A wonderful little amber ale with a very nice silky and enduring froth on top — and so perfectly amber that it’d make for a good colour chart entry, or something to point to if someone doesn’t know what the word means. It’s only very subtly hopped, leaving loads of room for sweet, fruity malty characters (some from wheat) to knock around. The balancing bitterness has an assertive first grab with a nice smooth follow-through.

The apparently-slightly-bonkers Scotsmen who make it assert that “there is no proper actual physics in this bottle”, but that’s — obviously — just bad metaphysics. I can forgive them that, though. The chronically-bored are hereby directed to the entry on ‘Supervenience’ in the Wikipedia, and then in the Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Verbatim: Brew Dog ‘The Physics’. 13/1/09 $7 330ml 5% at home. Bloody marvellous amber ale. Lovely smooth head, perfectly amber in colour. Only subtley hopped, letting malty fruitiness drive. Curranty, with an assertive first grab, then a nice smooth follow-through.

Afterthoughts, November 2010: Oh yeah, Beer Nerd, regular-type Computer / Gadget Nerd, Comic Book Nerd — and also Philosophy Nerd. With a degree and everything. Seriously, though, supervenience is fascinating. Lovely to have that philosophy-headache moment next time you do something seemingly-mundane but physics-nightmarish as knocking on a door.