Mikkeller Black Hole

I picked this 375ml bottle for a joy on a Friday eve to celebrate Mikkeller being reviewed as one of the RateBeer best brewers and Ølbutikken as the best beer retailer in the world. This dark, green bottle, topped by a wire cradle and a cork, was bought at Ølbutikken in May last year (BB 14.08.2011). The body content is black as oil and topped by a ruby brownish, bubbly head. Smooth aroma of deep, dark malts. Dark fruits and roasted dark malts in flavour pushed into the background by a bit overwhelmingly liquorice. Solid and lingering bitter ending with warming alcohol. Great stuff, but the liquorice is rather too dominating. [Tromsø, 30.01.2009].

Bottled 375ml. Trade with nearbeer. Appearance: It pours a pitch black beer with a small dark beige head. Aroma: The nose is of coffee, aniseed, glue, grapefruit, cherry, lemon and blue cheese accompanied by vanilla and nutmeg with tobacco suddenly emerging. A wonderful sour feature showing up too when warming up - a terribly complex aroma. Flavor and palate: Extremely full bodied. Coffee, aniseed, wood, lemon and vanilla in the taste. Some wild strawberries sneaking in. Low carbonation. Very faintly sour. Warming alcohol appearing with the swallow. Lemon peel, sage and licorice in the finish which is sublime. Overall impression: Extremely good. I love every feature of this Imperial Stout. But the flavor is even more impressive than the aroma in my opinion. Thanks a lot nearbeer!

Bottle at Sorbone, Bromma, Stockholm. Smells of alcohol, soy sauce and rosted barley. Tastes like a bad barley wine. However it gets a bit better when you get used to its strenght (had it as the second beer for the night) RERATED: Bottle from Ölbutikken sampled at home. Coffe and burnt malts, a lot better than i rememberd it, raised the rating alot. Probably a bad bottle last time.

Bottle shared at the KW tasting, courtesy of xocoatl (thank you Walter!!!). Very hoppy aroma mixed with what you expect - coffee, sweet chocolate. Black, small beige head. Great taste - super hoppy, very sweet, chocolate and roast. A really hopped up American Style Impy, I loved it - one of my favourites from the night.

Bottle. Didn’t like this beer the first time I tried it, but now I can see its sweet sweet charm of honey and liquor chocolates, spiced up with some coffee and licorice. Delicious!

Sampled from a 12.7 ounce corked bottle, the same bottle used for their barleywine. This pours heavy and black with a nice relatively thick tan head, especially considering the high abv, that settles to a thin layer. The aroma consists of a whole lot of chocolate with coffee and alcohol soaked raisins with some vanilla too. There’s some alcohol heat to this but it’s not out of control, very roasty but also a soft creamy taste to balance that which I enjoyed. Flavors mostly cocoa, coffee, bourbon notes and maybe a bit of molasses with the chocolate strong up front and bourbon and molasses finishing this thing off with the coffee always lurking. This isn’t cheap but very good and an excellent evening sipper.

Aroma is absolutely heavenly, at least to me as a porter/stout fanatic: rich, strongly of dark coffee and unsweetened chocolate, with an undertone of molasses. Pours just as black as its namesake with a thick, fine-bubbled, dark tan head. Flavor lives up to the aroma and appearance, like a rick mocha made from fine, dark roast coffee and bittersweet chocolate. There is even a hint of orange in the flavor. Texture is delightfully smooth and thick as cream. Strongly recommended, especially to my fellow stout nuts.

THOUGHTS: Wow. This was great. Mikkeller continues to impress me. This one is dangerous. It hid the alcohol incredibly well. Not the kind of hoppy impy stout that many feel is the definitive impy stout, but a wonderfull impy that has some coffee without straying too far from what and impy stout should be. Brilliant. It’s an impy with some coffee in it not a coffee stout that is ramped up to impy alcohol levels, like some other coffee imperial stouts I’ve tried recently. TECHNICAL: Bottle. Poured a dark brown that was an opaque black in the glass with and average tan head that kept a sheet and left good to fair lacing. The aroma was light to moderate milk chocolate and cocoa, lighter mild coffee and some alcohol. The flavor started sweet but finished with bitter chocolate and coffee with a long duration. There was chocolate, bitter coffee, a little cream and a hint of alcohol. The full body was creamy and slightly oily with tingly carbonation and a light astringent and light alcoholic finish.