The dream that is Brewdog…

  In many dreams purpose and meaning is not easy to understand, and it can be hard to explain the feelings and sensations in words. In the dream world I enter while asleep, I mostly feel like a character in a movie, I’m on an undetermined voyage through an abstract landscape of confusion. In those nightly dreams, sight, hearing and touch is my main senses, and I can’t remember for the life of me that I ever felt taste and smells in that state. If you’re an average beer drinker, this is not your dreams, but your life…

  I was an average beer drinker, but I have woken up. But it still disturbs me to see the millions still asleep. And it disturbs me even more to hear them talk. Have you ever tried to talk to someone sleep talking? The words coming out of their mouths don’t make much sense, and they don’t see the world in front of you as you do. Their curtains are closed, and there’s no way to get their attention but to wake them up! But remember to be gentle and patient; few people like to be woken up roughly.

  The dream that is Brewdog is kind of like a daydream turned into a lucid dream, but still with all senses functioning. Taste being the strongest of them all. It’s almost unreal, because it’s too good to be true. It’s absurd. And it’s one dream I don’t want to wake up from. And the only way to wake me up from it is to cut off my thong! And for those of you who don’t share it with me, the rest of my words might not make much sense or sound like gibberish. But for me it’s a fantasy come true.

How to Brewdog, here demonstrated by the Brewdog owners! (Rockstars of beer)

  After travelling far and wide through the world of taste, while still being anchored on my petty little throne, in the center of “my dreams” at Cardinal. It’s time to spread my wings and visit the mighty Brewdog pub in Aberdeen. With my trusted helmsman, ginger friend and Coppercab look-alike Bongo Bastard on my side. We will set our sails towards the “Silver city with the golden sands”, Stavanger’s twin city Aberdeen. And when we get there Paradoxes & Trashy Blondes will challenge us. We will use Tactical Nuclear Penguins to Sink The Bismarck. We will be 5 A.M. Saints and Hardcore Punks. We will be barking like Brewdogs until the End Of History!

Cheers
- Dirty Haffy

Beer wars: The end of history!

I like telling stories, and like a friend of mine told me: "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story".  If you got a secret and wont tell me the whole story, rest assure I will make up the rest of the story. Todays tale boys and girls are about the rockstars of beers most ambitious brew, we're talking about the legendary Scottish beer bastards of "Brewdog". Well actually the story isn't only about them, but there's no doubt that these underdogs are the heroes of this little tale, defeating the "axis" and all...

Probably the coolest brewery in the world!

It was in the year of our lord 2009, I a newbie monk in the church of "Craft beer drinkers" was hanging out at my now favorite place of worship "Cardinal". After a long night of hard and unmerciful worshipping, a shiny copper object caught my eyes. I follow my calling and tasted this enchanting brew, claimed to be the strongest beer in the world by the bartender. This was off course "Samuel Adams Utopias". To be honest with you I thought it tasted like raisins and booze, (Raisin wine?!?) but I was pretty fucked up at the time. I just thought it was pretty cool to try the worlds strongest beer, wouldn't you? These yankees from Boston had made a beer stronger than what I thought was possible. So 27% of bad juju hit my system, and it gave me the fix I wanted. Utopias got all the way up to 27% as a "fermented beer", and I still think they hold the world record in that category. But anyway it didn't turn me on enough to care about the "grand finale" of the war between brewers. The dogfight to hold the title: "Strongest beer in the world".

Ach, the Germans they never learn, at least thats what some people say. (ME!) We bettered them at Rjukan in 1943, when a bunch of angry Norwegian saboteurs, trained in Great Britain blew up the "heavy water" factory. But they didn't give up, and by the end of the same year the Allied forces had to drop 400 bombs on the same factory. I mean how many wars can you loose and still keep coming back? But in beer wars no one needs to blow up the competitors brew house. Beer isn't a liquid of war like "heavy water", even though the outcome can be nuclear. As we are about to learn. Schorschbräu Schorschbock 31% had apparently held the record for strongest beer for a while, (since February '09) the 27% version of Samuel Adams Utopias (2007) had it before. Schorschbräu Schorschbock is classified as a Eisbock, basically a freeze distilled beer, where they remove the ice/slush that forms in the beer as it freezes and remove more and more as you freeze it again and again. Removing more and more water (Ice), while getting higher and higher alcohol volume.


Well if the Germans can do it, certainly the Scottish can too! So let's welcome "Tactical Nuclear Penguin", the real reason I'm writing this today. You see I'm a big fan of "Brewdog", they make beers for punks, me punk, me like "Brewdog", ugh ugh, get it?!? A hophead needs his regular fixes and "Brewdog" are among the best with their legendary "Punk IPA". But they are also a bunch of arrogant bastards, and after I visited their youtube channel, and watched their taunting movies for their three "new" extreme brews, I had to try them if I found them.

Back to why I'm writing this today, at Saturday I was at Cardinal again, the best pub in Norway, and I tried it! Brewdog's "Tactical Nuclear Penguin" is a Imperial Stout at 32%. And not only that, it's a good one. But if you've tried their Paradox you know Brewdog can make stouts. Here they have mixed the two versions of Paradox, the Isle of Arran & Smokehead, stored them some extra time in the whiskey barrels, then started the freezing distillation. It's kind of like a Stout concentrate, and if you ever tasted Coke syrup from the "bag in box" they use for tap, you know what I mean. I bet if you mixed this one with water it would still be a damn good Stout. So yeah here you get a "nuclear" explosion of taste in your mouth, and the smell, oh the perfectly crazy smell. It's like a microcosmos unravelling in your nose. You feel like a explorer of a distant world, and you're its ruler. And within it, is everything you ever dreamed of, everything you ever tasted, and you taste it all at the same time! Have you ever eaten a mouthful of jellybeans with all different tastes? Imagine the same with a beer. Imagine hints of caramel & chocolate, oak-barrels, all smokey and bitter in a wast and complexed universal way, tearing it's way through your taste buds like a nuclear explosion could level a city. Intense!


But back to the story, what happens when you better the Germans? Blitzkrieg! Attack, attack, attack! Shortly after they made a 40% version of their Schorschbock. Upon release they e-mailed Brewdog offering to sell them their secrets for brewing stronger beer, Brewdog politely declined... Pfff, politely, no no no no, check out their video for their comeback beer in the beer war: "Sink the Bismark", it's on their youtube channel and linked here. (I can almost hear the echo from the German beer brewers office, "Nein, nein, nein, don't mention ze war!") I haven't been so lucky to try the Bismark myself, but "Sink the Bismark" is nothing less than a quadruple IPA, four times more hops, four times more bitter and frozen four times. Malty and sweet while still holding a staggering 41%. I gotta get some, I'm currently planning a trip to the Brewdog pub in Aberdeen, but if they're out, there plenty of other stuff I can try. What I'm saying is, I wanna go anyway...

But the war was not over, like in a bad Stephen King movie sometimes the villains come back for more, and sometimes they come back for even more. The Germans launches a 43% beer! ACH! But all stories have to have a end, even this one. The brave Scotsmen of Brewdog return to the ice cold freezer, and conjure up the super-weapon of this war. The kind of weapon that's only used once or twice in every war, the kind of weapon you keep in your inner sleeve until you have no option, the kind of weapon that will crush all opposition and change history forever! This is their "Fat man" and "Little boy", this is their "Deathstar". "The end of history" is Brewdog's last effort in the beer war. They aimed for 50%, but they outdid themselves with a Belgian strong ale measuring at 55% of alcohol. This is boundary pushing at it's most extreme, the 0,33l. beer bottles is jammed into the throats of stuffed roadkill. Only 11 bottles was put out for sale, four Squirrels and seven Stoats. And for 700GBP one of these Squirrels could have been yours. (Most expensive beer ever!) You will probably never taste this, and nether will I, but now at least for a short while there is peace...

Shortly after the Dutch brewery Koelschip announced that they had brewed a beer at 60%. The "beer" was a blend with whisky and therefor can not be classified as a beer. The Dutch jokers named their "Beer" "Start the Future". (PS in Norway alcohol over 60% is classified as narcotics, and illegal. Will we ever see a "narcotic" beer?) Several other strong 30%+ beers have been made after the "beer war" started and ended. Belgian, American and Danish brewers have also joined the ranks of extreme strong beer brewers. It will be exciting to see what kind of "beer shots/schnapps" that will be made in the future, who will be the master of taste, who will win the costumers? Or will this just be a curiosity of the past? The future is still unwritten, but whats going on now will have a huge influence on the next generation of brewers, baby we're drinking historic beers!

Cheers

I like beer, I like it a lot!

And since you're here I presume you also like beer a lot, so I guess we have a common interest now, interesting, let's be friends. My name is Haffy and I have to tell you I feel so lucky to be living in Stavanger, Norway. Every week when I wanna go out and have a beer, I can go to one of the top pubs in the world, that's right, one of the top pubs in the whole wide world. (Top 50 pubs in the world list) And what's the name of this holy place you ask? Cardinal. And Cardinal have more than 500 different types of beer at any time, and around 24 of them on tap. There's no dress code, the music is not too loud, and there's no kids allowed, (Age limit is 24) and in all the years I've been going there I have never witnessed a single fight. The bartenders are real nice, and they know beer. So when me and my band, yeah I'm a singer in a band called Upskirts, anyway, when we had a long night jamming out tunes in the rehearsal room, I can go to Cardinal after and chill out. Me so lucky....

So anyway, enough with the introduction. I was there yesterday with my good friend "Bongo", the ginger drummer of my band. And we had to have some beers you know. So let me introduce you to a brewery called "Southern Tier"...

This is Bongo, with a Southern Tier Gemini in his glass.

Southern Tier: In the west part of New York state (USA), just outside of Jamestown there a little village called Lakewood. And in 2002 two bad-asses started a brewery and named it Southern Tier, they bought all the equipment from a defunct brewery in Pittsfield. These guys liked their beer tasty and decided to do it their way, and gave the middle finger to the commercial mainstream (macro) beer industry. Now in 2011 they have 35 employees and distribute around 15.000.000 bottles of beer yearly. Every batch is carefully checked and tasted and I truly believe these guys have a huge pride in their business. So far they have made around 30 something different types of beers, ranging from IPA to Stouts. They have a bar there, with all their different types of beer on cask, and it's also possible to get a tour of the brewery. So if you're ever in that area, you know what to do...

Alright, back to my world, Cardinal, yesterday, me and Bongo and two bottles of Southern Tier. Flown all the way across the Atlantic Sea just to pleasure our throats. My first introduction with Southern Tier was their "IPA", as a IPA-lover this one did not impress me, so I wasn't too curious about the brewery cause I thought the IPA was pretty standard. That was until I noticed a new stout in Cardinal's beer menu, the "Crème brûlée Imperial Milk Stout". I bought it, and then... I wasn't not curious anymore, I wasn't curious, I wasn't interested, I was in LOVE, I was sold! These gems cost a pretty penny, and you have to be willing to pay around 250 NOK (50 bucks) for a bottle. (0,65l.) But when you are in love, who cares about the money? The "Crème brûlée Imperial Milk Stout" tasted like a piece of heaven, like dessert, like the best dessert you ever had in your whole life. If you like Rouge's Chocolate stout or Nøgne Ø's Dark Horizon 3rd edition I recommend this one for you. I'm not saying it taste anything like those two, but it's up there on my top 10 beer list. So anyway, Bongo went to the bar and came back with one bottle of Southern Tier Gemini & one bottle of  Un*Eartly Imperial IPA.

Let's start with "Southern Tier Gemeni":

65cl. with 10,5% of alcohol, it's a heavy motherf**ker to kick off the night with. This one will take you where you wanna go with rocket speed, and before you know it you'll be circling the earth like you're John Young, Buzz Aldrin, Yuri Gagarin, Laika or whatever. This is a perfect IPA (Indian Pale Ale), it's bitter, it's dry, it's hoppy, it's hardcore. Six different types of hops and four different types of malt ensures that there will be an explosion of taste in your mouth, and a big f**king smile on your face. It will also make it impossible for you to drink pilsner for the rest of the night. It's sweet, it's fruity, it's just marvellous and it's definitively worth the dough. You might get nervous over the price, but f**k that, this is three beers in one, drink it like you would drink a bottle of wine. Enjoy the smells, the taste and gorge. Best served at around 8 degrees Celsius, IPA should not be too cold like Pils. (Just saying)

Up next we got "Southern Tier Un*Eartly Imperial IPA":

Another 65 cl. this time at 11% of ko-ko power. At Southern Tier's homepage they say that "to underestimate Unearthly is to trifle with the mysteries of the universe". This bastard of a ale smelled like sweet caramel pudding and tasted like something out of this world. Hoppy as hell, but sweet and tasty like if the hops where grown inside of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. The brewery claims that this is their most aggressive beer and I have to say that I believe them. After one bottle of this crazy f**ker, I could have walked home and been happy with just the one. Off course I didn't, but you must not underestimate the power of this one. So far I have never tasted a bad ale with the words "Imperial" printed on the bottle and I believe I'll have to wait a long time before that happens. This one was darker than the Gemini, and it was with ease that I surrendered to the dark side of the IPA force. I have read that some people might think this one is "too much" but I only have one comment on that: "Too much is never enough"!

History lesson boys and girls:

I find myself enjoying this blogging so I will also tell you about our local brewery and about two of their special ales. But first some history. This is a dark story of a cold Norwegian town, called Stavanger. At the far west-coast of Norway, where it rains cats and dogs. One of the most godless and atheistic places in the world. A historic place where the first Norwegian king Harald Fairhair, crushed his rivals and made Norway into one kingdom, more than a thousand years ago. This Viking-king would undoubtedly be pleasured if he knew that in this town, where he defeated all the smaller kings, with steal in his hand and beer in his beard, that in this town, they would make a ale worthy of a king. Harald was the father of the infamous Erik Bloodaxe who killed five of his own brothers and still was made king by Harald. Erik conquered parts of England, and is probably still a part of the reason why Norwegians are internationally know as crazy drunks. In those days it was mandatory by law to brew beer. You could be declared as lawless and loose your land and farm if you didn't brew beer for the Yule celebration. (Third strike and you're fucked.) The Vikings believed that Odin himself had taught man to brew beer, so I can't stress enough on how important this tradition was in Norway. (And still is!) Come 2003, Stavanger found herself without a local brewery. Tou brewery had been around since 1855, until Ringnes decided to put the local brewery down. Ringnes is owned by the Carlsberg group. (The empire strikes back!) So then what? In the wake of this scandal, that led to local boycotts of all Ringnes products, a new brewery arose. Lervig Aktiebryggeri started up then and there in 2003, and to be honest it wasn't much to write home about. I heard a rumour that instead of trusting their brewmaster, the investors and main share owners decided how the beer should taste like. Is there's any truth in this, I don't know, but judging on the taste of their pilsner it's easy to believe so. But in 2010 American brewer Mike Murphy was hired, and he had plenty of experience from other breweries. Even though he is American, Mike looks like a real Viking, and he have awesome brewing skills, Odin would've been proud of him! This have led to that we now once again can be proud of our local beer and brewery. We have a world class brewer, and world class beers, made right here smack in the middle of Stavanger. The first new beer was "Lucky Jack", a fruity and tasty American Pale Ale, the first Lervig beer made by Mike, and a personal favourite of mine when I want to go for the lighter stuff. And for Cardinal Pub only, Mike made the Northwestern Premium Lager, also a delicious treat, now sold out. Then he made the "Winter wine", also made specially for Cardinal pub only. Early 2011 and another addition came to the Lervig family: The Winter ale, mmmmm. And now spring 2011 we got two new pleasurable drinks, and that brings us to...

Haffy with a Konrad's Stout from Lervig.

Lervig Aktiebryggeri Konrad's Stout:


Can't wait till this hit the shelves at the liquor store, I will be camping on the outside in a tent waiting for it's release. A dark Russian Imperial Stout, 35cl a bottle, hits your bloodstream at 10,4% of alcohol. Kaaaa-BOOM! It's brewed with pils malt, chocolate malt & caramel malt, two types of hops and you can really taste the chocolate through, yummy. Chocolate, coffee and smoke mixed deliciously into this juggernaut of an ale. Bitter, dry and pitch black, this is God and Satan in one. This is love or hate, but for those of us who wants the real deal and won't accept anything less, this is it! And this is for those who don't mind the 300 kcal per bottle. Thank you Lervig, thank you Mike! Now let's get drunk and die in the snow!!!

I am really enjoy saying this, but the next one up, is never gonna find it's way into your mouth, it's mine, my own, my precious, he he...

You can really see that all this strong shit is having an effect on me!

Lervig Aktiebryggeri Barley Wine:

When Mike made the Cardinal Winter Wine, he kept 800 liters for another experiment, and where did he hide this? In Bourbon Barrels! So what do we have here? Barley Wine aged in Bourbon Barrels for five months. What is Barley wine you said? I'll let wikipedia answer: "Barley wine is a beer style of strong ale originating in England. A barley wine typically reaches an alcohol strength of 8 to 12% by volume, it's called a barley wine because it can be as strong as wine; but since it is made from grain rather than fruit, it is, in fact, a beer." Hurray! So now that we've got that out of the way, let's get to the interesting parts, how was it? Mmmm, vanilla, caramel and bourbon, both in smell and taste. It's remarkably easy to drink, considering it's at a whopping 10%. I would recommend this for any fan of Bourbon, but sadly those who drink Bourbon usually don't find their way out of their glasses with Jack & Coke, ha ha, more for me! And best of all it's limited, this might have been my last one you know. But there's plenty of more out there to explore. I'm really excited about the new trend with micro-breweries. F**k macro-breweries and their corporate shitty beers. For more news about Mike, visit his blog here. More about Lervig go here.

Bongo with a bottle of hemp beer? Hight tide IPA from Port Brewery...

So other that that Bongo had a bottle of High Tide and I had a glass of Evil Twin Soft Dookie, both really nice, specially the Evil Twin which is a Danish Imperial Stout. A shot of Grappa was also consumed just to assure that we would have some kind of hangover.

This was episode one, forecast for the future, more beer, more blogging, if you read this, please leave a comment!

Cheers