Bashah - BrewDog Ltd, Fraserburgh

This bottle of Bashah has been sitting in my basement for almost a year. I picked it up in Colorado last fall mostly because I'd never seen it before. I passed it up in favor of other beers in my basement until now because I haven't had a whole lot for Stone or BrewDog that I thought all that highly of. Bashah is a collaborative Belgian-style Black Double IPA, which means it doesn't really have a style at all... It seemed like a bit of a wildcard and I knew enough about BrewDog and Stone's style to err on the side of aging so the bitterness in this beer would die down a little. Well, I think more than enough time has passed, let's open this beer up...

Bashah pours just as black as you'd expect a Black IPA to pour. There's a mild amount of carbonation, less than most IPAs. The head fades pretty quickly and you're only left with a few sudsy patches on top of this incredibly dark beer. The aroma in the glass is definitely more inline with a Stout or Porter than an IPA of any description. The Bashah smells like roasted malt, nuts and eerily sweet in a very dark fruit kind of way.

The flavor of the Bashah is just as interesting as it smells. There's a big roasted dark malt flavor up front that is followed by a balanced buy pleasantly sweet dark fruit flavor. This beer finishes with a good deal of bitterness and an odd oakiness. It's all a bit weird, a bit complex and a bit delicious. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this beer. My main caveat to anyone who is hanging on to a bottle of this beer would be not to expect a big hop flavor. Whatever hops were in this beer are now long gone with the exception of the finishing bitterness, which could be attributed to the roasted malt. Still, this beer was worth the wait in the sense that it wasn't a disappointment... Honestly though, I did enjoy it and probably more than I should have considering the age of this "Double IPA".