Peroxide Punk and other beers I must try

No I don’t suddenly covet the beers of BrewDog because they are getting good marks at Rate Beer and are building a cult following in Japan.

However, you might worry that I’ve fallen under the spell of off-beat marketing wizardry given that less than two weeks ago I confessed I want to try the beers of Voodoo Brewery just because I like the brewer’s attitude. And now I’m quoting more brewers I’ve never met and whose beer I’ve never tasted, and this time they are from Scotland.

Thanks to a post from Stonch about Hardcore IPA, the first “Double IPA” in Britain I spent a fair amount of time this morning mucking around the BrewDog website.

The index page alone had me looking up Fraserburgh, Scotland, on the map:

We do not merely aspire to the proclaimed heady heights of conformity through neutrality and blandness.

Quality ingredients are expensive, time consuming hand brewing methods are expensive, all the extra care required because we use no additives or preservatives is expensive.

We don’t care!

Our goal is not to keep costs down, cut corners and then fool consumers into thinking this bland nonsense is actually good beer through an advertisement onslaught.

Our goal is to make truly amazing fresh, natural beers and not to compromise on any level.

We’ve been listening to that message from American small-batch brewers for more than 20 years (although I never tire of hearing it). It’s less often they say things, like: “It’s all about moderation. Everything in moderation, including moderation itself. What logically follows is that you must, from time to time have excess.”

As Stonch points out, the UK is not devoid of creative brewing. For instance, Sean Franklin at Rooster’s Brewery in Yorkshire has been concocting quite nice experimental beers since opening the brewery in 1993. But many of the new wave of micro breweries are really micro, often selling only to one pub.

James Watt and Martin Dickie, on the other hand, opened with a 10-barrel system at BrewDog (Rooster’s has an eight-barrel). And they distribute their beer in bottles.

In case you wondered, Peroxide Punk (in the headline) took that name because it is a fair color and described this way by the brewery:

“A trashy blonde concession for those who mouthed the words (in a deliberate manner) on the Punk IPA label, then spat the beer out. For you crazy rock n roll peeps who thought the extra 2% would make you loose the Harry Plotter entirely. Dry-Hopped . . . to give the beer a real aromatic zesty aroma and a depth of flavour and body which bellies its ABV. Fluorescent in colour, this beer might even make you glow in the dark. Zeitgeist in a bottle.”

I’m a sucker for zeitgeist in a bottle.