BrewDog announced yesterday evening that they’ve bottled up two new variants of their Paradox Whisky Cask Aged Imperial Stout for Japanese export and general website sales.

Almost before I knew what was happening, a stout-coloured mist had descended and I found myself clicking the ‘Buy’ button: coughing up £25.00 (less 10% with the BLOG discount code and £28.50 in total with an additional £6 for postage on top) for the Xmas Box Set containing three bottles of each and additionally tempted, I’m sure, by the rather natty DrewDog beer glasses they’ve thrown in for good measure. I know. £28.50 for six bottles of beer is a tad pricey. I sincerely hope the stuff is worth it (although I rather suspect it will be…)

Anyhow, BrewDog are promising next-day delivery as well, so if the consignment does arrive by Saturday I’ll be able to add Paradox Springbank and Paradox Longrow into the tasting of the Paradox Smokehead and Rip Tide stouts that I’ve tentatively planned for the weekend. Then again, maybe that’d be just too much of a good thing all in one go, eh? Perhaps I should save the new ones for next Thursday, say, round about dinner time..? We’ll see.

Brewery: Brooklyn Brewery
Location: New York, USA
ABV: 10.6%
Version: 12 fl.oz. bottle

Most of our coverage so far has been confined to UK beers, with a couple of excursions over to continental Europe, so it’s about time we moved a bit further afield. So over the Atlantic to the USA we go. American beer gets a bit of a disservice over here, with the big brand lagers stacked high in off-licences all over the country. But like most countries it does have a lot more to offer the more discerning beer drinker, you just tend to need to put a bit more effort into tracking them down (provided the stockists are prepared to put the same effort into getting them on the shelves).

Thus this, our first American beer review and it also happens to be our highest ABV so far. Yes, you read that right – 10.6%. I’ll let the Brooklyn Brewery themselves describe this offering -

“This is the famous Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout, our award-winning rendition of the Imperial Stout style once made exclusively for Catherine the Great. We use three mashes to brew each batch of this beer, achieving a luscious deep dark chocolate flavor through a blend of specialty roasted malts. We brew it every year for the winter season. It is delicious when newly bottled, but also ages beautifully for years.“

The bottle for this tasting was from the Winter 07/08 batch; a quick check on their website lists the ABV as 10.1% so maybe the alcohol content has been reduced for the new release. Considering the name it’s no surprise that the beer pours very black, with a full-on malt and chocolate aroma with hints of coffee. This is all very stout indeed, it could quite possibly stand up on it’s own.

Initial tasting though is disappointing. That high alcohol content muscles in, and combined with the up front maltiness tends to dominate to the detriment of other flavours. The best description I can come up with is to liken it to drinking thin treacle. However, this is not a beer to be rushed and giving it some time after opening to breathe, say half an hour, improves the taste greatly with some hoppy bitterness adding to the by now well developed dark chocolate dominance. One to savour during these rapidly approaching long winter nights.  

Brewery: Red Rat Craft Brewery
Location: Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England
ABV: 6.0%
Version: Bottled
Source: Sainsbury’s

I think of all the beers I picked up in the Sainsbury’s real ale promotion recently, this was the one I was looking forward to the most, so I’m really glad to be able to report that it didn’t disappoint – not in the slightest.

Crazy Dig Stout pours a proper, thick black colour – without even a hint of reddishness to mar its inky perfection (“dark as the inside of a cat,” as I think Terry Pratchett once wrote) and with very little head. The settling beer gives off a faint whiff of treacle and the first sip (or, I have to confess, gulp) releases an explosion of flavour, zest and energy which lasts the entire bottle.

I jotted down every flavour that came to mind whilst I was savouring this rather excellent brew and, whilst I’m sure I probably missed a few, I did notice: treacle (definitely), fruit (grapefruit and sour cherries) coffee and chicory, to name the predominant ones. An initial sweetness gave way to a lingering dryness as the drink went on as well, which saved it from being overly-sugary.

All in all: rather superb. Maybe not the wisest choice of session beer, but definitely one to try.

I rushed (nay, sprinted!) back to Sainsbury’s not long after I’d sampled Crazy Dog but their stocks had (unsurprisingly, perhaps) all disappeared. The good news is that Red Rat‘s (slightly eclectic) website offers a mail order page with a 12 bottle mixed case option for a quite reasonable £22 (especially if that includes postage – the site doesn’t specify) so I might be tempted by one of each of the rest of their range with the balance made up in Crazy Dog. Yes… very, very tempted indeed…