BrewDog's Nanny State - Beer of the Week

by Joshua M. Bernstein, Posted Nov 23rd 2009 @ 5:00PM

Photo: Jenene Chesbrough

Joshua M. Bernstein has written about brews, bars and booze for New York Magazine, Time Out New York, ForbesTraveler.com and The New York Times.

As far as the boys behind Scotland's rabble-rousing BrewDog are concerned, U.K. beer is as tasty as tepid tea.

Most breweries make "bland, lightly hopped and mildly malty beer," complains Martin Dickie, who co-founded BrewDog in 2007 along with James Watt. Compelled to "make the beers we want to drink ourselves," BrewDog took inspiration from boundary-busting American microbreweries, turning out the hoppy Punk IPA, the whiskey-cask-aged Paradox stout and the Zephyr, a double IPA aged with strawberries in wooden barrels.

"We are raising the bar of beer produced in the U.K.," Dickie explains.

While BrewDog has shown it can craft high-alcohol ales, it's equally adept at the opposite end of the spectrum. Case in point: Nanny State, a 1.1 percent ABV oddity that's cheekily dubbed a "mild imperial ale." But brewing a low-alcohol beer is no laughing matter: "It's pretty tough to get an appreciable mouthfeel in a beer so low in gravity," Dickie says. "We use seven kinds of malts to stand up against the onslaught of Humulus lupulus. We wanted to really give this beer a bite."

At first, Nanny State seems toothless. It pours a deep, dark amber with scant, sluggish carbonation. Had Nanny gone flat? But the pungent perfume of flowers, cut grass and pine promised a hop bounty, which was realized by the first sip: an uncompromising mouth-puckering bitterness, leavened by a light body and the muted flavors of biscuits and toasted caramel.

Nanny is a mad experiment that may only appeal to hop heads, but let's give BrewDog credit: They're pushing brewing's boundaries on both sides of the pond.

Does BrewDog's bark match its bite? Spill it in the comments.

Filed Under: Drink Recipes
Tags: beer, beer of the week, BeerOfTheWeek, brewdog, low-alcohol beer, Low-alcoholBeer, nanny state, NannyState

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

11-24-2009 @7:24AM Becki said... This sounds like a great idea. I love beer and could drink it all day long - but I wouldn't get anything done after about 10 am and the day would be a drunken washout. With a beer that as low alcohol in as this you might be able to serve your beer need without getting drunk and wasting the day. Non-alcoholic beers all taste like crap to me, plus they have the audacity to cost as much as normal beer. A nice tasting beer that didn't get you drunk would be one of the perfect drinks in my opinion.
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11-24-2009 @1:48PM Eric Tsuei 2 said... i need to learn how to brew my own beer too!
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11-24-2009 @2:28PM Barry said... I've had the Paradox many times and love it! You can order it from K&L wines here in the SF bay area.
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11-30-2009 @3:55PM foxdude0486 said... I agree. It'd be nice to have a good flavorful beer with low alcohol content to enjoy when not wanting to get drunk.
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