Brewdog/Stone Brewing: Bashah: Highland Park and Black Raspberry Reserve 2009 (Scotland: Black IIPA: 8.7% ABV)
Visual: Opening the bottle results in an explosion of froth not seen since the De Dolle beer days, resulting in hastily grabbing a glass to catch the cascading froth. Unsurprisingly then it has a massive brown head with dashing of red dust upon, the head leaves lace over the dark brown black body as it diminishes.
Nose: Cinnamon, smoke and peat. Blackberries, iodine traces and sour mash. Ground bitter chocolate, mulled wine and fish oil.
Body: Very smooth front before the main assault, then bitter with sour blue berries, iodine and chocolate. Very tart. Raspberries, an almost lambic sourness at the back and touch of salt.
Finish: Bitter chocolate and hops, the dry hops remain the longer of the two. Salt and sourness.
Conclusion: The original Bashah was a bitter delicious thing, with lots of hops and rich layers of flavour. This one, well it dials down the hops a tad but otherwise brings a hell of a lot of force to play. From its explosive emergence from the bottle, to the still bitter to the core Bashah body, to the sour berries or the salt and medicinal whisky influence, this is a monster.
Strangely, considering Highland Park is one of the more subtle islands, it brings a huge amount of medicinal peat and salt to the game here, most likely because the Bashah and berries overpower the more subtle notes that it normally brings to the game.
Still the bitter as hell Bashah can only just keep up with the forces brought to bay by the added elements, the different elements rampage against each other, explosively fighting on your taste buds.
The Bashah core does managed to hold its own just enough to bring its bitterness back to the fight, even if the ageing has muted the hops. Well worth a ride if you can hold on, if only for the experience of doing so. A demolition derby of a beer.
Alcohol And Aphorisms 
This sounds like one powerhouse of a beer. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of it. Was this a one time deal between Stone and Brew Dog?
One question… is Highland Park from Islay? I thought it was from way up north.
Cheers!
G-LO
Ach, ye caught me – I meant to put Islands, not Islays, dunno where my mind was when I typed up and proof read that – I just got paranoid and double checked all the Highland Park tasting notes to make sure I hadn’t done the same elsewhere :-). Thanks for the pick up, I’ll edit the article.
Bashah was a one off batch about a year ago that Stone Brewing and Brewdog did in Scotland. This reserve batch was announced about a year ago but only finally got released a month ago. They did one batch in Highland Park Casks with black raspberries, and the other in Imperial casks with tayberries. Only about 1K was made of each.
Beers Of Europe have some bottles still left http://www.beersofeurope.com/ but are charging a tad above the odds for them, plus I’m guessing postage to yours would be quite a chunk of change.
Quite allright! Given the number of posts you’re generating, you’re bound to have a typo or two.
Basha sounds really interesting. Pity it won’t be available here.
Don’t you just love stumbling on stuff like this? It’s taken almost 30 years, but drinking has finally become more about the discovery and conversation that comes with it more than anything else. And then there’s that sweet alcohol buzz. That’s always fun too, but it’s no longer the priority. 🙂
Aye, with the microbreweries it seems to be going a similar way to music scenes of the past, where each location has its own distinct feel. This seems especially true with breweries that predominantly turn out beers on tap, leading to good old fashioned road trips to find some.
It’s always a pain to see a beer I would love to try a continent away, but frankly I don’t think I’m in danger of running out of beers to try in Britain alone, let alone the world, so I can’t complain too much. (though the Brewdog/Stone Juxtaposition Black Pilsner never hitting these shores to the best of my knowledge was a pain)
This is very true. We’re living in the golden age of craft beer. Plenty to try all over the world. Same goes for whisky. It’s a beautiful thing! The only downside is the availability.
Whisky does seem to be having a resurgence of smaller distilleries, the show was full of young releases from the newly reopened warehouses. I really should look a bit more into world whisky, they had some Indian whisky I never got to try, and even old England has its own Distillery now Scotland and Ireland still seem to be the best for now, but it will be interesting to see in a few (or given the slow nature of making whisky about ten) years time