A guest Blog by Chris Mair

Extreme Mountain environments and extreme beer, are they mutually exclusive? Well the only way to find out is to mix the two, so we did. There is a process however, you can’t just get fired in to a mountain holding any old bottle of booze, there’s a science to this.

First off you have to choose your objective. This is very important, you have to choose the right mountain and obviously in Scotland, there are a few. The Ben is the obvious one, but in the current conditions you could find yourself being taken to hospital in the flying yellow ambulance, or the morgue. Neither of which achieve anything.

We chose Schiehallion because it is officially the centre of Scotland, according to clever folk who deal with lines of longitude and latitude. I’m still unconvinced but I was willing to believe it because it sounded cool.

Then you have to choose a beer, and Scotland is full of great and amazing beers. However, when conducting an experiment with such extreme variables there is only one choice of brewery. You have to go Brewdog.

The brewery wasn’t an issue though, the issue was, which beer?…. Again the choice seemed obvious, and we pontificated over it for quite sometime. Do we pick up a Penguin? Do we float the boat and Sink the Bismarck!? Well no, you see science is a fickle thing, to conducted an experiment properly you have to be alive at its conclusion. In the same way that racing up Ben Nevis in the depths of winter could result is a severe case of lifelessness, picking one of the worlds strongest beers to neck at a summit could have equally unpleasant consequences. It’s all to do with numbers and there were only three of us, with one driving so really only two. Take a 41% beer to the top with only two folk drinking and you end up with 1 sober chap and two gibbering idiots making their way down a snow strewn peak. This is suboptimal. Having an extreme beer in an extreme environment is one thing; being wasted on a mountainside is another.

The only real choice was Tokyo*, the Dog’s ridiculously smooth and eminently drinkable 18.2% stout.

Mountain and beer chosen, we set off. When dealing with Mountains in winter an early start is the way forward, if only because of the available parking spots close to aforementioned objective. In these conditions car parks tend to be buried under 4 feet of snow so ‘road side space’ bagging is almost as difficult as Munro bagging.

Extreme Mountain environments and extreme beer, are they mutually exclusive? Well the only way to find out is to mix the two, so we did. There is a process however, you can’t just get fired in to a mountain holding any old bottle of booze, there’s a science to this.

First off you have to choose your objective. This is very important, you have to choose the right mountain and obviously in Scotland, there are a few. The Ben is the obvious one, but in the current conditions you could find yourself being taken to hospital in the flying yellow ambulance, or the morgue. Neither of which achieve anything.

We chose Schiehallion because it is officially the centre of Scotland, according to clever folk who deal with lines of longitude and latitude. I’m still unconvinced but I was willing to believe it because it sounded cool.

Then you have to choose a beer, and Scotland is full of great and amazing beers. However, when conducting an experiment with such extreme variables there is only one choice of brewery. You have to go Brewdog.

The brewery wasn’t an issue though, the issue was, which beer?…. Again the choice seemed obvious, and we pontificated over it for quite sometime. Do we pick up a Penguin? Do we float the boat and Sink the Bismarck!? Well no, you see science is a fickle thing, to conducted an experiment properly you have to be alive at its conclusion. In the same way that racing up Ben Nevis in the depths of winter could result is a severe case of lifelessness, picking one of the worlds strongest beers to neck at a summit could have equally unpleasant consequences. It’s all to do with numbers and there were only three of us, with one driving so really only two. Take a 41% beer to the top with only two folk drinking and you end up with 1 sober chap and two gibbering idiots making their way down a snow strewn peak. This is suboptimal. Having an extreme beer in an extreme environment is one thing; being wasted on a mountainside is another.

The only real choice was Tokyo*, the Dog’s ridiculously smooth and eminently drinkable 18.2% stout.

Mountain and beer chosen, we set off. When dealing with Mountains in winter an early start is the way forward, if only because of the available parking spots close to aforementioned objective. In these conditions car parks tend to be buried under 4 feet of snow so ‘road side space’ bagging is almost as difficult as Munro bagging.

Once we got moving all was in hand. I’m not going to bore you all with recollections of drab kicking techniques or snow depths, suffice to say it was hard work but ultimately satisfying. These next photos however are conclusive proof that Tokyo and indeed Brewdog are at the very centre of Scotland…

The challenge has been laid down, have you ever drunk an extreme beer in an extreme environment? Want to? Pick your environment and pick your Brewdog wisely and it’s an awesome day out……As it turns out we were still quite drunk and the walk down took a lot less time than anticipated as a result. Which was a result. Result!

You can buy some Tokyo* here http://www.brewdog.com/product.php?id=26 

Posted in - our-beers