Personal Site & Travel Blog
BrewDog
Arrived in Glasgow with a little delay, so we quickly checked into the hostel to shower and change. Headed to the very hot Merchant Chippie for some battered haddock, haggis, and chips.
We needed to cool down after that, so we had a couple of beers at Drygate. We finished the first evening at the DogHouse, BrewDog’s only restaurant at the moment, but luckily just a bar as well. Another BrewDog location to check off our list!
James Watt on Twitter:
Maybe we’ll bump into him?
BrewDog
We’ll be leaving for our next Scotland trip soon, and there were still two subjects about the our Aberdeen trip I wanted to discuss. One of them is BrewDog, since visiting their Punk AGM 2016 was the main goal of this trip!
We managed to visit eight different BrewDog bars — six of them for the first time: Camden, Soho, Clerkenwell, Aberdeen, DogTap, Underdog, Castlegate and Shoreditch. On top of that, we visited the brewery in Ellon, and of course the Punk AGM, where we also had the opportunity to have a drink at Truck Norris. On our way back we still had the opportunity to visit BottleDog Kings X and buy a great looking growler, filled of course!
We’re quite experienced BrewDog patrons by now — we’re Equity Punks after all — but it still strikes me every time again, how passionate everybody who works for BrewDog is about craft beer, and about their company!
We usually stick with beer when visiting BrewDog bars, but this trip we also had lunch one time, at BrewDog Soho. The patty melt and hot dog were tasty for sure, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to have lunch or dinner at BrewDog.
The Dear Green coffee on the other hand, was a surprise: it surely was the best espresso we had in Aberdeen!
Aberdeen
It was our first time in Aberdeen, so on the first day there, we booked a tour to be shown the sights of the city. First stop was Footdee — locally known as Fittie — a quaint, little fishing village at the east end of the harbour. In the old town of Aberdeen, we made stops at University of Aberdeen and St Machar’s Cathedral. Apparently, that’s about all there is to see in Aberdeen…
The second day we visited the Tolbooth Museum, a 17th century jail, and the Maritime Museum. It had quite a nice collection of old ship models, and interesting exhibits about the history of the harbour and oil industry in Aberdeen. I couldn’t help feeling like there was quite a bit of greenwashing going on though… I really hope that a lot of that oil money is being invested in sustainable energy!
We tried finding a decent espresso bar, but they don’t seem to have them yet in Aberdeen. The best coffee we had, was actually at BrewDog Castlegate!
When it comes to beer, Aberdeen has a little bit more to offer, which isn’t surprising, considering this is the home town of BrewDog. But I’ll write more about BrewDog in a separate post.
We visited Six Degrees North, of course, but were surprised—even disappointed—to see the very commercial InBev pilsner Jupiler appearing on the board! We had all of the other Belgian beers before, but luckily they had a couple of beers of their own as well. Just a couple though, so we didn’t stay for long…
CASC was pretty interesting, but we didn’t have much time to spend there, since we were about to leave for London again. We tried to visit it on Friday night, but it was full, not surprising, since the town was being flooded with Equity Punks by then.
The last day of our trip was spent in London again. We arrived early enough to beat the crowds at Madame Tussauds, where there is a Star Wars exhibit at the moment.
We had lunch at Herman Ze German. Why isn’t schnitzel in a bun a common thing here?
Later in the afternoon we headed all the way to BrewDog Shoreditch — our eighth BrewDog bar this trip — hoping to be able to visit Two-Bit, the only Brewdog venue in London we hadn’t been to yet, at least not after it stopped being Underdog. Unfortunately they don’t open on Mondays, apparently, so that will have to wait until next time.
Honest Burgers provided us with our last meal — and beer — before going back to Brussels.
