Welcome back to another Pint Sized Review! Today, we’re just going to get right into it and take about Punk IPA from Brewdog! A brewery from Scotland that brews in… Ohio?

Anywho! All of the old band T-shirts I was planning on wearing for this are, um, shrinking. Yes, shrinking. But there’s nothing more punk rock than reading. Especially a book like 1984. Now, before I lose your attention…

Listen here: I can never thank my high school English teacher, Mr. Pioszak, enough for introducing me to this essential bit of reading and teaching me at a young and impressionable age that the government totally sucks and that I should never trust The Man. That book truly shaped who I am today.

All jokes aside, if you have time and resources, please donate books or money for books to your local school, or choose from a variety of charities to help open the minds and educate the future of our world so that they may not repeat the mistakes we all made in the past. 

Every year my wife, Kate, writes a grant with Donors Choose to help grow her classroom’s library, and every year it expands by dozens of books curated to reach out to children who wouldn’t have the opportunity otherwise. It means everything to her and her students, and we can’t progress as a society without each other. 

“Get drunk a lot and work 40 hours a week/Spend half your time hungover, sick, and weak” –Drinking and Driving, Black Flag 

Poured into the glass, the beer comes off as golden and clear with a big, frothy white head and sticks to the glass like sticking it to The Man. 

…That’s it. It’s an unremarkably ordinary looking beer. Get over yourself. Not every beer is a unicorn in a glass.

“…and the clocks were striking thirteen.” -1984

This smells dank! Resin-like. Big pine notes on the nose undercut with a grapefruit citrus smell. It’s like a fir tree that was genetically modified to grow lemons in a giant scientific finger to natural selection. An offense to all that is holy. 

This smells like a logger after shopping at Bath & Bodyworks.

That’s pretty metal. 

“You ain’t hardcore ’cause you spike your hair/When a jock still lives inside your head.” –Nazi Punks F*** Off, Dead Kennedys 

Imagine this: You’re a bee. A bee just buzzing around, being busy, getting into every flower you can find to please Mama Queen Bee back home. Just being all cute and fluffy and shit, hovering around in a way that people claim disproves science.

Well, using your magic wings you find your way to a weed farm. You buzz around and hang out on some planted and farmed dank nuggz, nuzzling your adorable little bee face in the chronic. You are absolutely covered in dust and pollen. 

You are turnt. 

So you make your way out of there. You’re covered, no, caked in Acapulco golden pollen. You take wide turns and slowly make your way to another field all the while looking around you because you’re so damn paranoid, this happens every time you garden the Devil’s lettuce. 

Lo and behold: a hop field.

You’ve no idea how you got here, but here you are. 

You start getting all up in these plants’ bidness. You’re going to be the most popular drone in the hive when you get back! You are so covered in the dustings of both weed and hop plant particulate you can barely fly! You take off for the hive…

…turns out you can’t fly. You’re too heavy.

You were too busy of a bee.

You fall for what seems like an eternity. You fall into something. Something wet. Something prickling and biting. What is this? Where are you?

The world is shaking. Where… what’s happening? Are we moving? 

Then darkness. 

This tastes like a bee covered in hop and weed pollen that fell into your already opened light beer and you took a sip and accidentally swallowed a live bee but it’s too confused to do anything about it. 

Sooooo… kinda funky, kinda bitter, but smooth and balanced with malt sweetness and a bit of a carbonated bite.

“I’ve seen a old man have a heart attack in Manhattan/Well he died while we just stood there lookin’ at him/Ain’t he cute?” –I Don’t Care About You, FEAR

This is a surprising light-bodied beer! Goes down good and easy with a previously mentioned prickle of the carbon dioxide. I do feel the hop character sticks around a little longer than expected. 

I feel it has the body of an English Ale as opposed to a more watery IPA. 

“Come one come all into 1984!” –Talk Shows on Mute, Incubus

So, I’ve never had anything from Brewdog before, and I feel that this is a great place to start. Perfectly balanced, easily drinkable, light, and refreshing while still having some oomph to punch back at you. 

This is a great every day beer that pairs with an Impossible burger, studded belts, denim vests, contemplating the importance and complications of a centralized government and the moral duties required of keeping it in check with the rights and needs of the people domestic and foreign maintained in the forefront of any leadership role, and just doing your own goddamn thing, man. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do, just do what’s right. 

Beer is like music. It can be classic, can be punk, can be heavy, can be prog, or can be something completely out of left field. Got a brew you want to share with me? I take submissions and donations to the cause! Email me at dennis@thepintsizedreview.com or shoot me a message on any of my social media accounts. You can follow me on Twitter @drinkpintsized, Instagram @thepintsizedreview, or the way your parents get their news: on Facebook. Just search “The Pint Sized Review” and you’ll find me. Donate on our Patreon, and if you can’t please like, share our posts, and join the mailing list so you always know when we are putting out some stupid stuff for a laugh and maybe, just maybe, some education.

Peace!

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