News Bits: Charity brew, Brew Dog Tokyo, Drunken Wizards

Here is some news, instead of writing about all the beer I've been drinking. I haven't tweeted for a few days, but rest assured my liver isn't getting any sort of break.

(We do not, under any circumstances, support Adult Kickball)

First, from Taking the Beard Out of Beer, the lovely Melissa Cole lets us know that a British Brewer has terminal prostate cancer and is using his remaining time to make beer to raise money for the nurses helping him back to health. I'm not sure I'll see this 7% Dark Mild before I leave, but I'll certainly bug my (temporarily) local landlords to get some in.

In related strong beer news, the UK is atwitter with BrewDog's latest concoction: 18.2% Imperial^3 Stout Tokyo*. Radio 4 talked about it on the evening news, and a variety of newspapers (RIP) and blogs want to talk about it too. BrewDog are, without a doubt, the future of British brewing. Interesting beers, revisions and perversions of the classics. They even make some traditional beers with lots more flavor. They've even got a video up about this and most other of their beers. I'm saddened but not surprised to be missing them at GBBF, being as they have the audacity to push the boundaries of UK beer beyond 8,000 varieties of Bitter.

(The above video is for regular Tokyo, the link in the text is for Tokyo*)

The controversy around the beer is that it is so high alcohol that it will cause more drunkenness. It is also 10 quid ($16) for a bottle, which contains six UK alcohol units. Ten pounds will also buy you 700ml of Smirnoff at most UK Sainsbury's and during the summer a bottle of Pimm's. Now, the 330ml of BrewDog is smaller than the 700ml bottles, but for less than the cost of the bottle you can get what we call a 'mickey' in the states, though it is understandably tantamount to calling sprinkles jimmies: terms that could be offensive if they weren't so antiquated and absurd. Mind, I thought the same thing about the last descendants of the teetotalers.



Where were we... oh right, bigots that aren't me. So your 10 pounds will buy you a 330ml bottle of Tokyo, at 18%ABV, a 375ml Mickey of Smirnoff at 40%ABV, or an entire 700ml bottle of Pimm's at 25%. That's 6 units for BrewDog, 15 units of Smirnoff or just under 20 units of Pimm's. Right. So clearly the beer is too strong, except, wait, for the same cost and bottle size you can get way drunker, for cheaper. Now, which will taste better? Expensive beer, NJ's favorite vodka (and finest cultural export), or some Pimm's? Now, I love the Pimm's, but the beer will be better. So for 10 pounds I'll get a great beer experience and still be able to walk home, unlike the young man below. The nanny state argument leaves something to be desired, and I agree that BrewDog won't be killing anyone, and certainly not any faster or cheaper than the spirit companies.



Our last news for the day, The Mad Fermentationist, a hero of mine in the homemade delicacies category, welcomes a new blogger. We can hardly contain our excitement!