bashah - The Black Double Belgian IPA by Stone and BrewDog

Graeme Wallace, Steve Wagner, Martin Dickie, Greg Koch and Mitch Steele. Just about to mash in!

Greg Koch, Steve Wagner and Mitch Steele, all of Stone Brewing Company from California, have spent the last couple of days at BrewDog.  Stone www.stonebrew.com , and in particular the approach of founders Greg and Steve were  huge inspiration to Martin and myself when we started BrewDog. For all at BrewDog, having Greg, Steve and Mitch over and brewing with is pretty much like a crazy music fan being able to go on stage and rock out with their favourite band.

 Matteo Milan, Graeme Wallace, Stewart Bowman and Mitch Steele checking on the mash.

We brewed a special Stone-BrewDog collaborative beer, a double black Belgian IPA called bashah. We are going to release some more details about the beer itself later, there are a few pretty exciting twists to it.  

Matteo Milan (our Italian Brewer) prepared a stunning BBQ at the end of the brew-day; our brewing system is quite labour intensive so everyone had worked up a good appetite.  

We has some amazing beers with our food including a 2003 Stone Vertical Epic and a 2003 Speedway Stout, oh and some Tokyo* (much to our amazement this drinking this beer did not lead to the downfall of Western civilisation). Narayanan gave us some excellent signing and Martin conducted a kick-ass whisky and chocolate tasting. We also shot the first few scenes of a soon to be huge hit movie, The Bare Mitch Project, a porn-horror thriller starring Mitch Steele and Graeme Wallace shot in our very own Canteen of Death.

Stars of the new movie: Graeme Wallace and Mitch Steele.

On Friday Greg, Mitch and I went lobster fishing, caught some mackerel then sweet-talked my Grandmother into cooking the mackerel when we got safely back into port. Other highlights of the visit included a beer and food extravaganza at Musa www.musaartcafe.com which is our favourite restaurant in Aberdeen and a tour and whisky tasting with the guys from Duncan Taylor www.dtcscotch.com.

Greg and Mitch doing some North Atlantic lobster fishing.

The label text for bashah was written by Greg and myself while driving to dinner on Friday evening, hopefully that is not going to show too much in the final copy!

We all had a blast brewing and hanging out with the Stone crew, for us their visit is the most exciting thing that has ever happened at BrewDog - it was a real privilege to be able to brew with our heroes!

The first release of the beer should be around mid September. Watch this space.