The first of the two sample sets, single malt scotch whisky, has arrived and been tasted, my guesses were returned and Oliver announced the results today. The methodology was quite simple – we needed to guess distillery, age, abv and the specific expression. 25 points would be given if we got the expression (and thus everything else) right, with 5 points each for the others (with 0.5 of a point removed for each 0.5% of the ABV or year that we were out).

The whiskies were all recent official bottlings (no independents) from working distilleries that listed their age to give us a chance to guess what they were. To make sure that there were no pointers as to what the whiskies were Oliver only charged us a down payment on the drams to start with so that we couldn’t work backwards to find out a total cost (although he did reassure us that it wouldn’t be more than €500 in total for the 5 bottles) and labelled them up with coloured stickers so as not to imply any sort of tasting order. Cunning man.

Anyways here are my raw tasting notes (edited for poor spleling), guesses (and the tasting order I chose from dram colour alone) and what the whiskies actually were:

Yellow
Colour: Light Gold
Nose: Grass, fresh cut apple, honeysuckle, flowering hedges, sour fruit chews, perfumed wood, rose wood(?), lemon zest, lemon butter sauce, joss sticks, damp green leaves. Buttery biscuit (base?) + spice, flower petals, light cherry, marzipan as it sits in the glass.
Palate: Light and oily, syrup hit to start, then sour wood, some vanilla, light sweet cream, building tannins, green sticks + dry wood. Nice, but not as good or deep as the nose.
Finish: Stony, sour wood, fresh cur wood develops. Tannins linger with Granny Smith apple skins.
I guessed: Bladnoch 20yo 46%
It was: Loch Lomond 1966/2011, 40%
Points: 3 (abv)

Green
Colour: Light Gold
Nose: Butter, fruity wood, spicey peach stones, damp pine forest floor, earth, damp car blankets, butter burns off to reveal a more savoury nose with light cinder toffee sweetness.
Palate: Piney smoke, bracken, pungent earth, hot (cask strength?), tar, background minerality, underlying smoky caramel, more cinder toffee.
Finish: Mossy bonfire stones, damp burnt wood, light sour apple tannin.
I guessed: Tobermory 10yo 46.3%
It was: Caol Ila 12yo Unpeated, 57.6%
Points: 4 (age)

Orange (aka Red)
Colour: Mid Gold
Nose: Fake butter, damp wood, spiced cream, dired strawberry pieces, buttered caramel popcorn, white chocolate/caramac/Milky Bar, sour rhubarb develops.
Palate: More butter, sour fruity wood underneath sherry wood. Hints of cinnamon and clove, oily mouthfeel, raisins and vine fruit.
Finish: Tannins, yet more butter, apple skin, some fruit and damp fruity wood, spiky sherry wood lingers.
I guessed: Glenfarclas 21yo 46%
It was: Glenfarclas Premium Edition Oloroso Sherry Casks 1993/2011, 46%
Points: 5 (distillery) + 5 (abv) + 3.5 (age)

Black
Colour: Light Bronze
Nose: Mud, pine compost, woody anis, sweet butter, stony underside, sweet mentholated smoke, sweet butter develops. More herbal and vegetal as it sits. Dark choc and earth – loam? Some red fruit, cherry?
Palate: Sweet spicy sherry, hot (cask strength?), vanilla, red fruit, cherry, marzipan, tarry smoke.
Finish: Sweet butter, trodden leaves, menthol smoke.
I guessed: Benriach 17yo Solstice 50%
It was: Auchentoshan 1999 11yo Bordeaux Matured, 58%
Points: 2 (age) + 1 (abv)

Blue
Colour: Dark Bronze
Nose: Pine cone infused butter, beaten too long curdled vanilla cream, wood ash, apple, menthol, cola bottle gummi, fruit chews, red fruit, rough cognac, green rhubarb, some sherry fruit underneath everything.
Palate: Wood smoke, rich sherry wood, rubbery edges, hot (cask strength?), cloves, earth.
Finish: Sweet raisin, cloves, fruitcake, wood smoke, sour fruit skin.
Guess: Bunnahabhain 25yo 50%
It was: Benrinnes Friends of the Classic Malts 23yo, 58.8%
Points: 4 (age) + 0.5 (abv)

From Oliver’s results it seems I was one of only two participants who managed to guess a distillery correctly: Glenfarclas. It was my most certain guess, albeit for the wrong expression, and I managed to guess it fairly solidly which seems to be the only reason I got on the leaderboard. The rest ranged between 2.5 and 4.5 which looks to be a fairly usual score for a vaguely informed guess. The other thing I noticed is that my tasting notes generally are more accurate than my guesses – the two bottlings that I’ve tried before (the Auchentoshan and the Caol Ila) both have similar notes to what I have written before (apart from the smoke in the Auchentoshan…). Which at least gives me some confidence in my palate.

So, in conclusion – blind tasting is just as random as you might think, at least at this level. Now to await the freestyle round…

Oliver has written up more about the results over on Dramming.

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Monkey Shoulder is a blended malt whisky from Grant’s, made by combining whisky from Glenfiddich, Balvenie and Kininvie. While the first two are well known establishments the latter is more unknown. It’s not really a distillery, instead being a set of stills round the back of Balvenie, used to produce extra malt for blending. According to the ever reliable Johannes van der Heuvel’s Malt Madness they closed it down in 2010 in favour of their new (and huge) Ailsa Bay distillery. There have only been two single malt bottlings released from Kininvie, labelled as ‘Hazelwood’ and sold for silly sums of money through travel retail, and with its close I suspect that we won’t see it appearing as single malt at anything other than a silly price . I see this as being almost certainly the case as Grant’s like to teaspoon their whiskies to make sure that they can’t be sold as single malts – they add a little bit of whisky from one of their other distilleries to the cask when they sell them, making them no longer the product of one distillery. No floating around casks of Kininvie = no independent bottlings = no cheaper bottlings. Anyways, as of next year spirit from Ailsa Bay will start becoming whisky and us whisky geeks can switch our attention to whinging at Grant’s for a taste of that instead…

So, Monkey Shoulder. It’s been around since about 2006 and is another creation of Grant’s Malt Master David Stewart. It’s made up entirely of bourbon cask matured whisky (27 casks per batch, so the marketing goes) and is a mix of both young and old spirit further married in bourbon casks for 6-8 months.  The idea of the blend is to back up the light younger spirit with some older more flavoursome whisky to help it to stand out when mixed while staying fairly light and easy drinking – its place in the portfolio as a whisky for those who don’t usually like whisky and those who want to make whisky cocktails.

We were joined by brand ambassador/bartender Dean Callan and handler/madman Olivier Ward for a Whisky Squad with a difference – no blind tasting and only one whisky (well, two, but more of that later). The plan was to try a couple of cocktails and knock back a bit of Monkey Shoulder while chewing the fat with Dean and Olivier.

First up we passed around a bottle of Monkey Shoulder so we could see where we were starting from. On the nose it had butterscotch, popcorn, creamy grain, hints of lemon, sweet vanilla and honey. To taste it was soft and creamy with a bit of woody spice, lemon cream and malted milk biscuits. It finished with some dry wood, cinnamon and lemon rind, and faded to bitter wood. An easy drinking whisky without much complexity but enough flavour to make it one that is quite easy to knock back by the glass. As a few people around the room quickly realised.

With the bottle still moving around the throng Dean moved onto the first cocktail of the evening, the Old Fashioned. Often considered to be the first cocktail, it’s as simple as they come – spirit, sugar, bitters, ice. It’s one of my standard cocktails and I already wrote a post about it way back in 2009 (my fifth post…) – since then I’ve played around with it much more and am always interested to see what other people do with the idea (as long as it doesn’t start with ‘muddling’ fruit in the bottom of a mixing glass). Normally Dean would build this in the glass it was to be served in, but as he was serving a lot of us he made up a batch to be poured individually. His recipe is, as hoped, simple – Monkey Shoulder, sugar syrup to taste (he’s one of the “don’t bother using a sugar cube soaked in bitters” crowd that I used to be part of – these days I use a cube smushed up with bitters to create a layered effect, as outlined in point 3 of this American Drink article), a couple of dashes of Angostura bitters, ice for stirring and some orange peel to garnish.

On the nose it was dominated by the orange oils from the garnish (expressed over the glass), but also had a bit of caramel and woody spice. To taste it was sweet (a bit sweet for my taste), with a malty edge from the whisky, soft cinnamon, brown sugar and some caramelised orange, finishing sweet and spicy. One of my big problems with whisky in cocktails is a jarring malt flavour that often appears when mixed. The way that I’ve found to round it out/hide it is by using bitters, the great flavour connector in many cocktails, and the Angostura here fulfil that task admirably, keeping everything together.

Next was The Malt Jockey, a Monkey Shoulder twist on the Jockey Club, itself a Manhattan variant with maraschino added as a sweetening agent. The Malt Jockey’s recipe is: 50ml Monkey Shoulder, 25ml Sweet Red Vermouth (Dean is an Antica Formula fan, but something fairly heavy and sweet should work well), 5-10ml of Maraschino Liqueur (depending on how sweet you like the cocktail), 2 dashes of chocolate bitters (I think Dean used Fee Brothers, which are quite sweet); stir with ice, strain into a chilled glass and garnish with expressed orange peel.

On the nose the orange yet again dominated and it appeared on the palate as well, along with a woody edge and a rich whisky/vermouth mix with the herbal notes  and hint of chocolate from the vermouth accented. It finished with green herbs and a burst of unexpected chocolate from the bitters. Again it married well, with the chocolate bitters helping tie everything together but not being as much of an overt influence this time compared to other times that I’ve tried it.

We then moved on to another Malt Jockey, this time tweaked by one of Dean’s current obsessions – barrel ageing. The small barrel was built by the coopers at Balvenie, having been chopped down from a retired cask to be a couple of litres in size. Dean filled the barrel with the regular recipe Malt Jockey back in February, giving it a couple of months of wooden influence before we got to taste it.

The wood had definitely had an effect, and tasting the two cocktails side by side it was obvious which was which – the aged version had a more malty nose and more bitterness on the palate along with a caramelised edge to the orange notes that hadn’t been there before. While the bitterness from the wood wasn’t a surprise, the softening and marrying of the flavours was something I hadn’t expected to have changed so much in a small amount of time – when playing with small casks you have to be really careful as the ratio of spirit to wood means that things happen fast.

Next we switched back to whisky, with Dean pulling out a special bottle – Cask Strength Monkey Shoulder. He managed to get a few bottles pulled from one of the marrying casks before dilution and presented them, individually labelled with the recipients name, to a group of visitors he was showing around the distillery, making sure he got one himself. I suspect he has some sneaky refills at home, but it’s something that isn’t out in the wild and was exciting to have a taste of.

It was bottled at 58.5% rather than the regular 40% and the extra concentration really showed. On the nose there were Green herbs, anis, cinnamon, bitter clove, toast, sweet butter, orange zest, vanilla and floral hints. To taste it was soft despite the strength, with vanilla and big spice, lemon and orange. It finished quite long with a surprising tinge of violets and polished wood with a hint of floral Mister Sheen. Not what I expected and a whisky that I wish I had a bit more time to sit down and think about – I wish I knew where the floral notes came from as I’d jump on a whisky with them. I suspect it’s young Glenfiddich and hope it wasn’t the Kininvie…

For a final drink Dean pulled out another experiment – New French Oak Aged Monkey Shoulder. While investigating the use of wood for cocktail maturation Dean had a small two litre new French Oak vat made up for him and about a month before the tasting had filled it with Monkey Shoulder ‘to see what would happen’. New oak can be very active and with a huge wood/spirit ratio compared to a full sized cask it was going to have had a big effect on the whisky, I just wasn’t sure what it would do.

On the nose it was rubbery with big pungent wood, lots of woody spice and a musky perfume. To taste there was masses of heavily perfumed wood and a ginger/rubber combination that reminded me of Adnams’s Spirit of Broadside – a distilled beer that they then matured for a year in new oak. It finished with sweet rubber and cheap fake chocolate. Overall I reckoned it was fairly awful as a drink, picking up all the overly woody and rubbery notes from the cask while avoiding the nicer elements that could have been added, apart from a little bit of extra spice. However, making tasty whisky wasn’t the point – I’ve now got a better idea of the flavours that new French oak imparts to a spirit.

And that was that. Many thanks to Dean and Olivier for looking after us and the Red Lion for having an excellent upstairs room.

Monkey Shoulder
Blended Malt Whisky, 40%. ~£25

Cask Strength Monkey Shoulder
Blended Malt Whisky, 58.5%. Not generally available.

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20+ writers, 1001 whiskies, several hundred images, a very Jim Murray introduction and a couple of kilos of paper and card. I had a read through my entries today and already a couple of them make me cringe, however I only wrote 14 (1.39% of the book) so there’s lots of good stuff in there if you have a look. It’s not really a ‘what are the best 1001 whiskies evar’ but more of a ‘what are 1001 whiskies that people wanted to write about’. There’s everything from everyday whisky to obscure foreign drams and everything in between, including some that I agree must be tasted and many that I wish I hadn’t. Don’t expect a coherent whole and do expect some repeated information, but as a book to dip in and out of it should keep most people happy for a while. However, I am biased and my word can’t be trusted at the best of times.

Anyways, the book is now out and you can buy it on Amazon (and doing so through that link might even give me a commission). I advise that you get it sent to its final resting place as it’s quite heavy, as I discovered this evening when carrying it home.

I wonder if any of those drinking their way through Ian Buxton’s 101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die will follow up that challenge with tasting their way through this book…

Ta muchly to Dom Roskrow for asking me to contribute and to the nice folks at Quintessence for giving me a thankyou at the end of the book for helping them sort out some of the photos.

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They’ve pulled together an impressive amount of cash in a small amount of time on two separate occasions and if they try it again I can see them doing just as well. However, one thing that has been discussed is what you get for your investment. There is the 5% discount in their bars and up to 20% in the online shop, but with Kickstarter, Crowdcube and the like helping people to start up projects all over the world people are starting to get wise to getting something back on their investment. Enter the second BrewDog AGM, stage right.

Annoyingly I missed the first one thanks to snow stopping trains going any further north than the Watford Gap, but I’ve heard tales of Epicness, with interesting beers, interesting people from all over the world and a cracking party. The difficult second AGM was always going to be a challenge, not only because the number of investors had increased from 2000 for the first EFP to over 7000 after the second release of shares, but also because the second round had a cheaper buy-in point, making it much easier for the average drinker to kick in some cash – just the sort of drinkers that would turn up at the AGM.

The storm gathers…(Shortly after taking this picture I went to sleep on the grass in the sun. Yes. In Aberdeen)

So, the plan was made – hire out the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference centre, put on regular buses to the new brewery site (a brewery paid for in part by the funds raised by EFP2), do a couple of beer tastings and business talks, sell beer and merch, have a couple of bars, and get in a bill of seven bands. Basically a beer festival for shareholders, their plus ones and anyone willing to pay £6 to get in (to fill up the place to as close to capacity as possible).

I rolled off the sleeper train at 7:30am and thankfully got an hour’s kip in my hotel, who were very lovely and let me check in and have my room six hours before the official check-in time (The Station Hotel. Right next to the station. As the name suggests). After a quick wander round town I caught a rather full bus to the AECC and on arrival encountered the theme for the day – queueing.

Within 30 minutes of the doors opening there were already quips on Twitter about ‘QueueDog’ and they didn’t let up during most of the day. Having several hundred people turning up at the start and ticking them off a list (ordered by first names) with only a handful of people on the desks meant that it took quite a while to get everyone through the doors. Having another single desk selling beer tokens (the only currency accepted to buy beer) meant that even before you tried to got to the swamped bars you’d already partaken in rather a lot of standing around.

I decided not to bother with the queue to start with and jumped onto one of the first buses going to the new brewery in Ellon, about 20 minutes drive from Aberdeen. It’s on the edge of an industrial estate, rather than the greenfield site envisioned during the original EFP drive, and is in the process of being built. I really like both diggers and breeze blocks, but I didn’t stay long due to a lack of anything apart from diggers, breeze blocks and confused looking builders.

A building site! Yay!

Later in the day, as part of the AGM presentation, Martin Dickie outlined the improvements at the new brewery:

• Massive expansion in production capacity – currently the brewery is tapped out at 25000hL, the new brewery will start at 70000hL but has room for expansion. The current brewery is about 550 sq.m, the new one is 2000 sq.m with extra space available as needed.
• Bigger batch sizes, but enough flexibility to still do smaller batches – current batch size is 50hL, new brewery will allow between 60 and 100hL. Mash size will rise from 1.3T to between 1.5T and 4T.
• More brews per day – up to 8 from 2.
• More automation – allowing more consistency from batch to batch, a common complaint about their beers today. It will also mean they don’t need to shovel out the mash tun by hand, which Martin fears will lead to a fatter production team.
• Higher post conditioning quality control – the new brewery will reduce oxygen contact from tank to packaging, which should help keep quality higher.
• Their own malt mill – allows barley to be bought whole rather than pre-milled, which is cheaper and maintains barley freshness. Also, as they can currently only get milled barley from England it will allow them to buy Scottish instead.
• A four vessel brew system rather than a two vessel – allows more potential for variation in the brew process as well as tweaks to maintain consistency as the raw ingredients change with the seasons.
• Centrifuge rather than filtering – allows removal of sediment without heavy filtering, leaving more flavour compounds. Unfortunately they’ve already broken the machine they were testing – there’s a lot of sediment in hop heavy beer.
• More environmental efficiency – reducing the water/beer ratio from about 7:1 to about 3:1 (and maybe lower) and recycling heat throughout the brew process. It’s not quite the windmills of the original plan, but it’s a good start.

It’s not all plain sailing at the new brewery, though. Moving production means that they will need to do a lot of work flavour matching so that they can continue producing their beer range – there’s a lot more to it than just upping the amounts in the recipe. On top of that there is a time limit, as the old brewery is being decommissioned at the end of the year and some of the equipment (including keg filling gear) is moving over to the new site. I’ve heard that beer produced at the new brewery will be marked as such in some way, so expect a bunch of old vs new tastings later this year.

There’s also the fact that the move to being a medium sized brewer starts casting doubts in some minds as to their status as the self-proclaimed leaders in the UK craft beer movement. As there’s no definition of what ‘craft’ actually means, in the opinion of some moving to an automated, largish brewery kicks them out of the club immediately. The BrewDog reaction is exactly what you’d expect – craft isn’t about size, it’s about attitude and the production of great beer. While the creation of the craft brewing scene in the UK has done wonders for beer in general, shifting the focus from the beards and sandals of ye olden dayes of but a few years ago to the ‘cooler’ hipster scene that is currently sitting at the forefront, it has created some divisions in the ranks of brewers and how BrewDog handle the reactions to the new brewery will be interesting to watch. Fortunately for me I don’t really care about the size of a brewery as long as the produce good beer.

Back at the AECC the queues hadn’t disappeared, growing a bit longer during the hour I was away. Luckily they gave up on signing everyone in shortly after I arrived, stamping hands and giving out a goody bag to everyone who professed to being a shareholder. All that remained was to join the token queue so that I could get some beer…

Inside the main hall of the venue the queues were predictably big, five or six deep at the bar at almost all times, and the shop was swamped for pretty much the entire day. Due to licensing regs they couldn’t send people home with bottles so every order had to be assembled, boxed, labelled, paid for in cash and then hidden away ready for posting next week. During the quiet times it was a 20 minute t wait o get seen but that spiralled to over an hour during the busiest parts of the day.

The aforementioned quiet times were during the pair of combined business talks/tastings that were run in one of the AECC’s main meeting rooms. James Watt rolled out the usual bits and pieces (described on Twitter at one point as self-congratulatory toss, which is both accurate and the sort of thing that is expected at an AGM), most of which have already been posted up on their blog (and has been posted again post-AGM in a post that reads so much like a shonky press release it makes me weep. And that from someone who writes shonky press releases) and in their newsletters: Profits are up; They haven’t been able to make enough beer to go around; Their online shop was shit; James is not a cat rapist.

Three rows from the back

However, one extra thing that I’d not heard about slipped out in the Q&A sessions at the end. In response to the question “So, what return are we going to get on our investment”, a question that I was already drunkenly mumbling something to the effect of “that’s not what the EFP program is about, unless they get bought by Anheiser-Busch or something” to my drinking companion, James explained that in 2013 there will be a system set-up to allow shareholders to buy and sell shares ‘at market rate’. He also said that they would be paying a dividend then as well. I suspect that the dividend will be pretty small and that most of it will end up coming back to company in the inevitable beer orders that will follow its issue (I expect to see a special shareholder dividend beer that will happily scoop the cash back to the mothership – they’re not idiots), and I look forward to seeing how buying and selling works out, especially as the discounts Equity for Punks members have received were (at least for the first round) billed as being for life rather than as long as you were a shareholder…

The tasting section of the meeting was interesting, as handing out beer to over 200 people is a bit of a logistical nightmare, but with the use of a trolley, a team of beer pullers and a lot of handing beer down rows we each got to taste three new beers:

We started off with the new 3.8% Pale Ale, which had its name, as chosen via a poll on the website, announced at the meeting – Dead Pony Club. If you put a name like that on a poll then what did they expect? Most probably that everyone would choose it – as mentioned earlier: they’re not stupid. It seems to be intended as a lower ABV version of Punk IPA, big and hop led but more suitable as a session ale, especially for summer. They’ve been working to get the flavour profile and body that they were after for about the last 6 months, ending up with a hop mix of Simcoe, HBC369 (recently named Mosaic) and Citra, and a mash bill of caramalt, pale malt and crystal. On the nose it had the expected resin laden happiness, mulchy vegetation, orange peel and pith, sweet orange juice and a stony minerality underneath.To taste it was thinner than I’d expected, but had lots of sour orange and pine resin. It finished short, with mixed citrus and bitter hops. The slightly watery body doesn’t do it many favours, but it’s still a very drinkable beer. I did find myself wondering how it’d do if it was cask conditioned…

The next beer on the tasting list was Libertine Dark Ale, a follow up to the Libertine Porter that was released earlier this year. I’m guessing this is a development on the ideas tested out in the EFP brew day beer (EFP 2011, which me and the other chaps of Village of the Drammed tried in Episode 2), which was a dark IPA aged on oak chips. This one doesn’t have any oak involved as far as I know, but is the BrewDog take on a black IPA. I rather like black IPAs but find they generally end up being darkly coloured IPAs or hoppy dark beers rather than finding a middle ground, and as such I’ve been waiting for the inevitable throwing of a hat into the ring by BrewDog. It’s a very dark 7% beer, made with Carafa Special malt (dehusked chocolate malt, for roasty flavours but a less husky mash) and hopped with Simcoe. On the nose it was quite sour, with stewed orange, some unripe pineapple and a coffee ground bitterness. To taste it had the traditional big hop along with some stewed red fruit, spice, chocolate and coffee. It finished sweet and sour, with mulchy hops and a bit of sweetened dark chocolate. A bit towards the hoppy dark beer side of things but well balanced and one that I hope makes it into bottles or at least on to the taps at BrewDog Camden.

Last in the tasting was a long promised beer that was launched for the AGM – Dog A. It’s a tweaked version of AB:04, the most popular of the Abstrakt series to date and one of the two that I haven’t tried (the other being AB:01). It’s a 14% imperial stout, fortified with Venezuelan cacao, Nicaraguan coffee (added as whole beans), Devon naga chills and vanilla beans (the new ingredient not found in AB:04). On the nose it is full of dark chocolate, with a slight prickle of chilli heat and some vegetal chilli notes. To taste it is sweet, with the rich body you’d expect from a 14% stout. It’s got very sweet chocolate and vanilla, and bitter coffee that doesn’t quite take the edge off. It finishes sour, with coffee acidity, bitter chocolate and a tiny hint of chilli spice. All in all this isn’t one for me – I’m not a fan of sweet chocolatey beers and the coffee here doesn’t balance out the cloying sweetness enough for my liking. I heard that the AB:04 had a more of a pronounced chilli note, both heat and flavour, and I suspect that the reduction of that along with added vanilla has made a beer that even more people will like, but one that unfortunately I don’t. Especially not for £12.50 a bottle after shareholder discount…

Back in the main hall I did a bit of queuing at the bar. Things yet again got better when the bands started (and as people left due to beer related ‘tired and emotional’-ness) but to start with the queues were as bad as earlier in the day. The bars themselves were well stocked, with a changing range of BrewDog beers and a few guests, including a bunch of bottles form Stone and some Hitachino Nest on draft. Prices were good, with tokens costing £2 and beers being a token a piece for a pint or half depending on the strength/rarity of the beer. From looking at Untappd it seems I managed to get through a stack of beverages, including BrewDog’s IPA is Dead HBC and Motueka, Zeitgeist, 5 AM Saint, American Saison, 77 Lager and Hardcore IPA, as well as a Nipponia from Hitachino Nest. With the amount of talk on Twitter afterwards about unused tokens I suspect that BrewDog might have even turned a profit on the event.

Anyways, the bands played on, beer was poured (with both Martin Dickie and bottle artist Johanna Basford joining a bar crew assembled from BrewDog staff old and new from all over the country) the bars ran out of beer little by little (including Punk IPA, although I suspect an emergency delivery from BrewDog Aberdeen was brought in), the floor got stickier and I wandered off mid-way through Kassidy‘s set, missing Bombskare finishing the night off with some drunkenly danced to ska.

A good weekend, even if reports suggest it wasn’t quite as excellent as the more intimate first AGM (although I suspect that is just due to people trying to make me jealous).

The next day, after a spot of breakfast at Musa, the BrewDog friendly restaurant, and a swift half2/3rds of Growler (a citra single hop lager – very tasty) at BrewDog Aberdeen it was back onto the train for the ‘leisurely’ 7.5 hour ride home. As I write I’ve just crossed the Forth rail bridge so it’s time to finish up and pretend to sleep expansively across these two seats to make sure none sits next to me when we get to Edinburgh

(Edit: I did pretty well, with noone sitting next to me until Newcastle. Then I was joined by a young lady in the advanced stages of controlled substance inspired enlightenment who pawed at her face, wept, slept and ran to the bathroom every 15 minutes. Which was interesting. I love trains [I really do, scary girls or not])

Dead Pony Club
Pale ale, 3.8%

Libertine Dark Ale
Black IPA, 7%

Dog A
Imperial stout, 14%

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Yes, after two years of schmoozing the assembled masses of the whisky industry Andy and Jason managed to lever a number of sample bottles of new make spirit out of the hands of the distilleries for a bit of a special evening – tasting blind, as usual, whiskies and the new make spirits that they started out as.

The pairs were served together, to allow appreciation of the similarities and variances in the aged and unaged spirits. The first new make had a buttery nose, with ground coriander, lemons and yeasty bread. To taste it was sour with crunchy pears and peach. The accompanying aged dram was light and floral on the nose, with sweet grain, hints of sherry and a touch of farmyard. On the palate it remained light, with a little bit of fruit, lots of cream, and some grain. It finished with woody spices and pleasant oak. The mask came off the bottle to reveal that it was Glenmorangie 10 year old. I’d gone for a while without having tasted the 10, but had tried it recently at the Whisky Lounge festival in Brighton (a good time was had, even from behind the Glenmorangie/Ardbeg stand were I was stationed for the day) and was more favourable towards it than I remembered being. It’s light and easy drinking and you can see why they sell so much of it.

The next new make had a slightly fizzy nose, with pear, grain and a little bit of generic fruitiness. To taste it was sweet, with some charcoal and fruit, and a minerally backbone. The whisky had spiced pear on the nose, with caramel digestives, brown bread and browning apples. To taste it was creamy, with cinnamon, sweet and sour apples, woody spice and a touch of linseed oil. It finished with more apples, both flesh and skins. I was quite surprised to guess this correctly, with the label coming off to reveal that it was Glenfiddich 12 year old. As I’ve written before I wasn’t a fan of the distillery until recently, letting the memory of bad old bottles and whisky snobbery get in the way of actually tasting the stuff. I still don’t think it’ll change your life, but it’s a decent dram.

The third new make had a nose of lemony grain, caraway seeds and pungent farmyard – bits of silage and a hint of cowpat. It started off tasting sweet, but quickly faded away to not a lot. The whisky was a different matter, with a spicy nose of sherry fruit, parma violets and iced fruitcake. To taste it was spicy, with apples, spiced spongecake, bananas and a touch of tannin, finishing with more parma violets. This was a bit of a conundrum, with the assumption being that it was a refill sherry cask matured whisky, but the label came off and it was revealed to instead be from the Isle of Arran – a single cask whisky from a bourbon barrel, to be exact. A tasty whisky that showed not only how much the wood lends to the spirit, but also how different every cask can be.

Number four came as a trio rather than a pair, with a mystery dram poured in between the whisky and new make. The spirit had a nose of citrus and caraway, with a hint of coffee ground bitterness. To taste it was very light, with only really a hint of sweet grain, and finished very hot. The second glass had a nose of butter icing and lemon, and a soft creamy taste that continued into the finish – we assumed, correctly, that this had been in a cask for at least some time. The whisky was quite different to the middle dram, with a nose of charcoal dust and sherry, carbonised bacon and young raw spirit. To taste it had sweaty leather, lots of sharp wood, pungent raisins, ground coffee and a lingering finish of new make spirit. The presense of an intermediate dram meant that this wasn’t much of a surprise – it was Glenglassaugh First Cask, a three year old whisky bottled at 59.1% that was some of the first distillate to be produced after the distillery changed hands back in 2008. The middle dram was their Fledgling XB, matured for a year in bourbon and sold as part of their spirit drinks range,. I’ve tried some of the older Glenglassaugh’s and I very much hope that their new spirit continues to develop towards that style, as I wasn’t a fan of the First Cask (or their new three year old Revival).

The next new make was very different – crunchy and green on the nose with pungent grain, and a spicy taste with lots of pear. The whisky was again different, with a nose of balsamic vinegar, raisins, Garibaldi biscuits, marzipan and damp forest floors. To taste it had sour cream and sweet fruit laid against a muddy background, finishing with cream, spice and a touch of menthol. The label came off and the bottle was shown to be Glenrothes 1995, a recent entry into their range of vintages that was bottled last year.

The penultimate new make started our decent into the smokier end of things, with a nose of sour fruit, light smoke and a hint of ham. It was sweet to taste, with mint, hay, tobacco, tea, tar and a young spirit caraway tang. The whisky had smoked peanut butter, coal stoves, lime and brine on the nose. On the palate it had coal dust, mango, sweet spicy fruit, extra strong mints and a burny hit of alcohol. It finished with a sherberty fizz and fizzy fruit chews. The big reveal showed it to be Lg3 from the Elements of Islay range, a rather excellent range bottled by my employers. I can’t possible mention which distillery Lg3 comes from, other than that it is on Islay, but the new make we tried beforehand was from Lagavulin.

The last new make of the night had a nose of smokey limes and a sweet mineral heavy body. The whisky’s nose started out with sweet fruity pip sweets and flowers, and moved on to glacé cherries, medicinal peat, freshly unwrapped bandages, germolene, turkish delight and candied lemons. To taste it had smoky coal, sweet syrup, more flowers, mint and a creamy, oily texture. It finished with the lime and coal smoke of the new make’s nose. For the last time the whisky was revealed and turned out to be Ardbeg 10. I don’t know whether to blame my knackered taste buds but this was not how I remembered Ardbeg 10, with none of the big vanilla that I associate it with coming out, replaced by a much more delicate and interesting set of flavours underneath the smoke. More investigation needed.

Anyways, with the whisky over there was only one thing left to do – eat cake. And cake there was.

Expect more Whisky Squad writeups when I get round to them. There were three sessions in April and I’m already a month behind, but as I’m missing the next one (my second one missed since I started going from #4) I might have a chance to not only finish up but also write about something else for once…

Lack of piccies courtesy of frantic note writing and talking toot with the lovely people of The Squad. Ho hum. Luckily Charly was on hand and took some rather pretty ones – they’re over on her blog.

Glenmorangie 10yo Original
Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 40%. ~£25

Glenfiddich 12yo
Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 40%. ~£25

Arran Cask Strength Bourbon (I think this was the 1998)
Island Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 57.8%. ~£45 

Glenglassaugh First Cask
Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky, CS%. £90 

Glenglassaugh Fledgling XB
Scottish Barley Spirit, 50%.  ~£13 for 20cl

Glenrothes 1995
Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 43%. ~£45

Elements of Islay Lg2
Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 58%. ~£45

Ardbeg 10
Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky,  46%. ~£35

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Despite being a big fan of aromatic bitters laden drinks over the last decade I’ve never finished a bottle. This fact stood unchallenged until this weekend, when an excellent rye Old Fashioned emptied my sun bleached bottle. I was given it back in the summer of 2000 by a friend of mine who had been staying in my house while I was in the USA for my first month of my first job out of university and it has stayed with me since, moving five times and becoming the beginning and backbone of my cocktail experimentation and love of tasty drinks. Fare thee well, old chum.

Outside, for one last turn in the sun

It’s a new era from here on. An era of a new bottle of Angostura. I think I will call him Tony. I wonder if Angostura bitters oxidises over a decade…

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BrewDog/Lost Abbey Lost Dog – a collaboration between BrewDog and Lost Abbey, a ‘monastically inspired’ brewery just north of San Diego in California. It’s a rum cask aged Imperial porter, produced during a visit by the Californians about a year ago. It’s a big dark beer, but held up to the light has a deep red colour. On the nose it had sticky red berries, massively sweet caramel and a little bit of burnt toffee – a nice but unsurprising nose that could have come off many sweet dark beers. To taste it was rich, laced with port fruit, and had a light fizz that cut through the sweetness. It finished with thick malt syrup sweetness, a burst of smoke (like a fire in a chocolate malt bin) and a very long lingering fruitiness – cherries, raisins, fake rhubarb. I tried this on tap previously at BrewDog Camden and it’s just how I remember it – a big sweet dark beer with some interesting fruit on the finish. The bottled version also comes in a pretty box.

Auchenthoshan Valinch – I’ve had this on my tasting stack for ages because the lid was stuck. I finally took a pair of pliers to it the other day and cracked it open. It’s Auchentoshan’s no-age-statement Classic bottled at cask strength, something that their fans have been asking about for a while and which they finally released last year. On the nose it’s young and spirity, with crunchy peach, lemon travel sweets, sweet pastry, vanilla sugar, green peppercorns and floral candles. To taste it has wax polish, sour green fruit (apples, crunchy pear, limes), young floral spirity notes and woody spice. A drop of water calms things down and brings out some vanilla cream. It finishes with lime skin and sour wood, adding in apple skin tannins and apple chews as it fades away. It is very young tasting and when I first tried it I wasn’t a fan. However, my tastes have recently started hitting out towards the light and floral end of the spectrum, and this is now much more towards where my palate is at the moment.

anCnoc 1998 – a newbie from the folks at Inver House (new enough that we don’t have it at work yet). I rather like the regular 12 and 16 year olds from anCnoc but haven’t been a massive fan of their vintage releases in the past. On the nose this was big and lemony, with fizzy yeastiness, Tangfastics, fizzy chewitts, green grapes, apple chews, fennel tops, tall grass and waxed fruit, and it got sweeter as it sat in the glass. To taste it was soft and creamy with green apple, light cinnamon spice and some green rhubarb. The rhubarb lingered in the finish, along with some pepper and sour green wood. It’s a very drinkable dram with some good fruit and spice. It’s not a game changer and doesn’t fit in with the regular anCnoc releases but is perfectly decent whisky.

Bowmore Tempest Batch #3 – this is the sample that reminded me I hadn’t done a quick tasting post in a while – I’ve had it for ages (Sorry DK). It was rather loved at work, with m’colleague Tim choosing it as his Christmas whisky, but I’d not got round to doing more than have a swig in the office. On the nose it has old bonfires, unripe fruit, brine, tarred ropes, damp dark wood and floral hints. To taste it had upfront wood smoke and charred wood, with sweet muddy peat, pears, some young spirity flavours, and sweet and sour fruit. It finished quite sweet, with syrup, spicy wood and some lingering hammy wood. I wouldn’t pick it as a favourite, although it does do a very good job of balancing smoke and sweet fruitiness.

The Spirit of Broadside – a weird one this, Adnams’s Broadside (tasty beer) distilled at their new(ish) distillery and then matured for a year in new oak. So, one year old, hopped, sort-of whisky. I went along to the launch and had some thrust into my hand. On the nose I got powdered rubber tire inner tubes, balloons, ginger, hops, marmite, raisins and lots of childhood memory smells – the scent of brewday on the other side of town to my school when I was growing up. To taste it was oily with caramel sweetness, pine, juniper, oranges, fresh cut ginger root, stewed apple, garam masala and cardamon. It finished sweet, with ginger, real maraschino cherries and lingering hops. Definitely not a whisky and interesting, although I have no idea where it fits in the world of spirits.

Copper House Limoncello – After I’d tried the Spirit of Broadside I had a glass of this handed to me. On the nose it was pure fresh cut lemon – enough so that I asked John McCarthy, the Adnams distiller, whether he’d used any more of the lemons than the traditional zest. He hadn’t, having bought horrendously expensive zest, but the nose still managed to get whole lemon juiciness into it somehow. To taste it was syrupy and oily, with buttery lemon and some zesty bitterness. Well balanced and not too sweet.

La Fée Parisienne - a sample given to me by the excellent Ryan Alexander at Barcamp London after myAbsinthe session. According to the internets this is almost a traditionally made absinthe – distilled rather than compounded using oils. However, it does have one definite additive – colouring. It’s a shocking fluorescent green and it louches to a quite impressive green as well. Before adding water it’s very spirity, with the alcoholic base coming out almost as strong as the anise, which is very strong, and almost swamping the few bitter herbals that are noticeable. After dilution (1:3 absinthe:water) the nose is still anis heavy, with a bit of seediness (like the seed at the middle of an aniseed ball) and a little bit of green herb bitterness. It tastes very sweet and syrupy, like melted aniseed balls, with a little hit of wormwood bitterness, and finishes with some mulchy grass and even more sweet aniseed balls. An unsubtle absinthe with lots of sweetness (I switched to Jade Edouard after this and it was incredible how bitter it seemed in comparison, when normally I find it naturally sweet) and a scary colour. It’s not bad though and is reasonably priced.

Glendronach 8 year old, bottled 1970s, Italian Import – A rather special dram this, acquired by m’colleague Tim, opened and shared around the office. It’s Glendronach from before the days that they became known as the sherry kings. Well, the time before the most recent time they became known as sherry kings, anyway. On the nose it doesn’t want to give up much, but has a chunk of sour tropical fruit – passion fruit, unripe rhubarb and mango – as well as a little bit of syrupy sweetness. To taste it’s nowhere near as sweet as the nose suggested, with polished wood, apricot, anis spiciness, cinnamon and acres of beautiful, old, elegant woodiness. It finished warming and spicy, with apples and a mineral edge, as well as more well aged wood. This is a proper old school whisky, the sort that I’d not even realised existed before I started working at TWE. The nose has all the marvellous tropical fruit that has got me looking for old bottlings of young whisky in auctions and the palate is dry with the Good Wood that I capitalise when I write about it. It seems that another few beers have been added to the ‘drinks to buy Tim’ list.

Thanks to DK at Margaret and Lukas at Alembic for the samples of Auchentoshan and Bowmore, and anCnoc respectively; and to Alice from Westgate for inviting me along to the Spirit of Broadside launch.

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Despite it being such a big name in the world of whisky I’ve not had much exposure to Highland Park. I’ve knocked back a few drams over the last few years, bought a bottle of their duty free only 1997 vintage (which I initially hated but returned to after 6 months to discover that my palate had changed enough that I loved it) and tried a couple of older versions of their whisky (which is the reason why I have a 1990s bottling of their 12 year old on my ‘Special Whisky’ pile) but don’t really have much of an idea of their current range. As such, an offer to try the 12, 15, 18, 25 and 30 as well as the new Thor wasn’t really something I could turn down.

We kicked off the night with the 12 year old, the entry level expression and a mainstay on bars for years. On the nose it had salted lemons, a whiff of charcoal smoke, crunchy green apples, tropical fruit chews, unripe mango, beeswax, honey, dusty wood and fruity dark chocolate – maybe chocolate limes? It developed in the glass, picking up more fruit and slowly cutting the citrus notes. To taste it started off with syrup sweetness, quickly moving on to sour and creamy wood, with more tropical chews, pineapple and smoked orange rind. It finished with smoky wood, malt syrup, green pine cones and woody spice.

Next was the 15 year old, which is on its way out in the UK, soon to only be available in the USA and Scandinavia. On the nose there was strawberry ice cream, rhubarb and custard sweets, floral meadows, sweetened grapefruit juice, a touch of honey sweetness, tropical fruit squash, sour cream and cocoa – or as @LRWhisky put it:

#HPTT #HighlandPark15 On the nose I get chocolate cheese cake, smoked pears #Mmmm

March 28, 2012 7:31 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@LRWhisky

LivingRoomWhisky

To taste it had rich vine fruit (not tomatoes, as a curious @lizbonline queried, but grapes of varied levels of raisin-ness), linseed oil, sweet citrus, tinned pineapple (complete with a metallic tang of the tin), creamy malt and a wisp of smoke. It finished with more tropical fruit (fresh mango) as well as some dusty wood and crushed charcoal.

We then moved onto the 18 year old, another one of the longer running members of the range (released back in 1997). On the nose it had lots of fruit – green apple, tinned pineapple (again with a touch of metal tin), kiwi and lime zest – as well as sweet pastry and floral notes, all backed up by coal smoke. On the palate it was big and sweet with sour coal dust matched by limes, bitter green herbs, rhubarb, a touch of marzipan, some menthol and a bit of cinnamon spice. It finished long, with nutmeg, clove and lemon sherbert, before fading to dry wood.

Next was the 25 year old, made up of more sherried whisky than most of the rest of the range (about half) and demonstrating what a properly active sherry cask can do to HP’s spirit. On the nose there was a pile of sweet and sticky fruit: figs, stewed apples and plump rummy raisins. Along with that there was marzipan, rich sweet pastry, wax furniture polish, some dry wood and a hint of cooling spice – mint/menthol/clove. To taste it started with a thick wedge of rich dried of fruit before a big whiff of struck match. Underneath that was woody smoke, soft brown sugar, some spicy cinnamon and woody liquorice. Again the finish was long, with marzipan, clove and cedar cigar boxes. The big thing for me in this dram was the way the wood was handled; as I said at the time:

#HPTT the 25 year old is a very old skool tasting whisky - not the sort of thing you get much of around these days. Elegant wood.

March 28, 2012 8:25 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@cowfish

Billy Abbott

Next was as close to the top of the regular range as we were going to get (as sending out £85 a go 40yo minis as part of a Tweet Tasting was probably a bit much to ask, and the 50yo is £9k a bottle) the 30 year old. On the nose it was sweet and floral, with some sour fruit (unripe peaches and mango, and lime zest), sweet buttery pastry, marzipan, cola bottles, sticky cherries, plum jam and a hint of metal. To taste it had sweet marzipan and sherry fruit up front, shot through with sour spices and wood. There were also Cinnamon Grahams, good maraschino cherries, polished wooden floors and big woody spice. It finished spicy, with nutmeg, ginger, soft brown sugar and dark unfinished wood.

We then went for our last dram of the night – the recently released and vaguely controversial Highland Park Thor. The “controversy” was due to a combination of three things: its relatively young age – 16 years; its price – £120; and its packaging – a nice looking rustic bottle wrapped up in a wooden cage of viking longboat prows. I wrote about Highland Park’s love of the special release over on the work blog recently and gave my opinions on the matter, but in short: not everyone who buys whisky just cares about the liquid and many people are happy to pay a bit extra for pretty packaging.

Anyways, tasting notes: On the nose it was quite spirity to start with, giving way to brine, lime and apple skin, tingly ginger, woody spice, earthy smoke, forest floor leaves, green herbs and a hint of mint. On the palate it was hot and spicy, with more ginger and cinnamon, muddy smoke, salted caramel, oranges and lemons. Adding water totally changed things, with a few minutes of resting after addition helping even more, calming the spice and producing more polished wood and sweet fruit – apples and bananas. It finished spicy, with lots of cinnamon, as well as floral notes, soil, lightly smoked wood and liquorice root. As that fades apple skin tannins and sweet marzipan linger on. Not as big and ‘oomphy’ as I remember from my last tasting of it, but I had just tasted my way through five not un-heavy drams.

At the end of the night Steve asked us all what our favourite had been. As I said at the time:

@TheWhiskyWire For me it's been the 18 - excellent balance of fruitiness, light smoke and rich sherry. Now I need to try the 21yo... #HPTT

March 28, 2012 9:21 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@cowfish

Billy Abbott

They’ve just rereleased their 21 year old whisky (at 46.5%, as it used to be before it was dropped to 40% and then discontinued outside of travel retail due to a continued stock shortages that meant they couldn’t supply the whole market) and if it sits, as I hope, between the 18 (not quite enough Good Wood for my liking but lots of great fruit) and the 25 (too much sherry but lots of tasty woody notes) then I might have found a new favourite dram.

Many thanks to Steve Rush (@TheWhiskyWire and @TweetTastings) and Daryl Haldane, global brand advocate for Highland Park, who took over the @HighlandPark twitter account for the night. Steve has some tasting note highlights from the evening over on his blog, and you can find a few more writeups around the web – Whisky Discovery, Glen Untitled, Living Room Whisky. I also have a transcript of the tasting along with the various tweets leading up to it, thanks to my magic ‘format a bunch of tweets vaguely nicely’ script – if you want to read through everything that was said you can find it here.

Highland Park 12
Orcadian Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 40%. ~£30

Highland Park 15
Orcadian Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 40%. ~£40

Highland Park 18
Orcadian Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 43%. ~£60

Highland Park 25
Orcadian Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 48.1%. ~£140

Highland Park 30
Orcadian Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 48.1%. ~£200

Highland Park Thor
Orcadian Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 52.1%. ~£120

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I’m not going to talk too much about the whisky as the folks from Monkey Shoulder are running the next Whisky Squad night, which I suspect I may be writing about shortly after, but as the Chocolate Trail is only open until Monday night I thought I’d get something up.

Basically, they’re doing a pop-up cocktail shop just off Carnaby Street over the Easter weekend. They’ve set up a bar surrounded by greenery concealing painted eggs – punters are invited to find an egg and then swap it for a whisky cocktail and matched chocolate from Niko B. I popped in on Saturday for a chat with the folks and a couple of drinks.

First up was a simple Ginger Monkey, mixing Monkey Shoulder with Fentiman’s ginger beer. It was matched with a burnt caramel and lemon chocolate, kicking in some sweet citrus and crunchy sugar to balance the spiciness of the drink. I followed that with a Malt Jockey, one of  Monkey Shoulder’s signature cocktails – a Manhattan twist with some chocolate bitters and an orange zest garnish. It was matched with a dark orange chocolate, contrasting the cocktail’s orange nose and chocolatey body with a chocolatey nose and orange body.

My third cocktail (I tried to leave but they wouldn’t let me) was one that I’d not tried before – a Rose and Rhubarb Julep. A simple Monkey Shoulder julep, with crushed ice, spanked mint and sugar syrup, dosed with some rose liqueur and a dash of rhubarb bitters. It’s an excellently sweet julep, with Turkish delight and sour rhubarb. It was matched with a lemon, ginger and cayenne truffle, a big flavour contrast that strengthened the elements of the whisky flavour that were hidden by the sweetness and floral notes of the cocktail: ginger and spice.

Anyways, they’re only there for a couple more days – if you’re knocking around Soho you should pop in for a quick cocktail. If you do make it, make sure you have a play on their musical chairs:

You can find full details on the Anonymous Artists webpage. They’re at 63 Broadwick Street and are open from midday to 7pm on Sunday 8th and Monday 9th April. If you miss it then keep an eye on Facebook and the internet – they’ve got lots more coming up this year.

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I picked this one up at the Great British Beer Festival last year and totally forgot about it, which wasn’t hard due to my advanced state of ruin by the time I got to the Italian bar. When it popped up as next in the Cupboard of Surprise I had no idea what to expect without obsessive internet research to help me. Google, be my guide…

Birrificio Lambrate was founded by three guys in 1996 in Milan in the back of a pub. They started off brewing 50 litre batches of two different beers and opening the pub every other day to give them a chance to get some of it down the locals’ necks. They’ve since grown to five partners, 2000 litre batches, a second pub, and distribution in Milan’s pubs and across Europe. I’d not heard of them before (I am just starting my Italian beer journey) but a bit of a search on the web shows that they’re rather well respected, especially for their Ghisa smoked stout.

Imperial Ghisa is a special version of Ghisa, with the ABV upped from 5% to 8.5%, and the richness upped along with it. On the nose it’s very Marmite-like, with sweet but dark caramel and roast chestnuts. To taste the Marmite continues along with some sour milk and molasses, and despite being quite thick it’s still nicely fizzy. It finished with burnt liquorice and some black rubbery notes. Reading back over those notes they don’t sound particularly positive, but they are meant to be – it’s a very heavy stout but has a nice sweetness that balances the smoked flavours and alcoholic punch. Not one for the beginning of the night, but a tasty evening ender.

Imperial Ghisa
Smoked Stout, 8.5%. ~£3, although the night was fairly advanced when I bought it and my memory is hazy…

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