Mikkeller Black Hole

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

Serve in Snifter

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UPDATED: JUN 2, 2007 Bottle #80 of 100. Four months later, bottle #08 of 100, still remarkable. Pours motor oil thick, black and opaque. Even the well retained but thin head of fat, tan bubbles is totally impervious to light. Looks menacingly thick with pretty albeit sparse lacing. Aroma is one of intense viscosity, powerful and subjugating. I have been coerced into loving it without tasting it. Nuances of sugar-sweet alcohol burn, maybe the most pleasing alcohol component I’ve encountered in big dark beer to date. This also has scents of melted bitter chocolates, a little lacto character, molasses, cherries, brown sugar that’s been scorched to a pan’s surface and fresh coffee from the finest neighborhood roaster. It all seems very lively. Fantastically complex aroma, a mosaic of fragrance. Flavor isn’t exactly one sided either, focusing at first on smokiness, but of a very welcoming nature; no bacon flavor here. This the most complex variety of smoky flavors I’ve yet encountered, this thing just won’t stop amazing. Roasty malt with a bite is nicely offset by more complex sugars(the honey I suppose). The chocolate taste is strong, the coffee stronger still. The finish is mostly of coffee with a dash of creamer and a little vanilla and chocolate. The palate is so full, wow. The lingering taste is so mouth-fillling so long after swallowing. I hope another opportunity at this presents itself. Simply breathtaking.

Courtesy of Papsoe. The aroma has burnt molasses, brown sugar, grahm cracker, dark chocolate, coffee and malt in an insanely high concentration. It pours a high viscosity black color and the head, which is a very dark mocha brown, fades fairly rapidly, but retains some semblance of an actual head. It is almost menacing looking it is so dark. <P> The first sip is dark chocolate mixed with pan-seared grahm cracker, cocoa powder, brown sugar, molasses, blueberry skins, rum soaked cherries and lots of boozy notes. In retrospect this would have benefited from another year in the bottle, but it is amazing right now and I owed it to Boboski to share it for opening something super rare with me. Great stuff. They should definitely brew it again.

Thanks to sk8viking for sending this imperial stout my way. Lots of roast chocolate(!) in this beauty. Very tasty.

A thread on this site a few days ago asked readers to nominate their favourite brewers from around the planet. If the question arises again, I’ll nominate these guys, because everything I’ve had has fallen somewhere between ’very good’ and ’astonishing’. This limited edition (sob!) imperial stout falls into the latter category. At a Sydney RateBeer gathering with a beer line-up of almost Roman decadence (think Westveletern, Pannepot, Utopia, Fullers London Porter), this one blazed like a supernova. I’m not sure if it’s the best beer I ever tasted, but I’ll be happy to offer a second opinion if Mikkeller forwards all remaining bottles to my home address. Even with the minimal samplings on offer at a group gathering, this one looked gorgeous in the glass - an impenetrable black that actually sucked in light and forced us to turn on more lamps. Okay, I made that up, but it was an infernally dark beer. A man could lose himself in there, never be found. The glass was capped by a luxuriant wash of caffe latte foam. The aroma was surprisingly ’green’ for an imperial stout - fresh hops and pistachios as well as the more expected brown sugars, molasses and espresso. Perfect creamy mouthfeel - wheat flakes? Lovely stuff. Rich and endlessly complex on the tongue. Thickly alcoholic, with the coffee running rampant. Mocha, Bourneville chocolate, port, dark rum, all those good things. A riot in a glass and everyone goes home with a sackload of good times. I think I’m drunk on the memory. Duff - you are a true champ for sharing this one with the Sydney crew. Onya mate. (Sydney RateBeer Jan 07 gathering)

Bottle 52/100: Pour is dark viscous viscous black with a dense and small brown head...smell is rich and so intensely roasty, like being in a coffee shop when roasting...some notes of oak and cocoa...flavor is strongly sweet at first with a strong warmth from alcohol coming on...then the alcohol is killed off by more roasty bitterness...nicely done!

bottle. pours pitch black. dark brown head. roasted buttery aroma. lots of chokolate and liqerice in flavour. complex and pleasant. very good beer.

Huge, ultra-dark grey-brown head over jet-black beer. Dry, bone-dry hops and some Italian cafe breve struggling to get out. Incredibly concentrated; aroma’s of green husks, cucumber, moccha, black grain. Taste: coffee...yes; moccha...probably; higher alcohols...present, besides the ethanol; toffee...identifyable; milksugar...YES!; molasses...no doubt but well-hidden; rubber...suggested. Finally a flavour that is dessert-y, which I attribute to the vanilla. And after swallowing all that, I get tobacco. Incredibly porwerful, smooth, creamy & fierce. Wheat expresses itself in the MF. A truly complex and awe-inspiring beer - even for somebody not overly fond of coffee like me. Tour de force , which is at the same time its Achilles heel: it just wants desperately to be thé... Tak, Jeppe - og Carlo.

UPDATED: JUN 16, 2012 TITW-II. Thanks to kmweaver for sharing. (#46/100). Pitch black body with a small tan head. The aroma is vinous, roasty, vanilla, molases and chocolate. The flavor is vanilla, port, cherry, chocolate, very burnt and coffee. Medium/full body, warm with a very drying finish.

Dark opaque, no head, small lacing. Fruity aroma, roasted malts, chocolat, some coffee, bit salty even. Very strong taste of roasted malts, dark chocolat, coffee. Palate goes on forever. Not my favorite session ale.

UPDATED: NOV 26, 2006 Dutch Ratebeer gathering. Pitch-black, no head. Aroma of cherries, blackcurrant, liquorice and some yoghurt. Somewhat salty flavour with liquorice, vanilla and coffee, reminiscent of Sam Adams Triple Bock (although my fellow Dutch Ratebeerians did not agree). Alcohol is nicely hidden. Endless amounts of flavour, but for me too much is going on to appreciate it to its fullest.