Moorhouses Black Cat (Bottle)

Brewed by Moorhouses
Style: Mild Ale
Burnley, England

Bottled. Aroma of strong licorice and hints of coffee. Dary ruby color, light brown irregular head, good lace. Light sweet, bitter, roasted, loads of licorice, coffee finish. Bit sandy mouthfeel and light. Very amazing and flavorful beer for just 3.4 ABV. Should try this on cask some day.

Pours a dark black/brown color with average sized head and good lacing. The aroma is largely roasted with a strong coffee presence. The chocolate notes are there, but hard to detect. The flavor screams forward a perfectly balanced smokyness. Finishes a little watery and metallic, but overall this was a well built mild ale, a unique experience for me.

Bottle. Pours dark brown with an average frothy off-white head that diminished slowly. Good malty aroma. Medium body with a sticky texture. Light bitter sweet flavor with a medium finish.

Weak in alc. but big on taste. Roasted malts combine with a pleasant sweetness. Quite complex compared to many milds.

Pours burnt sienna with smallish off-white head. Aroma of malt, chocoff, some dark fruit. Tastes somewhat black malty, with some chocolate and molasses in the finish. Gets sweeter and more chocolate syrupy as it warms, but the complexity and balance is for shit. Mediocre. Ohmper has called me out in the past (Carnegie porter), and I am calling him out on his rating of this. 3.8 is way too high, Per, and if this palate is a 5, then Oprah is a 5 for beauty!! But that’s the beauty of this site....non only can we disagree, but we have the Bayesian average to act as a "rationilization factor".

This bottle is ancient. Aroma of berries over lightly toasted malt. Almost opaque, but in front of halogen it’s a beautiful ruby red. The beige head hardly exists. Starts with light berry, moves to roasted malts, berries make a comeback, and the end is toasted malt with some standup hop. Medium mouthfeel. I’d say the berry is blackberry if anything. A dry finish. Amazing. I think having the bottle for 5 years or so may have allowed some flavor development. I certainly don’t recall this complexity the last time I tried it.

I am rerating after a few years. My notes are almost the same. Solid beer. A medium light tan head. The body is a very deep amber that is almost black. The aroma is light iced tea with some milk chocolate and a hint of tobacco. The taste is strong iced tea with some earthy mushrooms and nuts. A little bit of milk chocolate. Lots of character showing how nice a mild can taste. Refreshing and slightly dry.

Bottle: Brown cola hue with a small but lasting frothy off-white head and very good lace. The aroma has notes of apple and raisin, smoky malts, earthy yeast esters, floral hops, and cavandish pipe tobacco. The taste mildly malty with tones of toast and chocolate, hints of coffee, fruit and smoke. Overall, pleasureable but not outstanding. I would have guess this a Schwarzbier or Brown Ale in style, but whatever...