BREWSKI ISSUE ONE
A
MAGAZINE FOR HOPHEADS
Welcome to
BREWSKI It’s an honour to provide the words which officially open a magazine that has existed for so long in my mind and so briefly in print or - in this case - in pixels. Brewski was born out of a conversation I had almost one year ago towards the end of my stint writing for an unloved and underappreciated beer magazine. I was sitting with the final edition up on my screen wondering whether it really deserved its free-with-a-pint-of-beer price tag when someone asked the question: why don’t you just write your own magazine? Twelve months on and I finally have an answer to that question. There ain’t no reason. This magazine is living poof of that. This magazine owes much to many, but none more so than Laura. Through her endemic positivity, drive and passion I have come to push myself and turn a tattered assemblage of plans and ideas into this tangible thing. Without her I would have left Brewski lie, gather dust and slowly fade into a memory. For that I give my sincere thanks.
G r e at scot ! Brewski spends a night at the Barras surrounded by some of Scotland’s finest brewing talent
Last month under a high arched roof of dark glass, Scotland’s hopheads met to sniff, drink and discuss beers from every corner of Scotland. Founded and organised by Derek Hoy and Alex Knox of Hippo Beers, the inaugural Great Scottish Beer Celebration was a two-day extravaganza, celebrating - as you may have guessed - all things beer. The festival welcomed eighteen of Scotland’s finest breweries, three of the tastiest eateries and one lonely looking cider brewer. Stepping through 54 Calton Entry, the industrial walls of the Barras Art and Design Centre shoot up overhead, purple
lights flicker and music blares out of a pair of speaker stacks. Two headphone-clad figures survey the crowd from a large semi-circular balcony at the head of the event space. Around the edge of the room stand breweries from Orkney, Leith and everywhere inbetween. A throng of hopheads meander between stalls, tasting everything on offer. Fyne Ales, the ever present beer festival force, are set up in the midst of everything - a buzzing crowd already clustered around them. Pride of place in their Celebration line-up goes to Wheat Russian, a new beer out of their experimental brewhouse.
Inspired by the Dude’s tipple of choice, Wheat Russian could all so easily have been a confused mess of milk, coffee, vanilla and beer. Thankfully, it isn’t. Wheat Russian starts off as a silky smooth white stout brewed from wheat and flaked barley. To get the White Russian flavour they infuse coffee and chocolate early in the brewing process and inject vanilla and lactose towards the end. The result is a frankly astounding beer, a beguiling blend of flavours that somehow manage to replicate what a White Russian is without tasting gimmicky or confused. At the back of the room is little corner of darkness inhabited by
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upand-comers Black Metal Brewery. Since moving on from their pilot half-barrel setup, Black Metal have ramped up production, pushing their brooding beers to bars and beer shops across the country. I’m recommended Blood Revenge rye stout, the Herald’s beer of the week from midFebruary. It’s a nice mix of soft caramel malts and sharp fruity bitterness. It’s a little whiskylike but without the alcoholic burn - a refreshing break from the sweet coffee and chocolate stouts that litter the other stalls. Over in the other back corner, nestled between Babu Kitchen’s simmering pots of curry and the bearded Fallen brewers, is Jaw Brew. The Hillington-based brewery is one of Glasgow’s newest, but don’t let their
youthful exuberance fool you, they definitely know their way around a fermentation tank. Two core beers - Drift and Fathom - earned silver awards from SIBA. Their other core brew - Drop - is hard done by not to pick up another. I tried Fathom, a bottle conditioned dark ale. It’s a lot gentler than either Drift or Drop, softer and smoother with a nicely balanced amber sweetness and smooth bitterness. Fathom’s a simple beer but I think that’s the point. It does exactly what a dark ale should do and it does it exceptionally well. Onwards and northwards. “He stays in Edinburgh, I’ll show you,” says Highland Brewing Company’s Orcadian-in-
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residence. He proceeds to carefully mark a postcard with the position of the Highland’s farmstead brewery, along with assurances of its scenic credentials. I thanked him and promised to mail the postcard to an Orcadian I used to work with. Then we got talking about beer and I promptly forget the postcard. H i g h l a n d ’s b r e w s a r e excellent across the board, but stars of the show are their two IPAs - Muckle and Long Way IPA. Muckle’s a solid American IPA: big, brash and bitter, bursting with citrus and crisp grassy pangs. Highland’s second IPA - Long Way - was brewed in collaboration with a brewery based out in Colorado. It’s much
sweeter and its hops bring a really nice juicy fruitiness. Both are excellent, but Long Way gets my nod for king of the north. My final stop at the Great Scottish Beer Celebration is to Top Out, their stand is decked out in trademark Ordnance Survey livery. Each beer’s branding is based on a different Scottish summit and head brewer Michael Hopert has bagged every one. The original plan was to call the brewery Eclipse, but that was blocked by a last minute trademark objection from a soft drinks manufacturer. Happy accidents, I guess.
I tried Staple and I was impressed. It’s a solid pale ale with an interesting mix of pine, citrus and earthy grass. And while it’s never going to blow you away, it’s a beer you could drink every day and and not get bored. Staple by name, staple by nature. The festival flies by and as the clock chimes eleven, white lights flicker into life, the music dies down and fluorescent jacket-clad security guards move into corralling position. Before we’re ushered out the door, co-organisers Derek Hoy and Alec Knox meander out onto the balcony to and say a few words.
I t ’s a testament to the culture they have cultivated and the event they have hosted that after five hours drinking all the stouts, porters, lagers, pale ales, ambers, saisons, reds, blondes and ambers under the sun, every single person is looking up to the balcony and listening to their speech. In one weekend the Great Scottish Beer Celebration solidified its position in the Scottish hophead’s diary, more than holding its own against the well known big guns. Bring on next year.
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?
WHEN DID
BEER BECOME
COOL
Sitting above the gently simmering stainless steel boil kettle of Drygate’s experimental brewery, someone poses the question: when did beer become cool? As one of Scotland’s new breed of craft breweries, Drygate is an excellent backdrop for the question. Built into the old shell of an abandoned box factory in the shadow of the crumbling black Necropolis, it’s an interesting juxtaposition of old and new, of old bland lager and new exciting beer. Inside, its beerhall serves a small core range of Drygate originals - Outtaspace Apple Ale, Bearface Lager and Gladeye IPA - and a constantly changing menagerie of guest brews sourced from all corners of the world. Drygate - and the beer revolution in general - sort of snuck up on me. One moment it was the decrepit remnants of a box factory and the next a simmering cauldron of malt, hops and yeast. A few years ago, your choice in the average bar was limited to Tennent’s, Carling and - if you were feeling particularly adventurous - that Aussie classic Fosters. Whereas, today’s bars are packed to the gunwhales with Williams Brothers, Fyne Ales and imported Californian IPAs - it’s a really good time to drink beer. Revolution is often built on the back of youthful exuberance and beer is no different. A quick look around Drygate reveals a radically different beer swilling demographic than you would have found even five years ago. The traditional bearded and bellied ‘real ale’ drinkers are still there, but they’re far outnumbered by a sprawling mass of twentyand thirty-somethings. I took a minute to ask a few people what made them try beer and I heard the same thing time and
time again: the choice. Behind Drygate’s glistening chrome is a world of saisons and stouts, lagers and lambics, porters and pilsners. There’s reds, blondes, blacks and ambers, a technicolour dream world of beer. The choice at Drygate is amazing and there is truly something for everyone. I was once told there was no such thing as a person who didn’t like beer, just people who hadn’t tried the right one. At the time I thought it was nonsense. Now I’m not so sure. Part of the reason beer is booming now is the progressive beer duty, introduced back in 2002. The progressive duty means smaller breweries pay tax at substantially lower rates than their larger counterparts, giving new breweries a little more breathing room than they would have otherwise had. While it’s still hard to develop a brewery into a business, it’s not quite as tooth and nail as it was before. With a little more financial wiggle room, breweries are more willing to experiment and innovate - not every beer needs to be an unmitigated commercial success. Wild Beer Co. just brewed a beer inspired by Thailand’s Tom Yum soup - it’s hot and sour with a huge salty finish. No one in their right mind would brew that - but they did. In the past fifteen years, the number of British breweries has trebled and the market’s been flooded by experimental brews like Wild Beer’s Thai tipple. Freeze distilled IPAs, white stouts, barleywines and Trappist ales are all commonplace. Breweries are flinging anything they can find into their fermentation tanks and seeing what comes out the end. And then there’s brewpubs, essentially a pub Issue #1 | TheBrewski.co.uk | Brewski | 9
or bar with a homebrewing kit in the back. These drinking establishments are usually the side project of overly keen homebrewers and tend to foster more of a community feel - they’re fantastic. While brewpubs are still a relatively new phenomenon in Scotland, their numbers are growing. Glasgow’s newest brewpub - Ride Brewing - offers drinkers four year-round and two seasonal beers, all brewed right in the middle of Drury Street Bar. Along the M8, the Alpha Project operates a similar set up in a quiet corner of the Hanging Bat. It’s putting punters in direct contact with their pint and it’s a fantastic experience. But getting back to Drygate and the question at hand: when did beer become cool? I think there’s a simple answer for that. Beer became cool when beer became more than bland yellow lager. Beer became cool when beer became worth drinking.
reviews A round-up of all the latest beer from around scotland - and some oldies just for good measure
HOP FICTION - 6.5% - BREWDOG Hop Fiction - part of BrewDog’s experimental Prototype series - is an attempt to brew an IPA without dry-hopping. When you’re aiming for a style renowned for its big, bold, brash bitterness, it’s the equivalent of brewing with one hand tied behind your back. Hop Fiction pours a clear amber with an irregular off-white head which quickly disappears into the body. There’s a nice chunk of lemon and orange on the nose too. The first taste delivers a hefty bitter bang - they’ve certainly managed to retain a lot
of the distinctive hoppy bitterness through extensive wort- and whirlpool-hopping. Behind the bitterness, everything is much more subdued. The orange and lemon notes that were present on the nose are all mostly absent in the taste. Hop Fiction fades to a soured sweetness and finishes off with a bitterness that lingers at the back of your mouth. BrewDog’s experiment is certainly nice but it lacks the strong flavours of their other IPAs. A successful experiment maybe, but not one to repeat.
Old Contemptible - 4.8% - Caledonian Brewed in partnership with the Imperial War Museum, Old Contemptible is a beer to mark the centenary of the First World War. It’s sweet on the nose with big bursts of vanilla and chocolate, and there’s a subtle maltiness at the back too. The taste is a more muted. The chocolate is there but it’s all wrapped up in a syrupy sweetness. The vanilla all but disappears. While the nose was a collection of distinct
scents, the taste is more of a blend of everything. Towards the end there’s a small burst of bitterness from the hops and it lingers just long enough to be an interesting addition. Old Contemptible is a simple brown ale and it’s probably not going to blow your socks off. However, it’s pleasant enough to keep you interested and is a good accompaniment for a meaty meal.
Orach Slie - 6.0% - Harviestoun Conditioned in honeyed-malt casks from Glenfarclas, Orach Slie is an easy-going lager with mellow whisky notes and a syrupy sweetness. Orach Slie pours a clear amber with a fragile off-white head. It’s light and refreshing on the nose with a punchy sweetness and gentle whisky undercurrent. The first sip is a little less intense than you might expect if you’ve tried any of Harviestoun’s other oak aged beers, but
give it time and the flavours start to unwind. An oaky sweetness pairs beautifully with subtle bitterness from the hops and there’s a small smoky flourish right at the end. Orach Slie fades to a clean whisky finish which keeps you company for a couple of minutes before gently drifting away. It’s a perfect summer beer, the ideal refreshment for a long meandering walk over the Speyside moors where Glenfarclas distil their whisky.
florida black - 4.5% - black wolf Florida Black is one of Black Wolf’s new cubs. A silky smooth wild oat stout, it picked up a gold medal at last year’s World Beer Awards, which bodes well for the brewery’s second bunch of beers. A malty chocolate nose suggests a rich sweet syrupy drink to come but it just never materialises. Florida Black isn’t watery exactly but it lacks enough body to be truly enjoyable.
There’s some rich chocolate notes and an interestingly subtle bitterness, but ultimately you’re left wanting more. Florida Black fades to a gentle earthy sweetness with the faintest smoky scent. It’s a pleasant beer but not one that’ll have you running back for more.
Radical road - 6.4% -stewart brewing Stewart Brewing’s Radical Road promises to be a swaggering bitter brute. It’s hopped in the kettle, primary and secondary so the burst of tropical fruits and grapefruit on the nose comes as no surprise. A malty base and gentle orange notes complement the aromas from the hops to create a really interesting first impression. Radical Road is much more than a collection of hops, though, and its depth
starts to come out as soon you take your first sip. There’s sweet caramel and mango at the front and tangy grapefruit behind. The sweetness disappears fast, leaving a prickly dry bitterness and punchy grapefruit. Radical Road is a fantastic beer. Its threestage hopping creates a fantastic mesh of flavours that are perfectly balanced against the sweetness of tropical fruit.
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