Tag Archives: BrewDog

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BrewDog Nottingham opens in, er, Nottingham

BrewDog Nottingham is now open, officially, as in you can go and get a beer if it’s past mid-day and before 1am.

They also do pint glasses, I know what some blokes are like.

Last night I spent the evening in the spanking new BrewDog Nottingham on what was an officially unofficially but we’re officially open night, members of Nottingham CAMRA were there too, now according to some PR and some other ‘ranty’ articles I have read this should have resulted in scenes resembling wrestlemania 1988, yet nobody was oiled up, no fight broke out, nobody got dragon punched and no scenes that would make the Jeremy Kyle highlight reel erupted, it’s almost as if those people had willingly walked in and bought a beer, funny that eh?

"Hey is that an old school gym floor on the wall?"

I make no excuses for my love of other cities like Sheffield, where 10+ beer pubs are aplenty offering greater diversity and choice, an area in which I think Nottingham still can improve; so regardless of whether you welcome BrewDog Nottingham with open arms, or a double flip of the bird, it’s undeniable that they offer a range of beers that were previously unavailable, and that’s the important bit isn’t it, beer.

The guest draft board offering beers from around the world.

Oh god the beer, In Nottinghams sea of Castle Rock and Blue Monkey (both great brewers who do Nottingham proud) BrewDog Nottingham offers a genuine entirely different choice, now you’re not stupid, you can see from the pictures it’s not cheap, but until Tesco start offering imported beers on tap like Hitachino Nest, Stone, or Flying Dog, you either buy it or you don’t, and with promised themed brewery nights coupled with the ability to go up to 16 different beers on tap at once it’s worth checking out merely for the gems they import, and I do mean gems, on sampling Hitachino Nest – Japanese classic ale (7.5%) and Stone – Oaked arrogant bastard (7.2%) I instantly fell in love, which made me wonder why BrewDog need all the silly PR when they already offer something that people can’t get readily elsewhere.

BrewDog draft beers, and a squirrely bottle of 'the end of history'

What about the BrewDog beers? well, I didn’t try all 9 on at the time (sorry) but the 3-4  I had where absolutely great, Punk IPA was very tasty, poles apart from my previous experience with it ‘on keg’ and special praise goes to Protoype 17.6, a mix of trashy blonde and raspberries, proof that cocking about can lead to great things!

Nottingham has just got another drinking choice and it’s a great one and not at all much abrew about woofing, to quote BrewDogs irritating twitter feed, ‘pow‘ pow indeed sir, pow indeed.

 

BrewDog Nottingham is located on 20 Broad Street, next to the Broadway cinema, remember they have an old school gym floor on the walls, yes, really.

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CAMRA and BrewDog get nitro knickers twisted.

Hit the nitro! it sounds like something out of Knight Rider doesn’t it? no I didn’t think so either, as we all know KITT uses a turbo boost, not nitro.

You may or may not have read about the big brewhaha kicking off between CAMRA and BrewDog regarding kegging some of their beer at the GBBF (Great British Beer Festival) it’s mostly rather petty tit for tat but it does create a bridge to an issue that over the coming months and years we will be undoubtedly seeing more of, craft beer in a keg. Like it or not ‘craft beer’ in kegs isn’t going anywhere so CAMRAs decision to pull the plug seems a little short sighted, perhaps both parties just need to sit down properly and talk it over, this would be helped greatly by BrewDog who brew some fine beer indeed pulling their head down from the clouds, they’re not the messiahs they often claim to be, just rather good at marketing.

The ‘rebellious’ BrewDog (available in Tescos…) like to get busy with the fizzy, or busy wit’ fizzy if you prefer the Bo Selecta Craaaaig Daaavid approach. So what’s the big deal? well it all comes down to the definitions of ale, live yeast, filtering etc, yes I can hear the snores already but kegging dominance in short is what CAMRA was setup to stop happening; but more importantly it looks to me like a good old clashing of opinion. In Europe and America this practise of kegging is common, my co-writer Hoppkins is a huge fan of American craft beers and has sampled them many times on their home soil, I myself loved many of the beers we had in Amsterdam, again all kegged, in-fact some of the Flying Dog beers I had out there rank as the best I have ever had though I am massively curious as to what they taste like without kegging.

Is there room for both? I don’t think there’s a choice as both exist and both will continue to push forward but you can’t blame CAMRAs defensive approach with the taste destroying reputation kegging has, this can’t be helped by some of the UK brewers putting on some very poor shows, both BrewDogs- Punk IPA and Thornbridge – Jaipur are brilliant brews, but truly dreadful on keg, and I might point out at this point I have tried them both more than twice at different places and times so it wasn’t just a bad batch.

For now it seems a lot more toys are going to be chucked out the pram, but it seems a genuine shame to have beers specifically brewed for kegging as they do in the US and Europe snubbed because of this reason, for now this debate seems set to roar on.

Of much more importance is the Nottingham CAMRA branches confirmation that BrewDog will be at the 2011 Nottingham Beer Festival but as last year on cask, not keg!