BrewDog Riptide Imperial Stout

I have loved everything from BrewDog except Bashah. Their IPA's Punk and Hardcore are each great in their own way. This blows them all out of the water if you like stout.

Deep, dark flavor. Toasty without being burnt, chocolatey without being sweet. Thick without being syrupy. Really, really good.

Really, really good with a cigar too. I tend to smoke a lot of cigars when I am with my dad. It's bonding time and shooting the proverbial doo-doo time. Stout, cigars, summer, and a deck. It can't get much better than that.

Brew Dog Hardcore IPA

Are YOU hardcore? I think the answer to this question for anyone used to drinking a West Coast IPA is, yes.

Brewdog's Hardcore IPA is more like Showtime, or Skinemax than Hardcore. That's not to say that it's bad, I was just expecting a bit more bitterness than what was in the glass. Especially since I could smell the hops literally from across the table, and I don't profess to have a great schnoz, AND the schnoz is stuffed up at this time. The pine aroma was exploding up out of the glass and bottle the second this was popped and poured.

There definitely was a whole lot of aromatic hops but they must have skipped the bittering hops brewing step because this was no more bitter than their "Punk IPA" that I reviewed previously.

Appearance: Golden Yellow, very small head, quite a bit of bubbles

Aroma: HUGE pine, hoppy, hoppy, hoppy. A little citrus, lemon.

Taste: Decent body weight, not too thin, not syrupy. Carbonation felt low despite the amount of bubbles for some odd reason. Much more carbonation than the "Punk IPA" though. Not as balanced as the "Punk" either. It didn't taste more bitter but there wasn't that sweetness to balance it out. The lemon in the aroma came through in the taste as well.

Overall: Good, but I'd rather drink their "Punk IPA" because it is better balanced.

Stone+Brew Dog=Bashah!!! His Head In

We had a pretty big tragedy this weekend that definitely deserved to be mourned a little. Nobody died, well, yet anyway. That still remains to be seen. Lets just say, figuratively speaking, I'd hate to have this come back at me in court, so, everyone reading this, he's dead to us, figuratively. Tiny Tiny Man.

Instead of "mourning" however, we chose to celebrate the passing of someone who, though he professed to possess an inordinate amount of intellect, committed such a stupid, childish,  act of well, stupidity. You lost buddy, you lost.

This celebration of sorts is how I came to come into the posession of a beer I have been drooling to try. It was being sold for an unseemly amount of money by the pint at the neighborhood gastropub and I couldn't in good conscience pony up the cash. This is why, when the man at BevMo asked me like the neighborhood crack dealer if I wanted his last bottle of Bashah I jumped at him, err, it.

Bashah is a collaborative effort between the crazy Scottish brewers Brew Dog and our own American Stone Brewing in Oceanside California. When I say, "crazy" I mean crazy. Brew Dog makes a "beer" called Tactical Nuclear Penguin that is pushing 32% ABV. They've since then pushed that limit as well. Needless to say these guys are creative.

Bashah is a Black Belgian Double IPA but tastes more like a porter. Lots of roasted coffee, some carbony toasty flavors, a little bit of licorice. It was a little thin and there was not very much bitterness for being a DOUBLE IPA. There wasn't even really that bready taste that comes from Belgian yeast. All in all it tasted good but I was not blown away. Maybe a case of high expectations? I would drink it if it was cheap, which it's not. I payed 5$ for a 12 oz bottle. And at 8.6% ABV I was buzzing after already having a schwarzbier that, at 2$ for a pint was every bit as good.