When to drink your "special beer"?

On Friday I had a delivery of some very special Brewdog beers. These are beers that are only brewed in small batches, and a released in a strictly limited capacity. I managed to get a case of three of these limited beers: Paradox Jura, a 15% whisky aged imperial stout, Lost Dog which is an imperial porter which has been aged in rum barrels and brewed together with the Lost Abbey brewery in California, and Abstrakt AB:08 which is a deconstructed blonde imperial stout. Yes - blonde stout.

Being limited edition means that there is a demand for them that is higher than normal for Brewdog beers. Which of course in simple economic terms means that you have to pay a bit more for them. It's not just the reason that they are high in demand that makes them expensive - but the fact that these beers are lovingly made and have been aged for up to a year. Time equals money.

These beers, for a 33cl bottle cost 15€ (Paradox and Abstrakt) and 20€ (Lost Dog), but despite that I managed to pre sell them many eager beer fans in Estonia who simply hadn't had the chance to get their paws on beers of such quality before. There is a growing band of beer drinkers in Estonia that understand you get what you pay for, and that beer can be treated in the same way which wine has been treated since it became "posh". These are the same drinkers who realise that they are being served up mass produced liquid and are expected to drink it with pride because it's made in the same country they live in.

When I first had the opportunity to bring these beers to Estonia my first thought that a) they would be too expensive and b) that there wouldn't be any takers for them. My second thought was that I should forget about my first thought because that kind of attitude is so last year. As I've outlined above, there is a market for these type of beers precisely because others are thinking like my last year first thoughts. One of the main reasons my hand was bitten off by many when I offered these beers, is because Estonians have been denied great beer for so long.

The beers arrived, I got them registered; don't get me started on this ridiculous ruling. It's only necessary in Estonia and is just another ridiculous blockade in the way of getting good beer here. I have to give one bottle as a sample (I bet they drank it and declared it vastly inferior to Saku Rock) and then I have to pay to get the beer registered. Not the brand - but the beer. Three new Brewdogs, means three samples and three amounts of cash passing from me to them. They also require a lab analysis which gives the breakdown of ingredients,ABV, OG and various other bits of information that I don't know what they do with, or indeed understand. When I ask the brewers for a lab analysis in order for me to register the beers (and release them from the excise warehouse), nearly all of them ask me why I need and what information is required. After I've told them, I then go onto their website and see how many other countries in the world they export to, and ask myself the the question why they don't know what information is required on the lab analysis. Afterall, surely all of these other countries have the same rules and regulations about bringing export beer into their country?

Of course they don't.  It used to be the same for wine  - but last year the Estonian authorities dropped the registration process. Something to do with Estonia not making it's own wine (meaning shiraz, chardonnay etc - not fruit) perhaps? I strongly suspect that someone on the board is also on the board of Saku or A Le Coq. We don't want any of this export beer. Locally produced beer is much more suitable for the good people of Estonia. Access denied. Next!

Anyway - all this hard work only makes the beer taste better, and it's a sense of excitement when the papers are all in order and the the beers are authorised for release. So excited I was by the time I got home with my three new Brewdogs, that without thinking I started reaching for the bottle opener. And then I stopped. Not because it was two o'clock in the afternoon. Not because I had to pick George up from playschool at 5pm, I stopped because these were "special beers".

A bottle of Worthingtons White Shield was given to me by a brewer about 8 years ago. Nothing special about Worthington White Shield (and I mean that in terms of availability - it certainly is a special beer), but the special thing about this beer was it's best before date. White Shield is bottle conditioned which means that is has a small layer of live yeast at the bottom of the bottle. The yeast carries on doing it's job while the bottle sits on the shelf, keeping the beer fresh, the alcohol levels topped up and generally conditioning the beer. In the same way that you can lay wine down in the hope that it improves with age, you can do this with certain types of beer. If they have yeast in them, or they haven't been filtered, or they have a high alcohol content, then they should last a long time. Indeed, some beers have been found at the bottom of the ocean, or hidden away in cellars and have been drinkable. The worlds oldest "drinkable" beer, was found in our very own Baltic Sea http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12393875  and some were found underneath the brewery in which I used to work in the UK http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3352667/A-fresh-future-for-flat-old-beer.html

The beer I was given wasn't so old - it had a best before date of  May 1994 which made it 10 years old, and I promised that I'd leave it for a special occasion.

I've still got it. I can't bring myself to open it. It's a mixture of lots of things that is keeping me from opening it. Its one of my all time favourite beers - the last I have, it's the old style bottle that isn't made anymore, and it's 18 years old. That's the same age as some of the people who drink in my bar. It's going to have such complex flavours, additional alcohol levels and a whole different taste to when it was first brewed. Considering that WWS has a 3 year shelf life when it's first bottled - that makes it 21 years old. May 1991? Estonia was still the Soviet Union when this left the factory. This beer has history. If I drink it, then it's gone never to come back. I guess it's a bit of a security blanket for my days back at the brewery in Burton on Trent. Ah well, maybe it'll taste nice in another 10 years. I might try it then.

The Brewdog beers will also keep. They have a best before date of 2016, but I suspect that they will keep and mature for much longer than that. And whereas the Worthington is just an aged ale, the Brewdog beers are special within themselves. The Paradox is aged in casks from one of the worlds greatest whisky producing islands Jura, the Lost Dog is aged in Rum casks and has been brewed with legendary Californian craft brewers Lost Abbey, and the Abstrakt is a blonde beer that thinks it's a porter. You don't just crack open one of these beers when you are about to sit and watch the football on a Tuesday evening. You need a sense of occasion. Something to match the celebration of such a good beer. Or..you can buy two! I've learnt this from my Worthington White Shield experience. You dare not drink the beer because once you have, although it lives long in your memory, it's gone. If you buy two, then you can drink one of them safe in the knowledge that you still have one to look at, display, polish, swoon over and all the other sort of strange things you do when you have a "special beer". You'll confuse people who aren't into beer by bringing the bottle for them to look at and expecting them to show the same sort of admiration as you have for it. I've got a bottle of Ola Dubh Special Reserve 30, and once a year at Christmas I get it out and declare to whoever I'm having dinner with that I'll drink it. They look at me like I'm some sort of odd ball getting all dreamy about a small bottle of beer with an unpronouncable name. I never drink it though - because it's the last one I've got.

Of course the great thing now is, that there are some very special beers now readily available in Estonia without having to crack open the special stuff. My bottle of Hardcore IPA went very well with this years Christmas turkey, and its so readily available that I actually had two bottles of it over dinner.

It'd be interesting to hear from the other guys about when they intend to drink their beers. Maybe we should all get together this time next year and ceremonially open our beers together to mark the occasion when three great beers first arrived on the shores of Estonia.

I wonder if the people who work at the alcohol registery office are thinking of doing the same?

Leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

"Leaves a bitter taste in your mouth" is often an expression that is used for something bad. If you look it up, this idiom focuses on the lingering effect of unpleasantness. When this idiom is applied to things other than food, it is about the lingering bad taste. Here's an example I found on the internet:

We had been dating for two months and I liked him very much. Monday night we went out and he became drunk and abusive. He has called me ten times since but I haven't returned his phone calls. His behavior on Monday left a bitter taste in my mouth.


Seems like he was drinking too much of the wrong beer. She did right. (although after 10 unanswered calls you think he would have clocked onto the fact that she didn't like him. Must be a Stella drinker).

But is bitterness all about bad taste and abusive phone calls? In beer, bitterness is extremely important. So important in fact, that it's the key taste that people decide if they like the beer or not. Like smell, taste has an evolutionary role in protecting the body from ingesting anything harmful and identifying tastes that give us pleasure

As you can see above, the tongue is split into four different zones. Each of these play a part in tasting beer, because the liquid washes over your tongue before ending up down your throat (or t-shirt depending on how many you've had). Right at the back of the tongue is where bitterness is detected

Most natural toxins and medicines are bitter and acids are sour. These tastes are often perceived as unpleasant and potentially harmful to the body, whereas sweetness is seen as acceptable. This is why you normally stick your tip of your tongue onto an untasted food to check if it's ok  If it's bitter or sour, then by the time you've got it in your mouth, your tongue will be detecting that it's potentially harmful and give you massive signals to spit it out.

After smell, taste is the next most important factor in flavour perception. Once again, genetics, cultural background and experience play a role in taste ability and preference. It's also sad to note that as you get older, the ability to taste and smell declines with age (which explains why it's only young people who complain about smelly old people on buses and trams - not the other way around.).

Culture is an interesting one.  I'm from a culture in the UK where we are used to drinking quite bitter beers. The main cause of bitterness in beer comes from the addition of hops. Hops are added at the start of the boiling process, which means the brewer gets the flavour but not the aroma of the hops (that is lost in steam up the brewery chimney. If the brewer wants the aroma, then he'll add some more hops for the last 5 minutes of the boil, in a process called "late hopping".). Hops also act as a preservative of flavour, as the resins in hops have anti bacterial effects on organisms which can make beer taste "off". It's these preservative effects that were noticed by brewers who were sending their beer on the long trip to India in the 1800's. They used loads of hops to make sure the beer tasted fresh at the journey end. This type of beer was called India Pale Ale (IPA) and it, aswell as the hops inside it, became very popular in the UK and fashioned our style of beers still drunk today.

But Estonian beer never had to travel to India. Which means that Estonian beer on the whole, doesn't exactly rate high up on the bitterness scale. And a scale there is. All beer when it's brewed is measured in International Bitterness Units (IBUs). The more bitter it is, the higher the amount of units. These days it's becoming more and more popular to display the amount of IBUs on the label, because as I mentioned before, it's the bitterness that most people use to determine if they like a beer or not. Think of it like the numbers on a coffee packet to indicate how strong (roasted = bitterness) it is, or the amount of chilli peppers next to the food description at your Chinese takeaway (unless of course you are in Estonia, whereas you might as well disregard these entirely). Some examples:

Sol = 0 IBU (doesn't contain hops)
Bud = 10 IBU
Saku Originaal = 12 IBU
Saku Hele = 18 IBU
A Le Coq  = 12 IBU (suprise suprise)
Abbot Ale = 35 IBU
Pilsner Urquell = 45 IBU
Punk IPA = 68

Anything above that, and it starts to get very interesting! Currently, the beer with the most IBUs is from Danish brewer Mikkeller. Their "Hop Juice" has. Wait for it. 2007 IBUs. These brewers are similar to Brewdog in that they do a lot of experimental brews just for the hell of it. I have however spoken to them about bringing their beers to Estonia (mouth drooling) and the suggested brands they gave me included the beer called "1000IBU light". No prizes for guessing what the amount of bitterness units are in this one. I might be a bit scared to try it though!

The nearest we've got to something in the way of a beer with high IBUs is Brewdog Hardcore IPA, and it's that beer I'm reviewing now.

Brewdog Hardcore IPA (ratebeer rating: 99) 33cl 9.2% abv

You can't help but be a little bit scared when you are about to open this. It's the combination of the fact that it's 9.2% alcohol, its 150 IBUs and it's from Brewdog. When I first had a bottle, it sat in the fridge for quite a while, because I was waiting for "the right moment" to drink it. This is not a beer you grab when you've just finished playing football, just about to watch a football match, or the beer you give your father in law for the first time. I actually had mine on Christmas day, which I thought was the right moment - I was nice and relaxed, plus had a nice full stomach after stuffing my face all day. This beer took the role of a cognac or glass of port in front of the fire at the end of a long day.

It pours an amber golden orange colour, and suprisingly considering the amount of IBUs has quite a small head. What little head it does have packs a lot of aromas - toffee, caramel, banana and maybe a bit of honey and pine.

The taste is as you would expect - powerful, dry and full bodied. After the initial bitterness, it's got a sweet taste, and then finishes again with a long dryness. Almost like the juniper taste of a dry gin. The sweetness give it great drinkability - caramel and toffee flavours combined with the resin like sweetness of pine and orange peel.

So nothing to be scared of. Apart from the fact that I finished it and immediately wanted another one. It's definitely a drink to take at the end of the night, because in the morning (ok, I had another one) the first thing I tasted in my mouth was hops Unless of course, Hardcore is the ONLY drink you choose to drink all night.

"Leaves a bitter taste in your mouth"? Maybe in time this will be a phrase to describe something good and agreeable instead of the otherway around. I can't guarantee about getting drunk and making 10 abusive phone calls though...