Beer of the Week – Cross Borders Braw

Friday has rolled around once again, so that means another beery recommendation to kick off the weekend. This is the 25th time I’ve selected one of the great unsung heroes of Scottish beer and turned the spotlight towards it – if you don’t already know this beer then hopefully this’ll give you a small push towards picking it up and trying it for yourself.

So this time around we charge headlong into the weekend with that most classic of Friday beer styles – a hop-forward American Pale Ale. These beers are the ideal way in which to greet the end of the working week as they deliver big flavour, refreshing hop-led bitterness and a fairly decent whack of alcohol. And one of the very best to arrive on the scene from north of the border in recent times is, as they say in Dalkeith – Braw.

25. Braw (5.2%)
Cross Borders Brewery, Dalkeith, Midlothian
Style: US Pale Ale
330 ml can

Pick it up here:
At Alesela online shop (as individual 330ml cans)

Less than a year after being founded, Cross Borders have already produced some seriously tasty beers, but it’s Braw that truly stands out (and not just because they have a dedicated section of their website defining what the word actually means). The aromas are huge as soon as the can is opened – lots of orange juice, tropical fruit and other sticky citrus.

On the taste, there’s a soft and floral grapefruit edge with more orange zest, before the lasting bitterness and slight resin arrive on the finish. It may look like a Belgian Pale in the glass but it is every inch the US Pale Ale; quintessentially American and utterly delicious.

Beer of the Week Series:
1. Fyne Ales Highlander
2. Swannay Old Norway
3. Broughton Old Jock
4. Traquair House Ale
5. Tempest Easy Livin Pils
6. Cromarty Brewed Awakening
7. Fallen Chew Chew
8. Black Isle Hibernator
9. Isle of Skye Red
10. Harviestoun Old Engine Oil Engineer’s Reserve
11. Orkney Skull Splitter
12. Windswept Wolf
13. Kelburn Dark Moor
14. Alechemy 5ive Sisters
15. Loch Ness Light Ness
16. St Andrews Eighty Bob
17. Harviestoun The Ridge
18. Orkney Dark Island
19. Williams Bros Seven Giraffes
20. Cairngorm Black Gold
21. Strathaven Craigmill Mild
22. Black Isle Red Kite
23. Spey Valley Spey Stout
24. Top Out Schmankerl