Mikkeller 黑 / Black

Mikkeller
Brewed at De Proefbrouwerij
Style: Imperial Stout
Copenhagen V, Denmark

Pours a dark chocolate brown with close to no head just a little tan head. Aroma is again largly alcohol. Flavor is very choolatey with quite a bit of alcohol. body is creamy with light carbonation.

Bottle with 2017 expiry. Not my favourite Mikkeller, but tasty, more like a port than beer though. Pours black (big suprise) and zero head. Nose is roasty, port notes, with lots of alcohol coming through. Body is thick and syrupy, almost no carbonation. Roasty malt, dark chocolate, sweet with big bitter character coming through. I found this beer benefited from some aging.

Picked up somewhere...can’t really say actually because it would violate the law. Poured a very viscous black; a very nice and thick pour. Head was a dark brown color and looked nice but faded away QUICKLY. Sweet malt alcohol and champagne yeast aroma. You can really smell that champagne yeast. I don’t think the aroma is very impressive. A roast aroma does come through. Again, just not my favorite aroma. Nice thick flavor. Wow the flavor is so much better than the aroma. Nice deep roast flavor, and honestly the alcohol isn’t that bad. THe beer starts off as a sweet malt flavor and then that deep alcohol and roast just smack your tastebuds. It is a very nice developed roast flavor. Some great bitter flavors going on. Just a nice complex taste. The alcohol doesn’t kill the flavor at all. Not carbonated and very smooth. Pretty good, thought from the aroma it was going to be worse.

chocolate, coffee, roasty, citrus, alcohol, raisin, black, cloudy, brown foam, heavy cloying sweetness, very bitter, full body, oily feel, flat, long finish, bitter alcohol,

[Bottle from beermerchants] Pours so black that no light gets through even when held up to a lamp. Very dense, thick head of a dark brown colour; very pretty. Big, powerful aroma of dark chocolate, roast, prune, port and a lot of alcohol. Extremely full bodied (as you’d expect) with a lot of sweetness upfront. Lots of dark chocolate and roasted malt on the palate, muscavado sugar, prunes. Leads to a very bitter, alcoholic finish (though perhaps not quite so alcoholic as one would expect).

Bottle... Poured a thick, syrupy black with little to no head. Super balance and drinkable for 17.5%. WOW! This was really awesome. Not as cloying and thick as others in this range. Chocolate tones and a little soy sauce tone. Dark fruits and and a creamy, sugary malt complexity with dark, roasted coffee beans. Had a sherry booze-like finish.

375mL bottle, at least a year old, poured into a tulip. No surprise that it pours pitch black and produces a small but very creamy tan head that shows good staying power and leaves plenty of boozy legs on the way down. The aroma is pretty strong with lots of sweetness and alcohol. There is a heavily roasted espresso character with lots of burnt sugar and sweet dark fruits. It’s smells almost medicinal in the end but still ashy. Weird. If the aroma is strong, then the taste is downright overpowering, and not necessarily in a good way. The first sip is a blast of burnt chocolate malts, caramalized fruit and burnt coffee, but with a prevalent sweetness from the booze and sugar. Also some charred wood and smoke in the finish with a massive alcohol burn. Again, it gets almost medicinal in the finish, like cough syrup with a recently extinguished cigarette butt dropped in. The mouthfeel is full-bodied, thick, syrupy sweet and massively boozy. But still charred and ashy. I’m not exactly sure what to make of this one. There are definitely some good flavors in there, but the overall character is so ridiculously ashy and sweet altogether that my taste buds are left in shock. To say the drinkability is low would be a mild understatement. I need to go lie down....

Bottle. Bishops Arms Järntorget, Porterveckan. Black colour. Lots and lots of alcohol, raisins and soy sauce. Very boozy, very sweet, very bitter. Totally unbalanced. Hard to drink.