Wednesday 18 May 2011

The Tramp Juice Trio

Been wanting to do this since we launched Brewdog's Avery, Brown, Dredge at The Rake. I'm going to be comparing the ABD with Tennants Super and Carslberg Special Brew!
The things I do to my liver.
I spot the blurb on the side of the can of Special Brew 'best shared well chilled' - Shared? When was the last time you saw a tramp sharing a can of Spesh? I can just see it now, one tramp pours into another tramps fluted tasting glass, tramp 2 swills it around, takes a sniff, and sips it back gently, savouring every intricate flavour profile in the glass! The substitution of the word served with shared is just cynical marketing bullshit, not fooling anyone methinks!
Avery celebrates buying Beer Ritz.
It must be noted that I'm not the first person to write about these beers, on Ratebeer both the Spesh and the Super T of these beers have over a hundred ratings even with someone rating the Spesh 3.1! Wtf!!!
We're going to start with the Brewdog because I'm fairly certain that my tastebuds may never recover from the shock of the trampagne!
Named after the three bigwigs that brewed this monster, Avery, Brown, Dredge is a 7.5% 'Imperious Pilsner' which is an homage to everything that inspires these three flowery wordsmiths!
On the nose there's caramel, slightly floral but hard to pin down, maybe rose? The look is a slightly darker than most lagers as you might expect for an 'Imperious' style.
Dredge working, we think he might have broken a nail,
 if you find it in your bottle you win a prize!
Now when we launched it at The Rake I felt it was slightly too sweet and I have to say, for me it still is although there's a lovely boozy after-glow going on in the throat after you swallow.
Not sure about the guff on the bottle though - aren't these guys supposed to be writers? If you like strong pilsners you'll love this stuff - I'm dubbing it Special Brew(Dog).
Which brings us nicely onto the next beer in this little tramp juice trio is Carlsberg's Special Brew....
For this part I go and get a bucket, I may vomit, I was thinking about videoing this post but I don't think you lot want to see me chunder!
We knew that Brown would get sick of IPA's
 one day.
Well, it's 9% abv and pours clear, same colour as the ABD, on the nose there's a bit of sulphur, this stuff is going to hurt me but at least I didn't need a bottle opener to get it open, hehe. Nowhere near any of the subtle aromas that the ABD has, getting scared. It's sickly sweet, all malt and no hops to speak of and I can feel my mouth being stripped away layer by layer with every sip. Foul. Nothing nice here, I have no idea how the tramps drink this stuff and it's time to move on to the final can of the evening, Tennent's Super.
This is such fine stuff that Tennent's advise that you serve it 'ice cold', probably to take away any taste you might be unfortunate enough to experience. Now before we start there's something I have to just have a chuckle at....'Please drink responsibly' on the can! Nice to see the people at Tennent's doing such stirling work with their customer profiling! For all you pedants out there yes I know it's a legal requirement but is anyone naive enough to believe this will ever happen?
To the notes! Same as the Special Brew on colour and aroma, sickly, eggy sulphur (same stuff in a blue can, anyone?). Bit sweeter than the SB and there's more booze on the mouth feel, I'm about to be arrested for crimes against tastebuds so I'll leave it there. Go for the Special Brew(Dog) folks, it's craft, innit!

15 comments:

Ghost Drinker said...

I'm pretty sure when I say the 3 writers we're pretty hung over when they tried to write the labels blurb! :) I think mine would have just said something along the lines of "I just wanted to make an awesome beer for me to drink!"

rabidbarfly said...

Yep, that's what the bottle said. Excuses, excuses ;-)

Ghost Drinker said...

You think we should apply or try arrange an 'mediocre beer writer' brew day with another brewer like Summer Wine, Marble or Kernel? Ghostie wants his own label Imperial Stout!

rabidbarfly said...

Not sure I even qualify for mediocre but it's a great idea!

Ghost Drinker said...

Better than me! Lets get it done!! We'll take this industry by storm :D

rabidbarfly said...

Cry Havoc!

Mark Dredge said...

I'm glad ABD came out on top of those - phew!

And no nails were broken in the making of this beer. I was only posing for the picture, I wasn't actually doing any of the hard work - I've got terribly soft and delicate hands and didn't want to hurt them!

rabidbarfly said...

My bad.

Neil, Eating isn't Cheating said...

Excellent use of the much underused 'chunder'.

*Doths cap*

Ed said...

Spech is a quality product, it was made for Winston Churchill after all.

rabidbarfly said...

So Ed, how many cans of Spesh do you drink a week? ;-)

Ed said...

I have had Spech as my drink of choice when I've been wild camping, but it must be a few years since I've done that. It might be called for again in the summer though...

The Wineyard said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
CptCheerful said...

I've only tried Special Brew out of those three (does that mean it wins this little triple threat showdown by default for me? Good God...)

My tasting note got as advanced as "it tastes like a fag try full of used cigarette butts."

Never again.

rabidbarfly said...

Cpt Cheerful - my tasting notes would be more like wringing out a whores knickers. But that's just me ;-)