I always enjoy attending blogger events and meeting new faces, so when I found out that Sarah from BrewDog was looking for bloggers to attend an afternoon tea event at the Newcastle bar, I jumped at the chance to go. I took the opportunity to take along my boyfriend, Andy since I thought food would be a little more up his street than a blogger meet up or beauty event!
We arrived at the bar and were shown upstairs to where Sarah was holding the event. She welcomed us and showed us to our table where there was a cheese & meat board waiting for us with a selection of locally sourced cheese and continental meat (which I barely got a glimpse of since Andy devoured it all). Helen, the general manager, then came over with our first drinks, '5AM Saint' (5%)- "the holy grail of red ales". Neither of us are big beer drinkers, in fact we don't drink that often but when we do we're more whisky fans (or sometimes cider in my case) but 5AM Saint was actually quite nice and wasn't too strong despite having a higher ABV than something like Kopparberg.
Next up was 'Jack Hammer IPA' (7.2%) which was really quite bitter and strong (but if I thought that was strong I had another thing coming later when we moved on to the cakes!) I think I recall Helen saying this would pair well with the cheese, which by this point we'd made quite a dent in.
Following our cheese and meat and the accompanying beers, we moved onto the cakes. All three of the beer infused cakes we tasted were from Pet Lamb Patisserie and if I can get my hands on another passion fruit cupcake (the one above) then I will be paying them a visit.Paired with the cupcake was 'Punk IPA' (5.6%) - "a fresh full flavor natual beer that is tribute to the classic IPAs of yester-year" and I have to say it was probably my favorite I tasted. I really liked the fruity taste and the equally exotic fruity smell.
'Dead Pony Club' (3.8%) -"huge hoppy Californian Pale Ale", the lowest strength beer they serve at BrewDog was given to us alongside a generous citrus loaf slice (which I only just about managed to finish eating) before we moved on to our finale, 'Cocoa Psycho' (10%) - "a decadent and indulgent Imperial Russian Stout" paired with chocolate brownies. Like 'Jack Hammer', I found that 'Cocoa Psycho' was too strong for me to enjoy alone but when I mixed the taste with the brownie it was actually rather nice. Probably due to the coffee beans and cocoa nibs within the blend of the beer and because I like a good chocolate brownie!
