The ALD alliance

What a jape! What an absolute wheeze! When discount supermarket Aldi brought out obvious knock-offs of BrewDog's flagship beers Punk IPA and Elvis Juice, the Scottish brewer retaliated with ALD IPA, appropriating the German chain's company livery. Suspiciously soon afterwards, Aldi agreed to begin stocking ALD alongside their specially-commissioned BrewDog doppelgangers, Anti-Establishment IPA and Memphis Blvd. It seemed like a perfect opportunity for some blind-taste fun, to find out if Aldi really can go toe-to-toe with a brewery of BrewDog's stature.

Of course, the recipes of Anti-Establishment and ALD have nothing at all in common with each other, and the beers look very different: one a russet amber, the other purest spun gold. Head retention was uniformly poor but that could just be the state of my glassware. Aroma: the dark one was pithy and sweaty, and immediately set wheels spinning in my memory; the pale one was dank and piquant, suggesting fresh American hops. It has been suggested that the brewery behind the knock-offs is Aldi regular Williams Brothers, and that unpleasant funk from the darker one called to mind some of the poorer Aldi specials they've committed in the past. I thought it would be better to taste before calling it.

It couldn't have been clearer that one of these breweries knows how to handle hops the way I like while the other definitely doesn't. Amber Boy is chalkily dry and rough on the tongue but also tries to tack on a balancing malt sweetness. It's an unholy mix of celery, spinach, strawberries and toffee, liquidised and forced down your throat in a tube. Not a good time. The angel on the other shoulder is lager-clean and light-bodied, while also resinous and oily, tasting of fresh, crisp kale and crunchy red cabbage with a sprinkling of black pepper. The bitterness is properly balanced by lemon candy. Easy drinking but complex and interesting; a class act (not a million miles from Dead Pony) and just a higher level of quality next to the other ghastly chimera.

My guess, then, was that the dark one was Anti-Establishment, with a bonus punt for Williams Brothers being the brewery, while the pale one was ALD IPA, BrewDog doing what they're good at. My identification proved to be correct.

I needed to complete the set, of course, so also picked up Memphis Blvd. As Aldi's answer to Elvis Juice it's an IPA with grapefruit. Not that I'm a big fan of Elvis Juice or anything, but hey -- 6.5% ABV and for buttons. It's a lovely coppery red colour, but the fun pretty much ends there. There's awesomely epic amounts of grapefruit and epically awesome amounts of bittering hops and they do not get on. The result tastes like an equal mix of orange peel and vomit, with a nasty dry metallic rasp for bad measure. While I don't particularly like Elvis Juice I do particularly hate this. 

The finisher is one which I picked up with the others but is thematically unrelated to them. I don't know if Deadly Brewing Lager is meant to be ripping off something specific, or even where it's brewed. It's a pedestrian 4% ABV, a middling clear golden, and my lightning finger on the camera shutter managed to capture a thin layer of head in the seconds before it faded away completely -- bad for a lager, cheapie or not. There's a decent body; a malty weight not unlike a much stronger Helles or even a Märzen. A honey sweetness accompanies this, plus a fun wintery spicing: sage and eucalyptus. My cynicism of three sentences ago melted before the sticky oat-cookie finish arrived. This has a lovely heft and a tasty complexity. If it's not German-brewed, it's from someone who has the German way nailed down well.

As a reluctant scholar of Aldi's big-brand clone beers I have noted before that they rarely have anything other than the most basic specifications in common with the beers they're trying to ape. While I didn't do a side-by-side with this latest pair I doubt anyone would have trouble differentiating them from Punk or Elvis Juice, and anyone who bought them as substitutes is in for disappointment. Deadly Brewing Lager, on the other hand, is easily overlooked and well worth throwing some change at.