Here’s a scanned clipping from last week’s Prestwich Advertiser, the stalwart engine of local news reporting that we’re treated to round our way every Thursday:

They say a picture tells a thousand words, don’t they? So let’s take a look at the picture of what is presumably a representative sample from the haul of “more than 200 bottles of booze … seized from youths as young as 13 on the streets of Radcliffe”.

Okay… I can see Strongbow, Fosters, Carling, Budweiser and wife-beater Stella Artois, plus assorted bottles of dodgy spirits including Taboo, Southern Comfort, Bacardi Breezer and some blue stuff that has to be either WKD or a WKD-substitute.

But where are the bottles of BrewDog Tokyo? Surely someone’s made a mistake..?

Brewery: BrewDog
Location: Fraserburgh, Scotland
ABV: 18.2%
Version: Bottled
Source: Courtesy of BrewDog

The Back-story: At 18.2% ABV, BrewDog Tokyo* is the strongest beer brewed in the UK and as a result, it’s currently the most infamous: it has been condemned by health groups, the Scottish Parliament and the largely ignorant media.

The Beer: BrewDog Tokyo* is “an imperial stout brewed with jasmine and cranberries added in the kettle”, dry hopped “with a combination of North American and New Zealand hops” and then aged “for 4 weeks on toasted vanilla French oak chips”.

The Tasting Notes: I drank this one soon after the BrewDog Rake Raspberry, the better to compare the two. Tokyo*’s aroma was a lot more muted, but still noticeably fruity; more rich fruitcake than crushed berries. The pour was noticeably effervescent and the head slightly lighter, but still with that same tan colour.

And the flavour? Bear with me, I may run out of superlatives halfway through these notes… let’s start with ‘absolutely incredible’ and move on from there, shall we? The first thing I noted: a distinct sweetness that was malty without being syrupy and an overall impression of definite alcoholic warmth, but without the stridency that you’d expect from a similar ABV beverage; port or sherry for instance. The flavours are rich, dense, complex and quite fascinating: a touch of cough-syrup, toasted bread, treacle, vintage port and dark cherry, with a hint of nuttiness, and a very slight herbal tang. Not much smokiness, not too heavy on the tannins; an extremely smooth, immensely satisfying drink all round.

Honestly, I could have happily gone on slowly sipping this one all night. All weekend, in fact. An absolutely stunning beer… quite possibly… in fact, no, definitely the best I’ve ever tasted. There, I’ve said it. Back in February Ed, Tim, Joe and myself all posted our tasting notes for BrewDog’s Paradox Smokehead and RipTide stouts and concluded that they were quite possibly the best stouts we’d ever tasted. I hinted at the time that there was actually one or two I’d tried that were even better: I can tell you that I was alluding to BrewDog’s Paradox Springbank and Paradox Longrow (I’ve just been too bone idle to type up the Tasting Notes since then). Well, I can promise you that this year’s Tokyo* surpasses even those utterly stellar beers. Really, truly, unbelievably good…

And that’s it… I really have run out of different ways of praising the stuff. Seriously, if you haven’t grabbed a couple of bottles yet, do so while you can. I’m contemplating investing in a few more myself, even though I have one more stashed in the special beer cupboard already (and may actually transfer that one to the house safe…)

In a word: wow. Just… wow.

What the other Beer Bloggers are saying: I sampled this one last Friday night so I was hoping to have the Notes posted at the weekend, but BT managed to kill my landline for four days, so I’m lagging behind both Pencil & Spoon‘s Mark Dredge’s video review and Pete Brown‘s blog. Haven’t seen any more reviews just yet, but I’ll post the links as and when I find them.

Another BrewDog extreme beer comes in to land, another fairly predictable pressure-group fuelled mainstream media protest takes off as a result:

• UK’s ‘strongest beer’ condemned – BBC News
• Row Brewing Over Britain’s Strongest Beer – Sky News
• Brewdog bites back at binge drinking claims after launch of 18% abv Tokyo* – The Grocer

All of the above are referring to the re-release of BrewDog’s limited run, 18.2% ABV, £9.99 per bottle Tokyo* Imperial Stout – “brewed with jasmine and cranberries added in the kettle”, dry hopped after fermentation with “a combination of North American and New Zealand Hops” and then aged “for 4 weeks on toasted vanilla French oak chips”, only available direct from BrewDog or via specialist beer retailers – and all of the above pretty much take the same faux-horrified line that surely, surely an 18.2% ABV beer is only going to make Britain’s binge-drinking culture worse, not contribute to a cure, as BrewDog’s James Watt said in a press release.

As it happens I think both suggestions are actually somewhat wide of the mark, simply because BrewDog Tokyo* costs £9.99 a bottle and even at the discounted website-order only rate of £34.99 for 6 bottles (plus £7 p&p) that’s still £42 for 3 pints of beer.

Think about it: when’s the last time you saw a regular binge-drinker who’d be prepared to pay £9.99 for a single 330ml bottle of beer, when they could probably pick up a litre bottle of 40% ABV vodka (or a.n.other bog-standard spirit) for less than that in any supermarket or off-license? And when’s the last time you saw someone who was prepared to pay £9.99 for a single bottle of beer engaging in the sort of binge-drinking that’s hitting the headlines with regard to both increasing rates of alcoholism and anti-social behaviour issues?

I’d suggest the two groups are pretty much diametrically opposed, which means that Tokyo* is highly unlikely to either worsen or ameliorate – or in fact contribute in any way – to the very many issues caused by binge-drinking that affect the UK today.

In the meantime, of course, BrewDog are revelling in the media spotlight cased by the successfully-courted controversy, which will no doubt ensure that the 1,000 bottles of UK-available Tokyo* sell out in short order. Job done there. Plus: various health watchdogs and alcohol-concern charities also get to jump up and down and shouting about precisely the wrong end of the stick whilst ticking their ‘we are being dead pro-active, we are, please give us more funding’ boxes, without actually doing anything about the widespread availability of genuinely dangerous cheap poor-quality booze. Mission accomplished for them, too.

And then there’s the poor old mainstream media, which continues to demonstrate its general irrelevance by superficially surfing the headline shallows and lazily regurgitating whatever the next outlet along is saying without stopping to think, without actually bothering to do any sort of investigation into the very real issues behind the story.

In short: business as usual all round.

More Commentary:

• Adrian Tierney-Jones summed the situation up quite nicely on his Called to the Bar blog.
• Jeff of the Gunmakers’ fame invites debate on the issue (check out the comments thread).
• Alan McLeod challenges the maths over at A Good Beer Blog.
• Mark Dredge crunches the numbers and reminisces on his student binge-drinking days over at his Pencil and Spoon blog.
• DM of DM on Beer makes a similar point or two as well.
• BrewDog-stockist The Rake Bar’s Richard Dinwoodie responds to the allegations (via the BrewDog blog).
• Pete Brown questions the wisdom of BrewDog’s apparent habit of courting controversy as a marketing strategy.

All well worth a read.