Over the holiday season I was lucky enough to be invited to try Scotland’s Brew Dog Tactical Nuclear Penguin. At 32% ABV, this is the strongest beer ever brewed, surpassing high-octane brews like Sam Adams Utopia and Dogfish Head 120-Minute. Brew Dog has been getting a lot of press in the UK of late, where they have raised the ire of health and safety types for (allegedly) encouraging over-consumption and other delinquent behaviours.
All hype aside, I wondered if a beer this strong would be palatable. At this strength did it still have the characteristics of beer? Would the flavour be dominated by the burn of alcohol? In short, was it any good?
What I can tell you is yes, Tactical Nuclear Penguin is definitely beer. It’s thick and black and there’s basically no carbonation. You don’t need to bring the glass to your nose to pick up on the intensely smoky aroma. Yes, you do feel the warming of alcohol as it goes down, but it does not dominate. It packs a real wallop for the first sip or two but, baby, you are in flavour country. Billed as an “über-imperial stout”, this tastes like a smoked stout that has been reduced to its very essence. The flavours – and the warming effects of the alcohol – come at you in waves. By the end of the 1/3 glass that I drank my gums were numb and my tongue was tingling. Talk about mouthfeel!
Sadly, Tactical Nuclear Penguin is not (yet?) available for sale in Ontario. I’ve read that it may make it into the U.S.A. sometime in the spring. If it does, don’t expect it to be cheap, as a 330 ml bottle goes for 35 UK pounds (about 70 CDN). But even at that admittedly high price tag it would be worth tracking down to share with a couple of close beer lovers or to greedily savour on your own on a cold winter night.
In the meantime, local beer agents Roland & Russell have brought Brew Dog’s Punk IPA into the LCBO as a winter seasonal. I strongly recommend it to any of you out there who love hop-forward beers. Here’s hoping that they can bring in more from this UK upstart that appears to have shown that extreme brewing is not strictly the domain of American craft breweries.