Hitachino Nest XH

Brewed by Kiuchi Brewery
Style: Belgian Ale
Ibaraki, Japan

Deep orange pour with a gigantic white head. Aroma starts bretty, with almost a light barnyard funk. Settles into clove and dried fruits. Flavor of apple, oak, caramel, bret, and some light sake. Earthy, yeasty, delicious. An absolutely stunning beer.

330 mL bottle. Foams up upon opening and pours red brown with a very large light tan head and a lot of carbonation apparent. Aromas of sour fruit, cloves, and caramel. Flavors of caramel, apple, brett, oak, and what I presume would be sake flavor, particularly apparent in the finish. This is pretty interesting and tasty.

(bottle - 330 ml) Hazy amber color with a very thick and fizzy off-white head. Aroma is chock full of many spices. Yeast, wood, sour cherries, citrus, and pepper. Very complex. Flavor is very earthy and spicy at the beginning with lots of wood, sour notes, yeast, and a light touch of sake. Good Belgian spice and yeast all throughout. Finish is spicy and dry with some earthy notes. Alcohol is rather warming.

20090311 11.2 oz bottle from RB Spirits. Glad I looked this up because I could have sworn I had rated it. Must have had it a dozen times. This bottle isn’t the best specimen. I got it for three bucks on sale as the local good beer store is working to clear out some old stock. It is still very good. Hazy cedar brown color with medium but quickly fading off white head. Aroma is woody and fruity, cherry blossom, black pepper, apricot, lilac, and lemon. A lovely mix that is only slightly tainted by an emerging alcohol note that surely wasn’t there a year or more ago. Flavor introduces a light Orval-like funk, flowery, and some mild but pleasingly bright acidity, lemony. Body has turned a bit slick, thicker and less lively than I recall, and a strong punch of alcohol comes through retronasally. Large chunks of heavy beige sediment sit on the bottom of the glass as though it were mud. In all a friendly visit with an old friend whose tune has changed slightly, but the spirit remains. Bump a couple points for its former glory.

Bottle, thanks to WeeHeavySD! Pours a hazy brownish-amber with a ridiculously large white head. Sharp aroma, of hops, sweeter malt and caramel, and wood. Taste is quite sharp, of wood, citrus hops, malt, and something with a bite that’s sort of like sake. Lingering sharpness. Strange and pretty tasty.

11.2oz bottle @Tampa Wkly Gathering–pours an off white head and hazy amber color. Aroma is oak, tart (lambic) fruit, musty. Taste is oak, tart (lambic) fruit-lemon, vinegar, musty medium malt. Weird but interesting.

I fell in love with Shochu during my brief time in South Japan, so I was very curious about a beer matured in Shochu casks. The aroma is mildly fruity -- my first thought was peach, but that’s not quite it (I’ll probably sit bolt awake at three o’clock this morning remembering what it is: "Aha! Lychee! It was lychee!" or some such nonsense). The color is deep orange, deepening still further to opaque orange-brown in the middle of the glass. Lots of tiny floaty bits. Thick yellowish head that lingers. Flavor has a mild citrusy tang to it. Slightly syrupy alcohol finish, more warming than aggressive. Different and much better than anything I was expecting.

Opaque red-amber with a large, beige, fizzy white head. Nose has yeast, zesty fruit, and lots of wood, like the nest classic. Also an odd spice, cologne-like in fact. Loads of sake wood in the flavor, yeast, orange, and more spice, finishing strong wood bitterness. Unique and complex, Hitachino again does no worse than "interesting." Here, it’s another small success.