Jolly Pumpkin Madrugada Obscura

Brewed by Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales
Style: Stout
Dexter, Michigan USA

Big time gusher and hard to pour because of all the carb. The carb makes the beer have a beautiful, long lasting tan head. Nose is a funky chocolate, like you ate a candy bar while cleaning some musty laundry. It’s interesting, and the taste mostly follows the nose, but it’s just too sour. The chocolate up front lasts for a few seconds on the tongue, but then the beer just explodes with sourness, and it’s not the tasty kind. An absurdly confusing beer: hard to drink lots of due to the flavor assault, it hides the 8.1% alcohol as well as any beer I’ve had since I first tried PtE. Worth trying once, but too expensive to merit a rebuy.

11th September 2008. Very frothy stout. Lots of toasty malt well offset by that typical Jolly Pumpkin sourness. Hint of smoke in the mid. The sourness had a fruity edge which also delivers a breif sweet note. Some chocolate in there too. Complex and drinkable.

Bottle from Crown#6 Batch 360/362, shared with Brother Eric. CAUTION! Open over the sink, just in case. Apparently something was living inside and wanted to come out quick. Foam snaked out of this bottle for 3 minutes straight while I cleaned up the mess. Pours pitchass black with no sign of daylight and monstrous 1.5" bubbly tan head. Nose is an odd sour belgian yeast covering brown sugar and molasses. Flavor is sour, dry, barnyard funk with roasted malt. Really odd and different. A sour stout? Not at all what I was expecting, though I’m not really sure what I was expecting anymore. Finish is earthy and rough with a brett feel to it. Two thumbs up for variety, but that’s being generous. I’m not sure I’ll revisit.

Bottle. Pours a black color with a samll off-white head. Has roasted malty chocolate and coffee aroma. Fruity and slightly tart chocolate and molasses flavor with some weak hints of coffee. Has a roasted fruity and slightly tart chocolate finish.

Batch 360/362, brewed in November 2008. Black body is topped with a mountainous head that is both frothy and creamy. The glass has been wrecked with sticky looking lace and the head remains like a lumpy cloud bank. The aroma is predominantly sour oak barrels that once held a robust wine, also with currants, old leaves black with rot, lots of bacterial influence, big coffee, molasses, faint esters, chocolate notes. Medium-bodied with plentiful, coarse carbonation and a dry finish. The flavor is sour from bacteria, oaky, sweet with wine, esters, roasted grains, lots of chocolate on the tail end, big coffee flavor, molasses, sour/bitter finish that fades to bitter, woody, and well-hopped. Alcohol is practically invisible. Complex, off-beat. Contains sulfites.

pitch black with large white head, notes of yeasty esters in the nose predominant. huge carbonation levels. flavor begins with very mild bitterness, followed by some sweet low crystal notes before a lot of belgian esters which lingers into the large degree of roasted flavors, intermixed with sourness from the bacteria and some oak. a very complex beer and a very unique stout. interesting and enjoyable

22.5 oz. Batch 266. Explosion from the start!! roasty aroma that that has notes of sour grapes. A nice bitter start with great coffee taste. To my delight this one surprised me with a very tart finish and no signs of the 8.1 ABV. This is a well crafted beer. Delicious.

Bottle. 22.5 oz. Pours opaque brown with a thick, firm, beige head. Aroma of coffe, chocolate roasted malts, grapes, cinnamon, and clove. Full, smooth mouthfeel, with a slight warming tingle. Heavy, solid finish. Excellent stout from Jolly Pumpkin.