Brewery: BrewDog
Location: Fraserburgh, Scotland
Style: “Vanilla Bean Infused Belgian Quad”
ABV: 10.2%
Version: 375ml bottle
Source: see below

Ed and I both scored ourselves a couple of bottles of BrewDog’s Abstrakt:01, the first[*] in their new range of Concept Beers. I ordered mine from the Abstrakt website on its day of release, Ed picked his up from the (rather excellent) Gap Wines in Belfast.

This is what Abstrakt:01 looked like when I poured it:

And here are our joint tasting notes:

Ed Said:

The bottle I sampled was number 1747 of 3200. I don’t know if that really means anything, or is any indicator of quality.

Not the easiest bottle to open, that cork was well pushed in. But once I got there I took a whiff from the open bottle and wondered where the aroma had gone, it was almost undetectable. A bit more comes through on pouring but it’s still very subtle, hints of vanilla and mango, with a touch of spice.

And the tasting was… actually quite disappointing. Very underwhelming, considering the price. Some subtle fruit flavours of mango and peach at the start, and a dollop of spiciness coming through shortly after, but I didn’t notice much sign of the vanilla. Despite the strength I thought the alcohol was well controlled, not impinging on the flavour too much, and the overall texture was very smooth. And it was far too easy to drink – I was hoping it would last me a while, but it was all gone in under 40 minutes. Maybe I’ve just come to expect more from BrewDog, but this is too tame, not exciting or challenging enough.

Or maybe it’s just too young and needs more time to mature and develop complexity. Which is what I plan to find out with the second bottle, number 1743; I’m following Darren’s suggestion and have stuffed it at the back of the cupboard for the next year.

As for me, I’m in pretty broad agreement. I picked up a hint of toasted coconut along with the vanilla on the aroma. I thought the mouth-feel was a particular highlight: honey-rich and smooth. And I noted down a stream-of-consciousness list of flavours that occurred to me as I sipped and ended up with: caramel, jam, honey, coconut, almond and overripe banana. It reminded me very strongly indeed of another beer, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember exactly which one… something Belgian, probably.

No surprise then that my overall impression was of a beer that’s rather too sweet at this (very young) stage of its development. To be fair to BrewDog, they do say (although only on the Abstrakt website, not on the bottle itself) that: “This beer is ideally suited to ageing and we recommend cellaring for 12-24 months.”

So that’s what I’ll be doing with bottles #2 and #3. I’ll have a word with Ed and see if we can coordinate another sampling and post up a fresh impression in twelve months’ time or so. I hope the sugars will have calmed down by then and more complex flavours developed. If its improvement-with-age is anything like BrewDog / Stone Bashah‘s then I reckon we’ll be in for a treat.

And I’ll be in for a bottle or three of Abstrakt:02 as well, with any luck. Triple Dry Hopped Imperial Red Ale, y’say? Sounds intriguing…

Around the Beerblogosphere

• Reluctant Scooper waxes lyrical

Look what ParcelForce dropped off this morning:

That’s one to drink young (in a couple of weeks’ time, most likely), one to mature for 12 months or so and a third to keep for as long as I can stop myself from opening it…