Johnny Rotten was one of the most interesting & dangerous front men of the punk era. His ragged look, spiked har, quick wit, nihilistic views & a desire to shock when a microphone was shoved in front of him made him the poster child for the 70’s British punk movement as thefront man for the world’s most dangerous group of the time, ‘The Sex Pistols’. They were edgy, provocative, uncompromising & misfits at a time when bands like Queen, Elton John, David Bowie, Cliff Richard, The Bay City Rollers & Fleetwood Mac were heavy hitters in the music charts. They were punk & the standouts. Roll forward to 2017, Johnny Rotten is no more. He is John Lydon. Still outspoken, anything but a punk or shocking or relevant anymore. And sadly, Punk IPA seems to have gone the same way. Or has it really?

Hi everyone, I’m Ian. It’s been 165 days since my last Hardcore IPA. When BrewDog announced Hardcore IPA was going away in November last year, I was a bit sore about it. Okay, I was incredibly sore about it. Hardcore IPA for me has always been the brother-from-another-mother to Stone’s Arrogant Bastard in its presentation. Both are beers from another time, & to me still timeless despite their claims that ‘time has overtaken our original Double IPA ‘ & that ‘it is a beer more suited to 2007 than 2017 when you look at the world of highly hopped big-hitters’. So for part 2 of this series, I take a look at what I considered the European behemoth of Double IPA’s, BrewDog Hardcore IPA.

There’s many times I stop buying certain beers. Sometimes it’s because the choice of new beers to try is overwhelming (and this just keeps getting worse). Other times, it’s because I fall out of love with a beer. Many know my long-time fondness for BrewDog beers, which has been held against me. This series of reviews called ‘DogYears’ is a trip back to revisit & check-in on beers from BrewDog I’ve loved & liked that are still available today to see how they are as the brewery from Ellon, Scotland palm-mashes the power-up button on their quest for beery domination.

Imperial stouts. There is nothing more satisfying, comforting or enjoyable late in the evening. What’s not to love from a thick, luxurious mouthfeel to those wonderfully amplified dark chocolate notes. I recently picked up a bottle of ‘Ultimate Revenge’, brewed in nearby Clane, County Kildare by Kelly’s Mountain Brew from my local SuperValu for a quiet Friday evening’s reading session.

Belgian beers. The easiest way to make sure I tune out. I am aware this may rub some people the wrong way (and in the past I got an earful from a Belgian Brewer’s Association representative over my podcasted views in the wake of the Mikkeller/Belgian vs gypsy brewers drama). I frankly have never written about beer to get back slaps or care about getting kicked in the balls for my views. Beer is highly subjective & emotive for me. And on a beer shopping trip, I for some reason took a fancy to picking up a tripel I came across. It had no fancy branding. It had no promise of hopped up excitement. It had no bombastic promise of being a game changer. And yet, I bought it. And no, I didn’t bang my head.

‘9 White Deer’ is a brewery from Ballyvourney (Baile Bhuirne, pron. Bail-yah Voorn-yeh) in County Cork in Ireland’s south-west, which is a Gaeltacht (an Irish speaking town for those non-Irish, pron. gwail-tockt). Their beers aren’t intended on being hop monsters or on being boundary breaking flavour-of-the-months. Their mission is well made , easy going, accessible craft beer. However, what they have done recently is fairly vanguard for any craft brewery out there with an entire range of gluten-free beers. And they werekind enough to ship bottles of them my way to give them a try.