh. We all knew the mythical status of the brewery and the respect it garners from the beer world so it was surrounded by discussions of psychology (which I’ll write about soon) and how we expect greatness from such beers which then affects our perceptions of them.

None of us had tried this beer before. It pours a deep ruby colour and the nose is all dried fruit sweetness and tea bread. It’s very complex with each mouthful picking out different flavours. It tasted very fresh and clean, a slight bitterness to end, lots of sweet tea, something oaky, candy sugar… there’s a lot going on. It’s really drinkable and moreish but despite the complexity it has a simple, fresh quality to it.

Beer Advocate has this as the 8th best beer in the world. Is it? We didn’t think so. Maybe it gets better with age, maybe we just didn’t fall under the Westy spell. It’s a very very good Belgian beer, just not the best.

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 7
Sean: 6.5
Total: 21

So it scored 21, that same as BrewDog’s Zeitgeist. Are they the same in reality? No. But Zeitgeist gets marks because it’s a beer that you can drink lots of, one that can be enjoyed all the time. Westvleteren is completely different, almost incomparable. Maybe we even marked the Westvletern down because it didn’t live up to the heights of greatness that we anticipated.

5. Becks. Alcohol Free. 0.05%. My choice.

A dud thrown in for fun and deliberately placed after the Westy 8. The marks speak for themselves but here were a few quotes: ‘it smells like arse’, ‘pointless’, ‘like licking copper pipes, but at least the pipes might have mould on that would taste of something, and probably the most succinct, ‘fucking shit’.

Mark: 0.5
Matt: 1
Sean: 0.5
Total: 2

6. Okell's. Aile. 4.7%. Sean’s choice.

A ‘Smoked Celtic Porter’. It’s got a great looking cappuccino head, there’s a hint of charcoal and bonfire in the nose but the smoke is really lulling and gentle. It’s very smooth and drinkable. We all loved this beer and we all were sad when the bottle was finished. Superb.

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 7.5
Sean: 8
Total: 23

7. Whim Ales. Dr. Johnson’s Definitive. 5.0%. Sean’s choice.

None of us had seen or heard of this beer before and we will probably quickly forget it; it was just okay. A fruity dark ale, some spice, cereal and dried fruits. Probably affect by following up the excellent Okell’s Aile.

Mark: 6.5
Matt: 6
Sean: 6
Total: 18.5

8. Stone Brewing. Ruination IPA. 7.7%. My choice.

I didn’t know when to bring this big gun out. It has a ruining effect (100+ IBUs!) on your palate and I didn’t want us to all just be tasting pine, orange and grapefruit for the rest of the night. So we had it before dinner, figuring that the food would clear our palates.

This is one addictively good beer. It’s brutally elegant in the cyclical nature that it makes you drink: sweet first then bitter which blows up in your mouth, then you want the sweetness again to ease the rampant hops and so on and so on… Incredible. Sean is a dark beer guy and Ruination IPA may well have changed his life forever (it changed my life when I first had it!).

Mark: 9
Matt: 9
Sean: 8.5
Total: 26.5

Next up: Dinner.

Matt’s lives right by a fish and chip shop so we just went there for something cheap and sustaining. I had burger and chips, Matt had sausage and chips and Sean devoured two huge battered sausages and chips (although did later complain of blurred vision). In keeping with the scoring, here’s what we gave the food:

Mark: 6
Matt: 6
Sean: 5
Total: 17

9. Desperados. 5.9%. Everyone’s choice!

A beer with huge sentimental value for all of us. We have demolished a fair few kegs and bottles of this trashy-delicious beer. It’s a tequila beer that you serve with lime. It’s quite unique, kinda sweet and limey. The flavour is just so familiar to all of us that we were gushing with Desperados-induced memories throughout. This scores highly because we love it for its sentimental value (plus it just tastes pretty good! Our trashy beer of choice!).

Mark: 7
Matt: 8
Sean: 8
Total: 23

Yes, it scored higher than Westvleteren 8!

10. Rogue. Dead Guy Ale. 6.5%. Sean’s choice.

A copper coloured maibock. Loads of apple and spice. Fairly drinkable but unfortunately it just wasn’t anything special, and by this time we were all getting pretty discernible, wanting nothing less than awesome (that’s what a Desperados will do to you/us!).

Mark: 6
Matt: 4
Sean: 4
Total: 14

11. Fuller’s. Vintage Ale 2004. 8.5%. Matt’s choice.

We stepped it up from here. This beer is older than the friendship between Matt and I which he bought it in our first year at uni together. We had two and opened one almost two years ago before we left uni. This is a sentimental beer that has been loving looked after.

It was bottle number 05325. Russet coloured with a big sherry and dried fruit nose with caramel and vanilla. It’s gorgeously complex with honeycomb, dates, marmalade, liquorice, oak, sherry and cherry… every mouthful gave us more and more flavours and complexity. We all agreed that it was probably the best beer that we’ve each tried. The sad thing is that we’ve had it for almost 5 years and now it’s gone forever!

Mark: 9.5
Matt: 9.5
Sean: 9
Total: 28

12. Goose Island. Bourbon County Stout. 13%. My choice.

I’ve had this knocking around for a while now and thought the beer night would be a great time to open it. If we thought the Fuller’s was unbeatable then this gave it a fair old fight. It’s an amazing beer. Black, oily, huge boozy bourbon nose, vanilla and coconut. It’s thick and rich, woody, vinous, chocolatey with a berry sweetness. It’s complex and warming and flipping good. I’ve got another hiding away for a few years time.

Mark: 9
Matt: 9
Sean: 9.5
Total: 27.5

13. BrewDog. Paradox Isle of Arran. 10%. Sean’s choice.

We probably should’ve had this before the Bourbon County as it’s fairly similar just a lot more mellow and toned down. It still stood up to the plate but it was stuck in the shadow of the beer before. But this is one of the best beers I’ve had this year and I love it. It’s chocolate and vanilla and coconut and cherry and ginger and berries and it’s superb. It’s like the Bourbon County’s little brother who may not be as strong and up in your face but is probably more intelligent and complex.

Mark: 9
Matt: 8
Sean: 8
Total: 25

14. Port Brewing. Wipeout IPA. 7%. My choice.

Another big IPA, this one to end off the night. This is hopped with Amarillo, Centennial, Cascade, Simcoe and Summit. It’s golden with a huge orange pith and juice aroma. It’s rich and boozy with hard-hitting, dry tangy hops which just keep getting more and more bitter. There isn’t too much sweetness either, which can be a problem with beers hopped to the eyeballs. A good IPA but after the glories of the Ruination anything big and bitter was going to fall short.

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 7
Sean: 7.5
Total: 22

And that was the end of the beer night. Although, there was still one bottle hanging around, but it only seemed fitting to have it in the morning with…

Breakfast... Sausage and black pudding sandwiches. Proper food and just the job to deal with the after effects of the night before. The breakfast scores:

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 8
Sean: 8.5
Total: 24

And with breakfast we had…

15. Mikkeller. Beer Geek Breakfast. 7.5%. My choice.

A rich coffee stout, bitter and roasted and full of proper coffee flavours. It has a great grassy/earthy hop finish which perfectly matches the coffee and dark chocolate notes. I thought this was a great (breakfast) beer, but it was probably marked down overall because of our slightly delicate states.

Mark: 7
Matt: 5.5
Sean: 6
Total: 18.5

So there it was. Great fun and a load of great beer. A strong and varied line-up and really interesting to compare so many different styles and flavours. The Fuller’s Vintage was champion of the night but the Goose Island was very close behind and the Ruination was right up there. I guess the big shock was Westvleteren not making the top five and Desperados being in there. The best beers are the best beers, and we agreed universally, but there is also something very important about sentimental value. The Top 5:

1. Fuller’s Vintage 2004
2. Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout
3. Stone’s Ruination IPA
4. BrewDog’s Paradox Isle of Arran
5. Okells Aile and Desperados (joint fifth)

In last place:

Becks Alcohol Free (that was kind of a gimme)

And breakfast beat dinner.

After breakfast we went to the White Horse in Parson’s Green and had a few great beers (Meantime IPA off tap was brilliant) and then out to a Belgian restaurant for dinner (I had Delirium Tremens off tap to start and a Rochefort 8 for main). Then we went to another pub and none of us ordered a beer. I’m guessing we were all feeling pretty beered-out!

Bitterness

“Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.” Martin Luther King.

I’ve found myself more and more drawn towards getting a huge smack of bitterness in my beer drinking. The hop is an addictive little chap, calling me back for more and more. But when I was drinking a particularly gorgeous but aggressive American IPA last week it got me thinking…

The beer was Ruination IPA from Stone Brewing Company in San Diego. It’s incredible. The bottle announces it as ‘A liquid poem to the glory of the hop’; it’s more of an anthem. It scores over 100 in the International Bittering Units scale and that’s a lot (lager scores 5-15, a ‘standard’ IPA around 50).

It pours a sexy bronze colour with a large lacing head; it’s a great looking beer. The aroma is huge with fresh oranges, grapefruit, pineapple and pine - the nose is intoxicating on its own. Sweet malt hits the tongue first and this is bready and full of caramel, but it’s soon overtaken by the massive hops: oranges and grapefruit; juice, flesh and pith; a long, clingy-bitter, dry, zingy, zesty finish. It’s just so drinkable, gluggable, well balanced. An awesome beer, but certainly not for those who are aren’t hop-lovers; it’ll blow your socks off!

All that bitterness got my brain going. Now I’m certainly no scientist, but here’s my basic understanding, with a beer slant put on it.

As kids we hate that bitter twang at the back of our mouths, but we love sweetness. As our palates develop we acquire the taste for bitter flavours, such as citrus, coffee and dark chocolate. It is innately within us to avoid bitter tastes. To our distant ancestors bitterness (usually when tasted from a plant) was bad and it signaled the possibility of poison; if it tasted bitter we avoided it incase it harmed us.

So what happens when we drink an aggressively bitter beer? Our bodies innate response would be to throw out warning alarms to let us know of potential danger. The chemical mechanisms would say: ‘Watch out, that could be poisonous!’ and then the brain and body need to make a life-critical decision about whether it’s safe to continue or not. The trouble is that underneath the bitterness is a whole load of sweetness, and sweetness = good. So there’s even more chemicals and decisions flying around: it’s good/bad, life/death.

We take another sip to be sure. We experience it like this: sweet first on the tip of our tongue, brief but powerful, but then as the beer moves over the tongue it hits the bitter-taste receptors right at the back of the mouth and down the throat. The bitter area dominates that part of our palate (it’s the last thing we taste before we swallow) and so the bitterness stays around for the longest, especially in a strongly hopped beer.

Now, whatever it decides, the body is flooded with chemicals simultaneously. It gets a ‘Go’ signal from the sweetness, but a ‘Stop’ from the bitterness. On top of this, sweetness actually dramatises the sensation of bitterness. So a beer that has a high ABV will generally have a depth of sweetness which then impacts upon the sensation of the bitterness. Here’s what your brain might be deciphering: ‘If this is bitter - which it most certainly is - then it could be poison. Maybe I’ll take another sip to be sure. Wait a minute! It’s sweet too… and it tastes so good, so how can anything bad be so delicious?’ Again there is a flood of chemicals, a mass of decision making.

Yet we know that it’s alright. We bought it from the store. It’s made to be enjoyed. It’s just the body isn’t fine-tuned to think that way.

As I see it, we have a delicious beer which is intoxicating, strong, sweetly malt but bitterly hopped. It tastes mighty fine but the chemical mechanisms still aren’t convinced, they’re still on alert. So your brain is caught in between two ways of thinking: fight or flight (fight means drink and enjoy!). This double-trouble, dual thinking can surely only be a good thing for our enjoyment of the beer. We’re on high alert over the flavour, but we’re also alertly enjoying it because it is so full of flavour. The life-critical decision is to fight it, to drink that highly-hopped masterpiece and to enjoy every last sip, even if your brain is still having niggling doubts. It also gives us a burst of adrenaline and everyone loves a bit of that.

Drinking an exceptionally bitter IPA is like being on a roller-coaster: you love it, but your body is in a state of heightened arousal, worried for your death, which then increases your enjoyment even more, in a masochistic kind-of way. Maybe I love the smack of puckering bitterness, maybe I’m addicted to the thrill of it.