Arbor Ales Aramis

The whole point of a single hop ale is to showcase the character of the hop. It's basically a pale malt canvas onto which the hop character is projected. That description is how Sean Franklin, founder of Rooster's brewery, described the idea, and that's the formula that people follow, with good reason.

Aramis is a relatively new hop, "from the Alsace region of France, a triploid variety developed as a cross between tetraploid Strisselspalt and a male seedling of WGV to create a unique variety with reasonable bittering potential and strong noble aroma characteristics, notably citrus, herbal, fruity and spicy", it says at SimplyHops.co.uk. Fascinating, but what does that really mean?

Arbor Ales Aramis smells like the steampunk future of hops. It's steampunk in the the sense that it's not some immense fruit bomb, some hydroponic citrus monster hop that will make all beers taste the same, but it's a traditional set of flavours that has been amplified somewhat for the modern palate. In this beer, it's a very European-smelling hop, with a real noble Saaz quality, including some of that slightly earthy, dirty, catty character. But at the same time, there's a citrussy lemon edge to it, some faint black pepper spiciness, and a fleeting suggestion of fruitiness mid-palate (peaches? tangerines?) that makes it bang on trend for 2012. At the same time, there's a faintly smoky note that suggest Lapsang Souchong tea, or perhaps the interaction between this and the fruit suggests Earl Grey.

And in this beer, there is plenty of bitterness, so the overall impression is a beguiling package that is simultaneously delicate and assertive. When Mark Dredge, Pete Brown and I brewed Avery Brown Dredge, BrewDog's Martin Dickie tried it and said "I feel like I'm being punished by Saaz, which is something I never thought I'd say". This beer has that same quality, albeit toned down from 11 to, say a 6 or 7 in volume terms, which given ABD's hooligan credentials is perhaps no bad thing.

So, Aramis. An interesting hop, and a very good beer.

NOTE: I buy and sell this beer through the business I own, although I don't think this has influenced my opinion of it

BrewDog Avery Brown Dredge - The Launch

When BrewDog's James Watt asked me, Pete Brown and Mark Dredge if we'd be interested in hosting a beer dinner at Musa in Aberdeen, and then brewing a beer the next day, the answer was an easy yes. Of course, the bigger discussion was: Who gets their name first on the label?

BrewDog Avery Brown Dredge is an homage to the beers and brewing traditions that have rocked our world. Classic traditional Saaz hops married to continual hopping. The old and new brought together to try and make a statement about where beer has come from, and where it should be heading. A beer born of blood, sweat and tears. Well, that was the idea. In the end, we were so partied-out from the beer dinner the night before that no amount of lifting malt and digging out mash tuns could shift the sense that we'd had a chance for greatness, but blown it by overindulging.

But wait, what beer from yonder fridge breaks? It is the Hotpoint, and Avery Brown Dredge is the sun. The sample I have in front of me is a pre-release taster, before the dry-hopping was carried out. It's a big, malty beast of a beer, initially bready, but with a familiar slightly antiseptic snap of Saaz hops. In the mouth, the hops kick hard against the pale malt sweetness. Dry-hopping will up the aroma. What have we created? It is only a matter of time before hopfen-helles-bock becomes a globally adopted and celebrated beer style. Or is it, as the label suggests, an imperious pilsner? Come along, try some, and decide for yourself.

Kill your heroes. Make your own idols. Whatever. Just drink our beer.

7.30pm, Leeds, North Bar. Or London at The Rake and The Jolly Butchers.

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Blood, Sweat and Beers: 36 Hours with the Dandy BrewPunks of Fraserburgh

As I struggled to pick up a knife and fork the next morning, I realised that I'd had quite an action packed 36 hours in BrewDog's company. The final straw was attempting to dig out 1400kg of wet grain from the mash tun. Well, it was 1400kg dry, who knows what it was after a mash and sparge - a couple of tonnes? No wonder spearing a button mushroom with a fork was suddenly such an ordeal.

I was in town with Pete Brown and Mark Dredge to brew a beer and host a sell-out beer dinner at Musa, BrewDog's restaurant in Aberdeen. You can have a look at the menu here. I won't wax lyrical about what a great job we did of the beer and food matching (we did), but what I will say is that the cooking there was of an exceptionally high calibre - great quality, expertly executed, with not a foot wrong the whole night. The chef there, Dave More, is a serious talent. We ate and drank into the small hours, and drank some more at BrewDog Aberdeen for good measure.

All of which would explain why team Avery Brown Dredge (as the beer will be called) was such a shambles the following morning. As we babbled our way to the brewery, it quickly became apparent that rather than arrive with a recipe and a plan, we'd arrived with a concept - a noble-hopped strong lager. It turns out that concepts are all very well, but they don't get beers brewed. Sensing that what we needed was a bit of mild bullying, Martin took us out to the hop store and with a cruel-to-be-kind mantra of 'Do what you want, it's your beer', frightened us into formulating a recipe.

1330kg of lager malt. 70kg of malted wheat. 50kg of Saaz hops. 5000 litres of water. Mashing in via an auger with a hopper on the floor, heaving sacks of malt into it, the previous night's cobwebs start to lift. Standing over the mash tun making sure the mash is smooth by pummelling it with a shovel blows away a few more. Head brewer Stewart Bowman supervising our efforts to a soundtrack of obscure German punk ensures that everything goes smoothly. A lunch of fried fish, cooked in a wok of boiling oil heated on their new nanobrew plant, and then we retire to the office for the really hard work - writing the label text.

If ever you want a demonstration of the acute short-term effects of alcoholic overindulgence, put three hungover award-winning beer writers in a room and ask them for 120 word of text to go on the back label of a beer. There must have been a point where, witnessing the dazzling creative power of (and I quote) "the very finest beer writers this side of the Atlantic and rockstars of the craft brewing movement" stumbling over words - no, not even being able to start putting words together - James and Martin must have been considering throwing the lever on the mash tun, throwing us out, and pretending the whole thing had never happened. I nearly fainted digging out the mash tun, but that was easier than coaxing words out of Brown and Dredge.

Of course, the beer isn't even half made yet. After the fermentation, there's a month of lagering and dry hopping to come. We're hoping it's going to be a special beer. It's a homage to beers that we like, brewers that have made a difference to our lives and to our writing, and traditions that need to be worshipped and then smashed to pieces.

BrewDog have come a very long way in a very short time. They've made a lot of friends, and rubbed plenty of people up the wrong way. But the great thing about spending a day in the chaos of their stuffed-to-overflowing brewery that you get a feel for their passion and their playfulness, and also the way that James and Martin can inspire those things in others. The great beer is a fantastic bonus.