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After opening three bars and a restaurant in the past year and a half, we’d like to think we’re quickly becoming qualified in the art of creating the perfect environment for eating, drinking and…board gaming. That’s right, retro board gaming. 

Salvaged from charity shops across the country and the darkest depths of EBay, you can now sample the delights of Jenga, Connect 4, Pop up Pirate and Scrabble whilst supping on a beer or chomping on a slice of homemade hop pizza.

In fact, we’ve gone one step further and created some ultimate beer and board game pairings to help you get as much out of a round of Pop up Pirate as you do a round of Punk IPA.

So which combinations do we recommend pulling out of the BrewDog toy box?

Jenga & 5am Saint

Jenga is all about finding the right balance and the same could be said for our hoppy, copper coloured ale.  A delicate combination of 5 malts and 7 hop varieties, 5am Saint’s balance of taste, aroma and ABV quite rightly makes it one of our favourite beers and also extremely popular in our bars. What’s more, this beer is ideally suited to toast your victory or – more specifically – the sound of ‘cascading’ Jenga blocks since 5am Saint also features bucket loads of Cascade hops. Questionable beer pun intended!

Connect 4 & Punk IPA

Connect 4 is undoubtedly one of the most iconic games of the late 70s and 80s and what better beer to pair it with than our very own iconoclastic Punk IPA. We fashioned our winning take on Connect 4 by combining four America and New Zealand hops varieties - Chinook, Simcoe, Ahtanum, Nelson Sauvin – in every bottle. Connect 4 is really a game that’s played ‘Best of three’ which is why we recommend grabbing a trio of punks to help you celebrate your victory.

Pop up Pirate & Paradox

Board game factoid: Pop up Pirate was originally developed in Japan under the title ‘Kurohige Kiki Ippatsu’ which means ‘Blackbeard in Danger’. When it comes to things that live in barrels, our whisky cask-aged imperial stout – Paradox – pretty much rocks the cask look. A heady combination of Galena and Bramling Cross hops set against a backdrop of Dark Crystal and Chocolate malts, we’re sure this is the best thing to every come out of a barrel; apart from a Pop up Pirate that is.

Scrabble & Tactical Nuclear Penguin

About a year or so ago, amidst mass uproar from diehard Scrabblers around the world, the good old rules of Scrabble were changed *insert gasp here*. The first alteration to the game since 1948 means there is yet another rule to remember when you are in the middle of arguing that , yes, your word is definitely legitimate and, no, it is not just the result of a poor grasp of the English language. The new rule, of course, was that proper nouns (those word things what are the names of things) are now officially recognised as Scrabble fodder meaning words like ‘BrewDog’ or even ‘Tactical Nuclear Penguin’ are A-OK. We’re not sure whether you get enough tiles in Scrabble to spell the word ‘Tactical Nuclear Penguin’ or whether this does actually fall within the rules but we say fire away anyway!

Want to check out the board games for yourself? Simply pop into anyone of our bars, grab yourself a beer and get playing.

As always we want to hear from you. What is your favourite craft beer and board game pairing?

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