I’ve been dying to try the beers from BrewDog for a while now, especially after seeing the “Stone Skips Across the Pond” video of Greg Koch & Mitch Steele from Stone Brewing Co. taking a trip to Scotland to brew a collaboration beer, Bashah. That trip just looked super-fun for them, and seeing them pick out old oak barrels to age the beer in by tasting the scotch that had been produced in them; I knew they were brewing something we had to get our hands on.

Alas, us SoFL folks are still yet to be on the lucky list of states to stock BrewDog, so when Mr. Potables+Edibles told me he had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (well the craft beer lover’s version thereof anyway) on a business trip to Houston, I was pretty happy! He stocked up, and checked his loot as luggage back to WPB! Yay!

Happily for me, the haul on the first of the two smuggling ops included several BrewDog offerings; including the Stone/BrewDog collaboration and the recent Gold Medal adorned, Hardcore IPA.

Bashah, which is labeled as a “Black Belgian Double IPA” is, according to Stone, the first ever commercially brewed example of the style.

It pours VERY dark in colour (almost black), with a tannish coloured head that dissipates pretty quickly. The nose is dominated mostly by the dark chocolate and coffee tones, but take another few slow whiffs, and you get some very dark dried fruit (prune or fig?) & some pine-y, resiny hops (explained by the discovery that large quantities of Warrior, Centennial, Amarillo, Magnum and Hercules hops were used). Then something akin to what my ghetto pool smelled like fresh out of the box last summer; rubbery? Maybe.

The taste is really exceptional. I detected some golden syrup/dark treacle, definitely some licquorice, and again with the dark fruits-this time I’m thinking more pruney than figgy. I also get something like charcoal? Like the taste you get when you left the bbq sauce covered ribs going waaaay too long; sweet, but too far gone to eat. The mouthfeel is solid on this one, a little on the viscous side, but pleasantly so; carbonation is good – not too much, not too little.

ABV: 8.5%

IBU: 90

SERVING STYLE: 12oz bottle

Next up we tried the BrewDog Hardcore IPA; afterthought that we probably should have started with the IPA was a brilliant piece of 20/20 hindsight, but whatever.

This Double IPA pour a gorgeous golden-orangish colour into the glass, that is topped off by a lovely looking, fluffy off-white head. Very attractive! Sticking my nose in the glass I got something I didn’t expect; a very sweet citrusy hop profile, I was definitely getting some kind of candy – I think Starburst? Once I got my nose around that, I definitely caught some of the toffee notes from the Maris Otter malt, folowed up by a bit of Earl Grey tea.

The taste? Well, the words “über bitter” come to mind. This beer is like I fell into a vat of quicksand made out of hops. A delicious quicksand made out of hops that is! The sweet hops that I caught on the nose are far more balanced on the tongue; the more piney, resiny characters from the Simcoe, Chinook, Amarillo & Warrior hops show up to do a brilliant job of evening up the keel of sweetness. The toffee-ish maltiness of the Maris Otter also does a smashing job of leveling out the playing field; the malt backbone is more than up to the task of holding up the crazy 150 ibus this beer contains.

ABV: 9% (but drinks like a 7% DANGER!)

IBU: 150

SERVING STYLE: 22oz bottle

All in all, I would have to say that our first foray into the eclectic world of BrewDog was a very successful one; here’s hoping for a SoFl distributor soon!