Brewdog: Prototype: All Day Long (Scotland: Mild Ale: 2.7% ABV)
Visual: Burnished toffee color. Half an inch of creamy off white froth that leaves suds.
Nose: Toffee and caramel. Good hops of citrus character. Moderate bitterness. Chocolate.
Body: Toffee. Grapes. Moderate prickling hop character. Malt chocolate. Soft elderberry. Pineapple.
Finish: Choc orange. Moderate bitterness and hops. Popcorn. Prickly. Slight greenery. Toffee.
Conclusion: Ok, let’s get this out of the way. Mikkeller’s Drink in the Sun is a way more awesome beer. That is just the way of the world. Ok they are very different beers, but they are both in the lower abv milieu. But, just because another beer is better doesn’t mean that this is bad though.
It is fruit, and yet mellow. It is at the higher end of the low abv beer range, and it sure does use that part well, the toffee and caramel malt flavours really come through. Even better that small amount of extra malt makes for a much better base for the hops to work from, in fact better so than the lower end of the Russian Doll range did – and they had a lot more malt to play with.
The hops themselves are a nice bitter prickle with grapes and easy going citrus. Nothing too intense – unlike, say Nanny State, but a nice complement to the malt which is the main deal -as is to be expected for a mild – even an unusual one like this.
It is pretty soothing, definitely more soothing than exciting, though it doesn’t exactly lack for flavor – more lacks in bite. Still, as a session beer you may want something more easy going.
I’m actually pretty partial to it – the extra malt is used well to give it a distinctly different style to their other low abv beers, and it works very hard to justify the extra abv it is using – and that gives a much more balanced beer. Well worth building on inb my opinion.
Background: A low abv beer from Brewdog as the third of the 2014 set of prototypes – Which is of interest to me, I love the high abv mad beers, but it is nice to have some choice at the lower end of the spectrum. As always I am not an unbiased actor on Brewdog beers. This was drunk while listening to some Svalbard. Yes again.
