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...

I've always wanted to try a good bottle of Speyside. I'm not quite sure why, because I'm not a Whiskey drinker... and I spell Whiskey with an E. I do enjoy a good barrel aged Stout every now and again, so when I saw this bottle of BrewDog Paradox Speyside I figured this might be something I'd like try. The few BrewDog beers I've had thus far haven't really been all that great. I'm hoping their limited release beers are brewed with a bit more care. Aging this beer in a 16 year old Glen Moray barrel is a good start.

I'm not sure what to make of BrewDog's 5 a.m. Saint... For starters, I'm pretty sure I've already had at least three different Amber style beers from BrewDog. Plenty of breweries do a Stout, Coffee Stout, Imperial Stout and maybe even another variation on the same style, but I've never heard of anyone making as many different Ambers as BrewDog. Secondly, I don't get the label. I can't tell if it's tongue-in-cheek or if BrewDog stole the marketing copy from a bottle of Arrogant Bastard. "You probably don't know much about beer." "You don't understand beer." Those are the first two lines on the back of the bottle... "lowest common denominator beer" is mentioned a couple paragraphs later. The name's meaning eludes me as well. Maybe this whole beer is just over my head.

BrewDog's popularity seems to be increasing just as fast as the alcohol percentage in its extreme beers. The rarity of their beers certainly helps. I finally spotted a bottle of BrewDog a couple weeks ago in a bargain big of all places. This bottle of The Physics is an an Amber ale that some claim is more of an ESB. I'm deferring to the brewer on this one and calling it an Amber since that's what they put on the label. Anyway, I decide to pull this beer out of the fridge tonight and see just how laid back this "laid back amber beer" really is.