Greg Koch:

James, Martin and the entire team at BrewDog really went to a lot of energy to show us a great time...and they sure did! We packed the two-and-a-half days (just 1 1/2 for Steve) solid. Castle visiting, distillery visiting, brewing, dining in a 150+ year old banana hanging warehouse in Aberdeen, selecting used single malt Scotch whiskey casks from a rare whiskey collector/broker (by tasting the whiskeys that used to be in them of course) for diversion of some of the bashah for aging, touring the small, lonely, windy roads of the countryside and seaside in Jame's hold-on-for-dear-life driving style, BBQing at the brewery, lobstering and mackerel fishing w/James' father and granddad (w/said mackerel subsequently being artfully cooked up by his epitome-of-hospitality grandmother), and finally as a testament to the sheer exhaustion at the end of the day: successfully falling asleep in the little hotel with the pub attached on Friday night at Midnight in the middle of horrid karaoke renditions of Bon Jovi songs in Scottish accents by the local, VERY inebriated town folk (We momentarily thought about checking out the pub, but then Mitch and I decided that the risk of accidentally offending the wrong soccer team - with something presumably as simple as a "sorry...what did you say?" - and thus leading to an even quicker "lights out" might not have been worth it.  Sure we would have risked it for a pint of BrewDog but they didn't have the good taste to serve their beer, and we definitely weren't going to go in for an uninspired pint of Euro lager! It's not like we'd had a shortage of beer after all.).

"I definitely can't wait to taste the result of ‘bashah'- the world's first ever (as far as we know) commercially brewed Black Belgian Double IPA!"

You can learn more about the beer here: http://www.brewdog.com/blog-article.php?id=132

James Watt

For all at BrewDog having Greg, Steve and Mitch over was a huge honour. We have made no secret of the fact that Stone were a huge inspiration to us and one of the main reasons that BrewDog exists. Those guys have a lot to answer for! I remember reading an interview with Greg Koch about 3 months before BrewDog started and he answered one of the questions by saying they did not believe in business plans and that they were a waste of time. As a direct consequence we never even wrote a business plan for BrewDog! Their success despite their unconventional approach showed us that we did not have to do something normal and boring to make our brewery work well.

I guess the best way to describe having Stone at our brewery would be like having your all time favourite band jamming with you in your garage. The whole experience has been our favourite BrewDog moment ever. I think it is a great testament to the hard work done so far by the very talented team we have here that Stone wanted to come and brew some beer with us. Despite being a little star-struck our brewing team loved the whole experience and it is things like this that make brewing Punk IPA at 3am whilst listening to some thrash metal worthwhile.  We can't wait to taste the finished beer. A double black Belgian IPA is a pretty messed up beer style but demonstrates how determined we were to use the collaboration to really push the boundaries and do something completely new.

They are also great guys to hang out with, we packed a lot into a short time in Scotland as Greg explained above, and everyone had a blast.

The bashah is fermenting away nicely and will soon be ready for an intensive dry-hopping schedule.

Keep Rocking in the Free World

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