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This beer also came from MyBreweryTap. What lovely people they are. This is Sierra Nevada’s take on a hefe, one of my favourite types of glugging beer. So I am looking forward to this one.

Kellerweis (4.8%) opens with a loud hiss and pours pale straw with a billowing moussey head that very slowly recedes. Aromas of banana and typical hefe-type yeasty notes.

The mouthfeel is medium and has a carbonic bite that yields to a very pleasant wheaty/banana/clove flavour, this tapers down to a mildly bitter finish.

Hefeweisens are eminently drinkable and I have had more than a few, what they risk is all tasting the same – this one is a nice example of the genre but it is “basically a hefe”. Very easy to drink, smooth, velvety and sweet on the tongue, and suddenly you’ve had a gallon of it.

I could probably even take a stab at the ingredients: Pilsner malt, wheat malt, mounthood hops and WLP300 yeast. Someone tell me if I’m right!

There’s nothing to make it stand up head and shoulders above it’s peers (in fact, most of its peers are stood at the same level!), but when all’s said and done I love a hefe and this one is a nice example of the style.

Not one for the trainspotting beer geek, but I could demolish a stack of these at a BBQ no problem.

Rating: 4/5 (one extra point for its massive drinkability… is that allowed? Yes.)

I received this beer from the MyBreweryTap US 52-week beer club. Tumbler is an autumn brown ale, and while I have overshot autumn somewhat, it won’t stop me getting this one down my neck. Tumbler apparently features fresh-roasted malt straight from the kiln, I like it.

Tumbler (5.5%) comes packaged in a 350mL bottle and opens with a loud hiss. It pours chestnut with a dense off-white head. Evidence of gentle carbonation is shown with small bubbles slowly pinging up the glass. Looking through the glass I can see that Tumbler is bottle-conditioned.

The aroma is definitely autumnal: gentle roasted malt, very little hop character.

The mouthfeel has a carbonic bite to it and is very light, a little dry. The flavour is inoffensive, gentle roasted flavours, with a mild toasted/toffee finish. There is very little hop to speak of, but the beer is fairly well balanced and smooth flavour wise.

I can’t get very excited about this beer. It’s pleasant enough. I’m sure on an autumn evening if I saw this on, I’d be happy to sink a couple or three.

Rating: 3/5 (pleasant and inoffensive).

The third beer I am opening for #openit is the one I have looked forward to the most, being honest. I was given a couple of bottles of Westvleteren by somebody when we visited Bruges in 2010. I have an 8 and a 12, and today I will be trying the 8. The 8 is a dubbel, which along with silly things like Quadrupels are my favourite trappist styles. Strong in alcohol, flavour, and easy to drink. Save me!

There’s lots of talk about these beers, chiefly because they’re the hardest to get hold of from the Trappist family. You can’t (legitimately) buy them online, as the monastery will not allow customers to resell their beer. They produce only enough beer each year to meet their running costs, and demand is very high (you have to call a phone line and go there in a car). The 8 and 12 have been lauded as the best beers in the world, which I think is a combination of their scarcity as well as the beer itself.

Anyway, if you’re interested in knowing more about this beer, it’s said much better elsewhere. Google Westvleteren and St. Sixtus, or buy the excellent “Brewing like a Monk” by Stan Heironymous to learn more.

8 (8%) comes packaged in a characteristic blank 330mL bottle, with a ring around the neck that says ‘trappistenbier’. It opens with a VERY loud fizz, and pours chestnut brown with a very large moussy head. The head very slowly recedes and thickly laces the glass as it goes. It eventually fades to a patchy few millimetres, but the lacing remains for the whole drink.

The aroma is hard to describe, it’s not straightforward but it’s very gentle. There are toffee notes in there and sugar-encrusted sweet raisins, almonds, cherries.
Taking a sip, the mouthfeel is medium, and I can say I haven’t had a beer similar to this flavour. There is orange peel. It’s fruity and vinous, almost candied, with glacé cherries, and a hint of alcohol vapour on the finish. The aftertaste is dry and quickly fades, inviting you to take another sip. You wouldn’t be able to do this for long though, there’s a definite booziness to it which unless you’re a terminator will very likely knock you for six.

As far as dubbels go, it’s very tasty indeed.

While beer shopping for a friend over in France (I’ll make a post about that once the cat is out of the bag!) one of the places I visited is the trusty Dram Shop in Commonside.  They have Thornbridge Bracia on the shelf almost every time I visit, and each time I resist it – it’s a bit pricey for me.  After a day of beer shopping however, it finally ground me and my wallet down to submission.

Thornbridge are a exciting local brewery, and I’ve reviewed their beer before.  Love them or hate them, you cannot knock the quality of the beer they consistently produce, they are all very well thought out and great examples of their styles.  Think of some of the recent beers coming from there:  Raven, Chiron, Sequoia; all delicious and always with the legendary Jaipur to fall back on.

Bracia is brewed four times a year at the iconic Thornbridge Hall, and is infused with chestnut honey sourced by their head brewer.  The back of the label is a phone book of hops and grains:  Maris Otter, Brown, Munich, Dark Crystal, Black, Chocolate, peated and roasted barley, Target, Pioneer, Hallertau Northern Brewer and Sorachi Ace.  Impressive!

Bracia (10%) comes packaged in an elegant 500mL bottle (the style Thornbridge reserve for their special brews, such as Evenlode and Coalition Old Ale), and opens with an assertive fizz.  Sniffing the bottle before pouring, I am finding it hard to describe the aroma.

It pours thick and treacly, very dark brown/black, with a head that almost settles like a nitrogen-infused Guinness.  The head becomes resilient and compact, and is dark tan.

The aroma is massively complex, and probably beyond my current ability to describe properly:  peaty, cereal/biscuity hazelnuts, a mild whiff of TCP, liquorice, and a sweetness I am finding it very hard to describe.

The mouthfeel matches the pour, very thick and syrupy, and the flavour is as complex as the aroma.  There’s a strong backbone of booze, roasted malts, black chocolate and peaty flavours.  Having never sampled chestnut honey I am finding it hard to pick out as an individual flavour, there is so much going on here.  Somewhere in there is also a creamy sweetness which rounds out the power of the other flavours.  More than most ales, the alcohol is very present and really warms the back of the throat.  The aftertaste is mainly roasted malts, toasted hazelnuts, and alcoholic warmth, maybe a glimpse of peaty/TCP flavours right at the edges.

There are parallels to be drawn with the Bristol Beer Factory Ultimate Stout in here, actually.  In terms of malt profile they are quite similar.  Bracia however has kicked it up another notch and added in a few more flavours, making it almost robust-porterish.  I’m going looking for hops and I’m having trouble picking them out.  I guess the malt loading here is so high that they are mainly there to balance out the sweetness, and there is still some sweetness present.

I wonder if I am mistaking Italian chestnut for hazelnut? I guess without finding some I just wint know.

I will also fail to answer a question commonly asked about this beer. Is it worth the money? It’s a tricky one. As An almost OCD collector of strong, put-away beers. If you view them like wine, It’s not so bad. I would certainly cellar one of these and open it to share with a good friend… with complexity like this I wonder how it will age. Maybe when I have some spare cash I will find out

Rating: 4/5 (Complex, bold, unique, but not for everyone, I fear…)

Hot on the heels of the fantastic Nelson Sauvin SHIPA comes the other bottle from my Mikkeller stash, the Weizenbock.  I like the sound of it – I like bocks (ok, it’s not the same, but I’m a bit full on and often more is more!), I like weisens (and I have had my own body weight in hefeweisens), what’s not to like?

Weizenbock (8.5%) comes packaged in a 330mL bottle, with little to explain what the drinker is in for.  A funny label, and an ingredients list (water, malt, wheat, hops and yeast) are the only clues we have.

The bottle opens with a very quiet hiss and pours light copper with a persistent meringue-like head.  There’s a persistent carbonation and the head very slowly breaks down, really lining the sides of the glass as it goes.

Aroma-wise we get little in the way of hops, which is to be expected, and some lovely sweet caramelised banana notes.  The mouthfeel is medium-full and warming, a small hint of carbonic bite, with flavours very typical of a wheat beer, banana and grainy cereal, but there is a very prominent boozy background to it.  The aftertaste is very subtle, and the alcohol is definitely there at the back of my throat.  As the beer warms the alcohol takes over, losing those banana, cerealy, even spicy flavours that were originally present.

I don’t think this one is for me.  Maybe I set the bar very high given that the last Mikkeller beer I had was truly exceptional, but I was hoping for what a weizenbock promises to be – everything you get from a weisen but turned up to 11.  Instead for me the alcohol moved up a few notches but didn’t bring the other elements with it, and as such that delicious wheat and characteristic yeasty taste is muted.

Rating: 3/5 (I would probably enjoy a glass of this, served correctly, but I would be wondering where they keep the other Mikkeller beers (or hell, throw me a Thornbridge Versa!)

So after a spot of Sunday lunch at the Rutland Arms I felt I needed something to break up the run of stouts I’ve been having lately.  Having a nosey at the little beer fridge revealed the Mikkeller Nelson Sauvin I have had in there a while (I have another Mikkeller in there, but thats for a later review).  I picked up this little fella from the Dram Shop a while back.   I have to admit to being a fan of Nelson Sauvin so I had to pick this up.  The most recent NS-infused brew I had recently was the excellent Thornbridge Kipling, a pale hop fruit salad of mangoes and grapefruits – this guy has a high bar to hit.

I’ve heard a lot of hype about the Mikkeller brews, I’m yet to see a bad review and everyone seems to like them.  Reading their website puts a smile on my face – they’re brewing nomads, using various breweries’ equipment – I can imagine that adding another challenge, but they must be doing something right to command the level of respect I see reading other reviews.

Nelson Sauvin Single Hop IPA (6.9%) is packaged in a 330mL bottle, opens with a loud hiss (and a whiff of grapefruit, great start) and pours reddish orange with a massive moussey white head.  This doesnt seem to be replaced by bubbles – in fact I can’t see any.  The head takes a long time to break down and laces the glass as it does so leaving a rocky remainder.  The aroma is incredible – sticky mango hits you with full force, I’m finding it difficult to pick up anything else, it is literally like someone just sliced one open.  Wow!

Taking a sip, we have a medium/full mouthfeel and very little in way of carbonic tingle.  The mango gives way to grapefruit, a very simple and good balance between the two.  Not particularly bitter, but the flavour hit is massive.  How on earth have they done that?  The malt is just sweet enough in the background to blend perfectly with the fruit from the hops  - I find myself taking more and more sips to get that big hit of flavour again.  The grapefruit lingers on the tongue leaving a very slight warming alcohol finish.  It’s easy to forget this beer is basically 7% ABV.

As the beer warms slightly I’m seeing a very gentle but steady carbonation coming from the nucleation points at the bottom of the glass.  I didn’t drink this straight from the fridge but I left it to warm a little, clearly the warmer it gets the more the CO2 is showing itself.  It’s a very pretty beer, the colour looked so good I had to take another picture of it.  It’s very hard to leave it to warm, I want to finish it, this is an exercise in self-discipline.  Warmth brings forward a little more maltiness in the flavour and a little more grapefruit to the aroma, but the overall experience is very similar.

There’s no two ways to go about it: this is an exceptional beer.  It’s my first Mikkeller and now I know what all the fuss is about.  This is probably the best beer I have reviewed, and one of the best I’ve ever enjoyed!  I am very impressed… so impressed that I will now have to go and find more, I hope the Dram Shop has some left

Rating: 5/5 (Comfortably the best beer I’ve reviewed so far.  Fantastic!)

As I continue to slowly but surely demolish the 12 stouts of “Christmas”, I now come to the “Ultimate Stout”.  I believe this one is the base stout for some of their funkier brews, so it’ll be nice to see what the beginning is meant to be like.  The label has words like strong, black, unctuous and delicious on it.  It’s like Greg from Masterchef.  Oh hold on, he’s not black.  But anyway.  The beer says it’s made from a Belgian yeast strain and roasted malts… interesting.  No food to pair this with but at 7.7% ABV it’s a meal by itself.

Ultimate Stout (7.7%) comes packaged in a 500mL bottle and opens with an assertive hiss.  It pours very dark brown with a compact tan head, reminiscent of a Belgian dubbel, the bubbles are fine and moussey.  These slowly fade with no lacing to produce a patchy covering.

Aroma wise we get notes of rich dark chocolate, with booze-soaked christmas fruit. If Green & Black’s did a Christmas pudding…

Taking a taste, the mouthfeel is deceptive – I was expecting a lot of body but it’s medium/thin with a carbonic bite to it (that quickly fades).  I wonder if that’s a property of the yeast, or maybe they’ve used candi sugar.  The flavouring is very intense, I expected but didn’t get any kind of dry, sharp roast barley type flavour but did get a more rounded, boozy, black chocolate flavour.

I’d compare this with a boozy Belgian digestif type beer.  I think it would be formidible after some chocolate ice cream.  In fact, I might even go and make some with it in future… that’s one for the notebook.  The intense black chocolate flavour is comparable to a very high % cacao chocolate sauce.  The finish is alcoholic and slippery, but still quite pleasant, drying out on the tongue to maybe reveal hints of that elusive roast barley.  It’s hidden somewhere in there I think.  I also think the 500mL packaging may be a bit full on – I’m about 2 thirds through the bottle and I am quite sated.  This is coming from a guy who enjoys pints of DarkStar Imperial Stout at Glastonwick every year!

Rating: 4/5 (I’m going to give this one a bit of a break and round it up half a mark.  These guys clearly know their way around a stout and this is nice, but I think there’s a bit too much in a 500mL bottle.  Also: TODO: make some ice cream with it!)

Still on with the twelve stouts of Christmas… ahem, the next up is the dessert-sounding Hazlenut Latte Stout.

The description explains that roasted hazelnuts and Java coffee have been added to the BBF milk stout. An interesting combination indeed!

Hazlenut Latte Stout (4.5%) is packaged in a 500ml bottle (as with all the beers in this series) and opens with a loud hiss. It pours (unsurprisingly) inky black with a dense, moussy pale tan head. This very slowly recedes but laces the glass with every millimetre it yields. Some carbonation is visible at the interface of head and beer, more than I’d expect.

The aromas are of strong dark coffee and toasted, almost burnt hazelnuts. I’m beginning to regret opening this at half 10, will it keep me awake?

On the first sip, the body is fairly thin, but the flavour is very intense. I’ve had a lot of latte in my time, I’m not convinced that flavour exists here… but there’s definitely dark coffee in there, you can tell by the clinging bitterness that wraps around the top of your tongue and settles at the back. On reflection I guess the latte name comes from the combination of the addition of real coffee to a milk stout, so it gets a pass for creativity

The flavour is so intense I’m having to take tiny sips to pick out the individual flavours. I have to admit I think they have actually done it – towards the finish you really do get a hit of toasted hazelnuts. This really is a dessert in a glass.

I know what I’m in store for though… I found the sweetness initially hiding in the background to build in intensity as I worked my way through the bottle. As a result I find myself drinking it more quickly than I’d normally do, to preserve the coffee and toasted hazelnut flavour, so unique to the format of a beer. The bottle says to serve slightly chilled, and I’m inclined to agree. I saved a little to try warmed up and the drink became sickly and cloying, so that’s a lesson for me.

It’s quite moreish and I’m surprised as it’s sweeter than I’d normally like. If you don’t like sweetness in beer this may not be one for you, though I can say that while this feels a bit of a novelty, its very well executed and would be perfect with good vanilla ice cream or gelato.

Rating: 3/5 (there are two impressive things I found about this beer. One: despite its sweetness I could drink a few pints of it (maybe), so hats off; Two: it’s a very clever recipe and from other brewers I’d expect them to cheat and add artificial flavour, these guys have done it properly. If I ever get down Brizzle way, I will try and find it on cask, that would be a chance to review it upwards, but realistically this would sit at 3.5).