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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).

So my Janopause is over, and I can drink beer again. Awesome. Although the diet is going so well, I think I will dial back the beer for a while. Still, today marks the end of my dry spell so I’m having a couple to celebrate.

Today I’m trying a couple, the first of which is Thwaites Old Dan. This was recommended to me by a friend. There’s a lot on the bottle about it being bottle conditioned, though I’m not sure what the fuss is about – there are lots of bottled conditioned beers out there. Still, it’s the right thing to do so I’ll let it slide.

They’ve helpfully listed the ingredients, which are: Maris Otter, Pearl and Crystal malts, Fuggles & WGV hops, and Thwaites yeast. It’s a strong one and promises fruit-cake flavours and it will mature well with age. My kind of beer!

I’m presuming that “Old Dan” is a dig/endearment at Daniel Thwaites, but I see no evidence on the bottle to support this… anyway, on with the good bit.

Thwaites Old Dan (7.4%) comes packaged in a 300ml brown bottle, opens with a moderate hiss and pours chestnut with a quickly-receding off-white head. The bubbles are quite large and visually, the beer looks fairly bubbly with sub-mm sized bubbles clinging to the side of the glass with a slow but steady stream of them flowing upwards.

On the nose we get a dry fruity aroma, with whiffs of boozy alcohol and a touch of toffee.

Taking a sip, the body is full and rich. The flavours are very powerful: rich dark fruit, raisins, burnt toffee and a touch of chocolate. The boozy alcohol is like a chocolate liqueur, hot and clinging to the edges of your tongue.

Theres little hop flavour to pick out but it is definitely there, having just made a beer with WGV I can pick that flavour out, perhaps the characteristic earthy fuggle is buried in with the fruit.

As the beer warms you get a little of the WGV on the nose as well, and unless I’m kidding myself, maybe a snatch of the minty fuggles aroma. I’m probably living a lie.

The boozy flavour is less evident as the beer warms, consequently the burnt toffee dominates, but I agree with the recommendation that it should be served cool, the flavours mingle very well that way.

Rating: 4/5 (overall a very nice beer. I will be saving some of these to mature and see what the future holds).

I picked up a bottle in The Rutland Arms in town, they also stock it in Waitrose.

This is the second of the BBF 12 Stouts of Christmas case I bought this year.  I’m a day behind now, so I should do two today.  Let’s see.  Anyway, next up is their Raspberry Stout.  After the Saltaire Raspberry Blonde I reviewed earlier, I’m a bit hesitant with this, but it does explain how they used real raspberries, so maybe it won’t have that sacharriney effect that the Saltaire beer did.  The label says, “strong, black, tart and fruity” and “flavours of raspberry, chocolate & dark fruits”.  It also advises to drink from a brandy snifter, but I always try and do my reviews in my ALLBEER FlavourMax glass, it makes it kind of fair.  The Belgians would kill me!

Raspberry Stout (7.7%) opens with a loud hiss and pours brown-black with a brown, dense head.  This quickly recedes, lacing its way to a few mm with bald spots in the middle.

Aroma-wise, we get dark coffee and acidic, sharp, tart raspberry notes.  The raspberry smells ripe and fruity – this beer is made with Belgian yeast so there may be some harmonies there.

The mouthfeel is medium-full, with an interesting flavour.  We have rich, black chocolate and christmas pudding flavours, the raspberry is definitely in there but its more mixed in amongst the other dark flavours, as mentioned like a boozy Christmas pudding.   The aftertaste is warming which might have something to do with it being the best part of 8% ABV, in a 500mL bottle that’s not to be sniffed at.  The further I get down the glass, the more the raspberry jumps out, but I can say in contrast to the Saltaire Raspberry Blonde it does feel more like real raspberries.  I hate to keep making the contrast but I think the composition of the beer helps it — the rest of this beer is dark, fruity and dense, whereas with the Blonde, the other flavours are very light and delicate and the raspberry swamps it.

I’m not liking it as much as their Chilli Choc stout if I’m honest, but it’s not a bad drink.  I think it would be better paired with some 85% Lindt dark chocolate, I think my pancreas would implode.  If I had to distil this flavour down into something simple, it would be cracked black high% cocoa chocolate melted into a double boiler, with a handful of very ripe raspberries smushed into them, allowed to set and then melt in the mouth.  If that’s a nice image for you, then you’ll probably love this beer… as long as it stays cold.

As the beer warms, the raspberries come more to the front, which is a testament to how tricky it must be to get exactly the right amount of them into the beer.  I suspect they did a few trial runs on this one!  They start to edge towards becoming a little too brash on the nose, maybe just a little too much on the palate as well.  Definitely a beer best tasted cold (not chilled), but not overly warm either.  I think, I know, how un-British of me! that it would be better sold in a 330mL format rather than a 500 too, but again, that might just be me.  By the time I’d got to the last mouthful, it wasn’t pleasant.

Rating: 3/5 (…this is a good beer, don’t get me wrong.  Definitely better executed than the Saltaire RB, but I’ve had the BBF Chilli Choc Stout so I know they can do much better.  If you see it, pick one up and prove me wrong!)

I saw on Twitter that these guys were doing a “12 stouts of Christmas” thing and thought, what a great idea.  So promptly bought the case!

The first I’m trying today (I’m a day behind, OK?!) is their Chilli Choc Stout (5.0%).  They are using locally sourced chillies from the Upton Cheney Chilli Farm, the “Fruitburst Habanero”.  Like the sound of it so lets give it a whirl.

The 500mL bottle opens with a short loud hiss.  It pours dark brown/black with a dense dark tan head… this recedes slowly without lacing the glass.

The aroma is very interesting.  There’s burnt coffee and chocolate notes, but something definitely different in there.  I’m having to swirl it a few times and get a few nosefuls to pick it up – not obviously chilli, but definitely something spicy.

The mouthfeel is medium, I expected it to be thicker given how it poured.  It is creamy on the tongue, and a little sweet.  The roast flavours come out as you swirl it across your tongue, and yes, theres some definite flavour of expensive, very dark chocolate as the sweetness subsides.  In terms of flavour, I can’t pick up the chilli – but then I notice that in the aftertaste, there’s a subtle but definitely present warming feeling that isn’t alcohol.  Almost “black peppery” in heat rather than what you’d expect from eating a chilli.

One thing is certain – these guys know how to make dark beer.  The more I drink, the more the chocolate flavours are coating the inside of my mouth.  Very Christmassy!  It’s massively complex!  I keep having to swirl the drink across my tongue to capture the different flavours in there.  Finally I notice the chilli on my tongue – it was hiding in the chocolate… sneaky!

The more I drink of this, the more I have a slow build up of chilli flavour right in the centre of my tongue.  Clever!

This drink marries chocolate and beer together very well indeed.  As well as the 5/5-rated Meantime Chocolate Porter.  The chilli adds another, subtle dimension but I’d really love to see some more chilli heat in there.  I guess they’ve had to cater it to the average palate – I love hot and spicy food, so to get more of a kick in this would really have been my cup of tea.  The risk there then, I guess, would be it could push this beer into novelty territory – which it isn’t.

Rating:  5/5 (I’m going with a 5, in my heart of hearts I think it’s a 4.5.  But I’m going to round up for Christmas)

Another mini review.  Picked this bottle up from Waitrose, a festive porter.

Lovely silky mouthfeel, roast coffee and definite chocolate malt combine to make a very satisfying beer.

A good mix of hops (Challenger, First Gold) round off the drink nicely and leave a well balanced flavour.  It’s finished off with a toasty aftertaste.

Perfect for Christmas night!

Mini-Rating: 4/5 (more please)

Bit of a quick one this as its Christmas and so I am a bit less methodical.  Grabbed this bottle from the Dram Shop in Walkley.

Appearance: Pours light straw, no discernible hiss from the bottle.  A 500mL bottle too, not seen any Kernel ones in this format before.

Mouthfeel: Silky.  I am not an expert on Rye but I am guessing this helps!

Aroma: very hoppy but not overpoweringly so.  I know the aroma, but can’t put my finger on it.  Could be cascades!

Carbonation: Medium/high. Lots of bubbles.  Lots of thick lacing down the glass.

Flavour: Deliciously drinkable.  The flavour matches the hop aroma, theres sweet malt mixed in there, it’s really well balanced and refreshing.  Lovely fruity hop aftertaste, not very bitter.

Mini-rating: 5/5 (delicious!)

This little guy has been sat in the back of my fridge for a while, and rather than crack into my newer ones I thought I’d dust it off.  It came from the MBT 52WBC, and the label says it is “Inspired by the Red Planet, has a warm red glow and a smooth malty flavour”.  They brewed it for the Beagle 2 launch (cool!) and contains Dark Crystal and Progress hops with a hint of roast barley.

Mars Magic (4.6%) opens with a gentle hiss and pours ruby with a dense off-white head.  There’s an interesting toffee-apple aroma, I should have had this on bonfire night!  Fruity and caramelly.  Taking a sip, theres a very slick silky mouthfeel and a real toffee explosion – dried fruit, caramel, theres little hops on the flavour, but plenty in the aftertaste.  The aftertaste lingers a while, its astringent and broad – a pleasant counterbalance.

Letting it warm, the aroma becomes more roasted, and it carries through to the flavour.  Not so sweet now, more balance to it, there is a very interesting candied quality to the toffee, I guess that must be the dark crystal and roast barley mixing together.  Very nice.

This like many is a much tastier beer when let to warm up a little.  Very nice!

Rating: 4/5 (when warmed up, it would only be a 3 from the fridge despite its lovely aroma!)