Ridgeway Lump of Coal

There’s a bit of irony here, because the bad kid gets a lump of coal, but the Lump of Coal isn’t all that bad. It is a bottle packed with heavy flavors - deep and oozing, though certainly not complex, with enough alcoholic warmth to keep the white Christmas winter outside the window where it belongs; decoration, not refrigeration. The Lump of Coal produces little head, and the beer backs this up with its cadaver stillness and swampy, inactive liquid. But the scent is alluring, especially for Christmas time, gifting the drinker with a thick aromatic paste of licorice, raisins, plums, honey, sweet coffee and toffee hazelnut in a deep and dulcet overture to Christmas goodies. The smell is so thick and so rich, I might as well be snorting syrup. The flavor leads with a front font of deep coffee, with the raw vegetal quality of the beans intact. Most of the other pools of sugary sweets have been staid, left behind in the aroma, but the flavor does carry the deep honey. Still, I miss the particularly deep taste of plums, raisins and licorice which made the aroma such a dinstuished Christmas beer. Instead, we get a heavy dose of alcohol, weighing sharply on the tongue and the head. No wonder Santa’s cheeks are always red. The Lump of Coal is drinkable, but leans too heavily on the coffee malts and booze in the taste, rather than borrowing some of what makes its aroma so relevantly great. Not a bad beer to find in your stocking.

Black with beige head. Damn good full bodied delicious liquorice and roasted malts coffee chocolate and some sweet fuit. very very very good

This really isn’t too bad. Not fantastic by any streatch of the word, but actually quite drinkable. Has some fruitcake and chocolate in the nose, with some dried red fruits in the flavor along with some roasted malts. The downside is that the mouthfeel is quite thin, and has a finish that drops right off the radar, but initially some nice flavors, they just don’t stick around long.

500ml bottle. Deep black-brown toffee color. Pungent fruity alcohol aroma, highly reminiscent of Caribbean Stouts. The taste is pungent fruity chocolate as well. A little watery and thin on the palate. Really unimpressive and more or less a gimmick beer.