BrewDog – Death Or Glory – 21% ABV – Aged 4-Years – Freeze Distilled

Death or Glory is the result of a quest – a noble experiment to introduce as much flavour as possible into a beer, and to challenge the preconceptions of what a beer could (or should) even be. Beginning life almost five years ago, the result is now finally ready to be unleashed. Both a labour of love and an exercise in idiosyncrasy, Death or Glory has pushed the limits of barrel-aged beers to the furthest reaches. And in producing it, we have taken the twin pillars of wood-ageing and freeze distilling to a whole new level.

At the beginning of 2011 we brewed a hopped up Belgian golden ale, and then freeze distilled it, amplifying and enlivening the flavours. Rather than stopping there, we then aged it on oak for over four years, sequestering it away in three different whisky casks (grain, Isle of Arran and bourbon from Kentucky). This is quite possibly the most exciting small-batch beer we have bottled to date. If intricately complex beers light your candle, then Death or Glory is going to set it off like a Catherine wheel.

A burnished coppery-bronze, it envelops with sweet, smoky and woodsy notes, rum and raisin, sherry, vanilla and maple syrup. At the same time, citrus and marmalade come to the fore, before concluding with an enormously warming finish. Esteemed beer writers Adrian Tierney-Jones and Matt Curtis recently sampled Death or Glory whilst in Ellon brewing their peach and apricot tripel, Peach Therapy. Here’s what Matt had to say…

“It almost knocked me sideways. If you hadn’t told me this was, or at least used to be a beer then I would’ve been convinced that this was a glass of Oloroso Sherry…all those years in the barrel just seemed to make the whole thing just taste louder.”

Whereas Adrian summed it up in typically adroit fashion…

“There’s a slightly saltiness on the palate, a savouriness, a sticky sweetness and a suggestion of sherry, but not the kind of polite sherry that granny might drink, more the sort knocked back during a night of craft flamenco.”

And if you want to taste Death or Glory, there is only one way to get it.

Two weeks ago, we filled you all in on our unique BrewDog Referral Scheme, where new investors can earn money-can’t-buy perks for referring their friends to our Equity for Punks share scheme. As an additional incentive to get those all-important referral points logged on your EFP account, we have added a listing to the Live Updates page of our Equity Punk area; a new chart that shows the people who have gained the most referrals that week.

And the top three on that table will receive bottles of Death or Glory. Each and every week. At 21% abv and uniquely packaged in a wooden box, branded with a skull and crossbones (branded in the literal sense; with fire), the third-placed investor will receive a single bottle, second-placed two bottles, and each weekly #1 referrer will be sent three bottles of this amazing, distinctive, beer. It will even come with its own special tasting glass.

The table resets every Monday, and refreshes with the latest names every hour in between. The first running of the Weekly Referrals chart is live on the site as you’re reading this – and will run until 12 Noon on Monday the 22nd of June. From then, it will tick over in a standard Monday to Monday format.

And that’s not all – in addition to this, in order to celebrate the official launch of our Weekly Referrers chart, we are going to send a bottle of Death or Glory to everyone in the top fifteen of our overall referrals table, as it currently stands!

If you are an investor, you can find that all-important code on your www.brewdog.com account. If you’d like to join the list of Weekly Top Referrers, then get sharing!