Mikkeller Black Hole

Mikkeller
Brewed at De Proefbrouwerij
Style: Imperial Stout
Copenhagen V, Denmark

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.

bottle shared at the KW group tasting. bottle brought by walter, thanks man!! pours black and headless, thin around the edges as well. what a big nose on this beast. nice hops, huge coffee and i really got a lot of belgian candied sugar, but i could be way off. great roasted malt flavours, more chocolate then i was expecting from the nose. thinner mouthfeel then i was expecting but this drank almost scarily easy for its weight. enjoyable but not my favourite imperial stout, very different then the others we had at the tasting and a very nice change of pace in that regard.

Pours black and lifeless, yet a dark tan head arises from nowhere. Gorgeous aroma, very complex with hints of chocolate, vanilla, bourbon, dark fruit and coffee. Very thick body that coats the glass with every swirl. Thick roasted grain coffee bitter taste with hints of dark cherry, vanilla, coffee and chocolate. Very complex, thick and smooth, a world class beer.