Hakim Stout

Brewed by Harar Beer Factory
Style: Foreign Stout
Harar, Ethiopia

Serve in Snifter, Tulip

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Brown with minimal, tawny head. Smelled and tasted slightly stale and funky to me. Too thin and boring for a stout. 12 oz. bottle.

Poured with essentially no head. Has a sort of interesting aroma, but the flavor is bitter and thin.

I drank an Ethiopian stout...isn't that insane? Well, the aroma knocked me off my feet, I thought for a minute I had come across some jewel in the brush but let's do a little side by side comparison of the aroma and flavor shall we: 1)There was an incredible full aroma of vanilla bean, rum and egg nog, little hints of espresso and a definitive sweetness that was not overpowering or distracting. 2)the vanilla/rum/eggnog goodness in the aroma was completely and utterly gone with the first sip. How the hell did they manage that one? Okay the espresso is there, I'll give them that, but combined with the crippling thin mouthfeel it tasted like iodine. A few minutes after finishing this I think I tasted a smidgeon of vanilla, but hardly enough to compensate. This is probably the most lopsided beer I've ever had.

The aroma on this was nice, lots of vanilla and only slightly astringent. Too bad about the rest of the beer. Not really a stout, more of a dark bitter if that is a style. Dry, crisp, and watery. Weird stuff.

Excellent coffee and spice aroma with a bit of maltiness. Thin off-white head with decent lacing. Cola appearance - very thin. Faint chocolate notes in the flavor with a bit of licorice in the aftertaste. Chicory coffee flavor also adds to this a bit. Very thin mouthfeel though - especially for a stout. Better than expected.

Nice dried fruit aroma - raisins, dates, over stout. Hysterical label looks like it came out of somebody's LaserJetII. Belgian-style squat bottle. Clear, cola-colored brew. Watery, but with decent roast malt and cocoa flavoers. Medium-light sweetness. Medium-light bittering. Fairly short nutty bitter finish with some coffee tartness.

very sweet stout, dasrk brown color, slight head, caramel and malt flavors dominate with a slight woody quality.

This is not a stout in any traditional sense. It lacks the hops, color and roatedness. That said: resembles an American brown ale. Some nice caramel tones in the aroma with a lacy head. Very thin, some honey notes, absolutely no malt derived bitterness ... the hops are missing too. This might be a decent brew (considering the country of origin) but is severely mislabled. Worth a try for the novelty, but probably not worth going back.

Mild alcohol coffee aroma.Dark brown appearance.Honey caramel coffee flavors with a mild hop finish.Went well with the spicy Ethiopian food.

Bottle. I hunted this down at an Ethiopian restaurant in Berkeley. The lightest looking brown color of a stout I have seen in a long time. The head is a foamy brown. The aroma and flavor is like malt balls, vanilla. I've had this same flavor in some of the Indonesian stouts.