BTN: Sink the Bismarck!

Although this is a wine forum, I couldn't help myself and just had to share this so I hope our host will indulge me.

Wednesday night, I joined Jim and Arnie for an extreme beer tasting, the highlight of which would be two of the strongest beers in the world at 41 and 32% alcohol. But before that, we had two beers with bitterness levels off the charts.

Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale - Dark amber. Seems a bit charred and ashen. Robust, bitter chocolate, cocoa powder. Extremely long and bitter finish. Much longer than any wine I've tried. The blurb on the bottle says the IBU (International Bitterness Units - a measure of the beer's bitterness) is classified. Jim estimates it's substantially north of 100 which is pretty extreme. Still, this was surprisingly easy to drink.

Ruination IPA (India Pale Ale) - From the Stone Brewing Co. of San Diego. Lemon and citrus aroma. Again, extreme bitterness and length on the finish. A somewhat fresher style than the Arrogant Bastard. Also surprisingly easy.

We originally wanted 6 people to try the next two beers but we couldn't get the numbers. In spite of this, Jim decided he wanted to taste these beers so we went ahead and tried:

Sink The Bismarck - From Brew Dog of Scotland. 41% alcohol. Probably frozen repeatedly to skim off the ice in order to get this strength. This monstrosity started life as a double IPA. Hazy, light orange. Has the tell-tale citrus aroma of an IPA. Smells like overripe oranges. No head. Intense, rich, very warm. Drink, or rather sip, this beer cold as it becomes unpleasant and cloying as it warms up. It's sort of like a bad whisky mixed in with some fruit liqueur. Weighty, strange. Leaves your throat scratchy. This is several orders of magnitude beyond anything I've experienced. Very difficult to drink and come to grips with. While it was exciting to try it, I would not want to try this again any time soon. We speculated that maybe it needs time to mellow. Jim has 2 more bottles and the best before date says 2020 so we'll try another bottle in 2015 and see how it's coming along. The beer gets its name from an old British film (black and white) about the sinking of the German Battleship Bismarck in WWII. They gave it this name because it beat the previous world's strongest beer which was a German brew.

Tactical Nuclear Penguin - Also from Brew Dog but a more modest 32% alcohol. This is an Uber Imperial Stout. Black. Iodine. Band aid, peaty. Smells like an Islay malt and tastes like one too although it's again very heavy on the palate. Smoky. Another difficult beer to drink. Just a bit easier than the Bismarck but again, I wouldn't like to try this within the next 5 years or so.

I think that's it for me and extreme strong beers. It doesn't seem like I have the palate to appreciate them.

We shared some of these with Kawasaki-san, the restaurant service manager, and he reciprocated by giving us a small tasting of 3 kinds of shochu. The one made from barley was very light, almost watery, the one from sugar cane was also light but had a bit more character. The last one from sweet potato was the shochu I was familiar with; sort of like a rough vodka.

Jim, not yet content with all that alcohol was still hankering for another drink after the shochu. I just happened to have some Penfolds Koonunga Hill Cabernet Shiraz Seventy-Six (the special blend to comemorate the first Koonunga Hill) 2007 and so we ended with a half bottle of that. Perhaps not a top wine but certainly much more palatable than the Brew Dog beers.

Sink The Bismarck [. . . ]41% alcohol. [...] sip, this beer cold as it becomes unpleasant and cloying as it warms up. It's sort of like a bad whisky mixed in with some fruit liqueur. Weighty, strange. [...] Very difficult to drink and come to grips with. [...] We speculated that maybe it needs time to mellow.

In my limited experience with high-alcohol beers [though not THAT high] (and in my conversations with others), extreme over-the-top alcohol tends to be a disadvantage not an advantage for aging. Beers out of whack tend to meander aimlessly rather than come together.

But, then again, from the perspective of my palate, I can't imagine why anyone would even attempt to make such extreme beers that suggest undrinkability, when drinkability is one of the most important considerations for when I choose a beer. Different strokes for different folks . . .

As I'm reading this I'm drinking a Woodstonk Inn Brewery, Pig's Ear, Brown Ale which has almost as neat a name as Sink the Bismarck! It is another brew made and botted by Shipyard in Portland with that wonderful English Ringwood yeast.

Brewdog are soon releasing a beer called, IIRC, The End of History with something around 55% abv. I wish they would stop fooling around and go back to what they did well - they used to make a perfectly nice, cheap, sane beers like the Punk IPA. Sadly, I find that now more effort is spent of marketing, media and the foolishly extreme.

EBUs of around 100 can actually be very pleasant brews. Despite its name, I have no problem drinking liters of a specialty made for one pub in Helsinki, HODA (which stands for Hop Overdose Ale). It is only 3,9% abv yet has 100 EBU. It might seem extreme and over the top from these figures, but it really is a wonderfully crisp and, most importantly, drinkable beer. Those beers, like Mikkeller's 1000 IBU, do sound rather extreme even for me despite my preferences for strong hops.

But when speaking of hops and bitterness, we have to remember that the perception of bitterness differs greatly between different hop varieties. I have tried beers from different hops yet identical IBUs and my perception of bitterness has been extremely varied.

Being a beer drinker initially by trade I'm very familiar with the loons of Brew Dog. Check out the vid for End of the World:

http://www.brewdog.com/blog-article.php?id=341

I like well hopped, some extremely hopped beers. I like strong beers, some extremely strong but this latest round of taking the piss has got to stop. I guess it's fun to watch from the sidelines.

I should note that I'm a supporter of the Session Beer movement.

Apparently "The End of History" (55% ABV) consisted of 12 bottles (inside stuffed animals!!) which were sold starting at 500 pounds each. Not to be outdone, Jan Nijboer, a Dutch brewer, at 't Koelschip (The Refrigerated Ship), made "Start the Future". It comes in a one-third litre bottle for 35 euros and is 60% ABV!

I'd say that we can expect further increases in the alcohol content of beer. Personally, I'm waiting for a 60% ABV Barossa Shiraz, or Amarone, or California Zinfandel, or......

Mike