Mikkeller Black Hole

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

Hardly any head, just a thin deep dark brown film. Intense deep black chocolate aroma with pine and mint notes. Intense massive chocolate mint and pine taste with coffee notes. An overpowering and uncompromising onslaught of black taste. In fact, I need water after 2 sips. Quite a bit of alcohol heat. Vaguely citric burnt notes and used coffee beans. Very unusual, very intense, and hard to drink. Interesting, though. (0.375l bottle from gr0ve.)

375ml - Aroma of mocha, coffee, alcohol, chocolate and burnt dark malts. Pours black with a small head and good lacing. Flavor is very strong dark roast coffee and burnt malts. The alcohol becomes astringent as it warms. Palate is sticky, dry and cloyingly bitter.

As it warms it became a struggle to even finish. I was not enjoying myself and actually poured the second half of my glass down the drain. Not a total drain pour (hence 3.5) but not something I would recommend.

Opaque dark brown pour with a thin white head. Aroma is dominated by coffee and alcohol. Some chocolate and molasses as well. It almost smells like port. Intense coffee flavor - the most intense coffee beer I’ve had. Hops on the finish as well as a lot of alcohol. This beer is pretty good, but there is way too much alcohol, it ruins the flavor.

Dark brown, nearly black, with a dark ruby tint around the edges - faint lace, no head - aroma of dark roast coffee, tobacco, damp oak, red wine tannins, alcohol (which gains an acetone quality as it warms, but just faintly) - low carbonation, slick mouthfeel - a cocoa and coffee bitterness dominates, and keeps the underlying sweetness from taking control - strong tannic character, notes of tobacco and wet ash - becomes more dry, ashy, and bitter near the finish - as it warms, I can’t really feel the alcohol, but I can taste it, so after a while the beer starts to taste like cheap vodka and chocolate - a bit thin for something so strong, and I’ve tasted more richness and complexity in coffee stouts half this strength - like a high gravity beer geek breakfast - another overpriced, overhyped mikkeller product - (new batch, marked as 13.1 abv).

375ml green bottle. Caged and (synthetic) corked. Pours thick, black. Pure crude oil. Aroma of cold espresso coffee, licorice, sweet malts, and aromomatic hops. Flavor is sweet malt, rich chocolate, coffee, cocoa, topped off with a perfectly balanced hop flavor. Absolutely stellar! Now I’m gonna eat some Triple Chunk Brownies. YUM.

Bottle. The new batch (still got one bottle left of the old and a backlog rating somewhere). Black, brown head. Coffee, licorice, hopscotch and some chocolate in aroma. Flavour is packed with notes of burnt malts, coffee and licorice along with a good dosage of bitter hops. This is great! This is gonna be a short rating, coz I just wanna savour this baby instead of typing. Excited to see how it compares to the original, when I dig up my notes or try them up against one another.

Pure brown black beerness, a strange ambivalence of intensive unsamplelike taste nd this coffeeshop tendency, but its name wins

375ml from Sam’s, Durham. Very thick pour, completely opaque with nary a sliver of light visible through the darkness. Yes, the laws of space and time are suspended here. Unfortunately, the beer’s not quite up to snuff in this space either. The nose is somewhat rich, with some espresso notes (but alas, not too much) and a funky, vegetal character as well. I actually didn’t find the beer as boozy tasting as I’d expected. Some hop bitterness in there, along with at least a bit of coffee, but the overall effect is more mushy and burnt, a kind of indistinct harshness rather than a refined, purposive character of any sort. There’s no way this is a bad beer. But based on what I’ve had from Mikkeller previously, and also on hype/cost, this is a pretty big disappointment.