Nøgne Ø Dark Horizon Second Edition

Formerly brewed at Nøgne Ø
Style: Imperial Stout
Grimstad, Norway

Thanks kiefdog for breaking this one out. Pours dark brown/ black with red highlights and a dark tan fizzy, yet dissipating head. Nose is a bit disappointing for what I have heard and read about this beer. I get roast, some dark fruit, and a bit of licorice. Flavor is coffee, dark fruit, booze, and burn. Finish lingers with roast and lots of alcohol. Medium to light bodied and a ton of alcohol burn. I see aging or avoidance of this beer in the future.

Bottle brought back from West Lakeview. Had a bottle of DH1E a couple weeks ago, so wanted to get a taste of this to both have a comparison with it’s predecessor and also see how this one ages. Pours like onyx with the most beautiful, near dark purple, head I’ve ever seen. Smells strongly of chocolate pudding and whisky. Builds on these two flavors in taste with added notes of black licorice and caramel. Finishes sticky with the flavor of cabernet. This is already amazing, but I have to agree that in a year this very well may deservingly enter the Top 10.

Bottle generously shared by nbutler11, completing his post-Chicago load-blowing. I don’t get how this isn’t in the Top 50. Not like its indelicacy at this point is much different from something like Younger or Darkness. Though for me it may have been deadened as it was my fifth beer of the night. Nose is of beautiful chocolate mousse and french creme (pre-brulee), nutmeg and exotic caramel. Flavor resembles that and maintains the creaminess, adding a hazelnut quality. Again, the wine yeast demands to know why it isn’t used more often in big beers. In a year this will be absurd.

500. Thanks, Pantanap! Pours absolutely jet black. Just watching this beer come up, eddying across the glass, you get the sense that it’s too much effort for it to even push itself out of the way to fill the cup. It’s soooo thick and goopy looking. Huge=]sweet pruney molassesy nose with tons of booze--my head actually snapped to the side a couple times while I was nose-testing this. Creamy thick body, obviously. Prunes, plums, strawberries, chocolate, and tons and tons of sweet twangy alcohol on the mid-palate. Long, drying, boozy, bitey finish. Not nearly the triumph that the first one was, but, then, this one needs probably 5-10 bottle years before it approaches anything like a peak.

Bottle. Pours pitch black with a diminishing brown head. Aroma is roasted with tar and rope. A bit tart and with remote metallic notes. Flavour is metallic and roasted. Full-bodied and with a decent amount of alcohol notes; but well-balanced. Bitter roasted finish with alcohol. A quite nice beer. 07-06-09.

Bottle. Black colour with a tan head. Aroma iscoffee, chocolate, alcohol. Flavour is dry, fruit, hop, dried fruit, coffee, chocolate, alcohol. Full mouthful. Warming and very nice beer.

Bottle #05231 Pours pitch black, almost like tar. Minimal brown head that disappears almost immediately. Some lace is remains. The aroma has sweetish licorice, salty licorice, herbal hoppiness, alcohol and tar in the finish. Alcohol and salty licorice dominate in the beginning but the finish bends more towards coffee, dark chocolate, tobacco and mellow bitterness. The aroma has quantitativity but it lacks complexity. The flavor is alcoholic, salty and intensively malty. Salty licorice and alcohol pretty much dominates, bitterness stikes in the finish but some ageing would do good (I guess?). The finish still has some darker coffee and chocolate. Full bodied palate is alcoholic, thick and syrupy. This beer reall has all the potential but it still lacks the maturity.

Bottle, #04769. Pours an opaque black body with dark brown head that quickly fizzes away like cola. Aroma of sweet and burnt malts, dark chocolate, and maybe a hint of tar. Flavor is more of the same. Quite boozy - there is a strong alcohol burn throughout the palate, giving an almost antiseptic flavor. Medium bodied with a slick mouthfeel. Well carbonated. Dry alcohol finish with a lingering burn in the back of the throat. The alcohol tends to dominate a bit too much, although is somewhat more bearable as it warms.