Last night I had a unique opportunity to try two insanely potent beers from Brew Dog, one of which is the strongest in the world. If you are unfamiliar with the Brew Dog, the brewery is out of Scotland and run by two relatively young guys who approach beer and marketing with the punk rock mentality. From the bottles to the beer names to the promo videos these guys do it their way & there way is pretty good.

James a.k.a. Brew Dog James, one of the brewery founders rolled into Max’s Tap House in Baltimore on Wednesday evening. On tap was many of the Brew Dog beers, I personally recommend the 5 AM Saint, full of hops flavor but lower in the alcohol & the Tokyo, an oak aged stout at a whopping 18% abv. A slew of bottles were also available of which I had the Dogma which I was quite impressed.

The main attraction of the evening was the two beers that are unavailable in the US, Tactical Nuclear Penguin 32% abv & Sink the Bismark 41%. There was one bottle of each, one 330ml bottle of each for about 40 people. Each person was given just a taste of one beer after forming the “queue” or as I like to call it, a line. Now you were free to get back in line to try the other if you were so inclined and many people were.

My wonderful girlfriend shared her taste with me & I, my taste with her. My reaction was that each one of these beers had a big bold flavor; the Tactical Nuclear Penguin (TNP) is aged in whiskey barrels and that flavor was extremely evident, which I really like. The Sink the Bismark (STB) is billed as a quad IPA, the sip was the equivalent of drinking hop syrup. The hop flavor was intense, I have never had anything like it, my tongue tingled for a few minutes after the taste. I waited for the flavor to dissipate before I drank anything else or ate my tasty pork nachos.

So would I drink TNP or STB again? Sure if someone was buying for me. While these beers don’t retail in the US yet the cost alone would make these beers not worth it. The cost 35£ & 40£ not including shipping in Europe, now convert to US dollars and tax the shit out of it. I honestly find both of these beers to more of a marketing plow to promote the company than anything else. They have gotten a ton of press out of them and you know what? It’s marketing genius, create a buzz with a small batch beer that everyone wants. It’s elusive, it’s rare & it’s actually a decent drink.

Should you ever have the opportunity to try these on someone else’s dime I highly recommend it; its an experience. Will I ever buy these should they hit the states, no way in hell.

Check out BeerInBaltimore.com’s write up of the event.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 5:21 am and is filed under Craft Beer, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.