Orkney Dark Island (Bottle)

Brewed by Orkney (Sinclair Breweries)
Style: Old Ale
Stromness, Orkney, Highlands & Islands, Scotland

Bottle sampled with Beerded_one. Pours brown with a large light tan head. Aroma of roast, smoke, spices, and alcohol. The flavor is smooth, smoke, roast, spices. NIce brew, a little thin but good.

Bottle. Strongly malty aroma with balanced smoke and peat. Vinous, whiskyish character. Dry and burned - a very interesting nose. Deep, darkened burgundy with a creamy, rocky, lacing tanned head. Taste reveals definite smoky whisky notes, restrained but demanding attention. About as far from over-the-top as possible. Faint burn and bg fruitiness. Light body but a dry and slightly ashy aftertaste, though not at all harsh. Have to wonder what this would be like form the cask. A really subtle and contemplative brew ... taste the archipelago!

Aroma of dark dank old dungeons; fits the name perfectly. Pour was a beautiful almost black with a thin off white head with no lacing. Taste was smokey; so much so that I would guess this was a smoked ale in a blind taste test. Some coffee bitterness and a burnt roasted malt taste. This is the best Old Ale I’ve ever had and it’s hard to imagine something topping it.

500ml bottle: This looks a delicious deep rich chocolatey brown with a thin but solid tan head. There’s a stark aroma, almost whiskey-like ... the first swallow is almost shockingly smoky, with a distinctly peat-based aspect. The sweet roastiness takes over as you go, but that hint of smoke is still there even to the end. (#2841, 5/6/2007)

Bottle. Black in color with orange undertones and a lasting light tan head. A muted malt coffee aroma is most noticeable. An amazing flavor to this beer - At first sweet chocolate and coffee with a great smoky finish. Just awesome! Smooth and easy feel. Another good one from Orkney.

Bottle. Pours good sized, light brown head. I’m usually not too fussy when it comes to beer. However, this ale was not very enjoyable. The smokiness tended to overpower the lovely malts in the brew. Not the best from a great brewery.

Dark, dark, darrrrk. There is so much roast malt in this! I find the aroma quite smokey, and the flavour wonderfully strong but not as complex as it might be. So, interesting and enjoyable for its extreme flavour, but not much else.

Sampled March 2007
Pours with a frothy, fully tan colored head that starts out about two-fingers thick. The beer is a very dark, almost black colored beer. There is an interesting spiciness here in the aroma, it is sort of cinnamon like (but not really) or perhaps a touch of clove (but again not really). Mainly the aroma is full of notes of chocolate, coffee, touches of molasses, some dusty chalk notes.

Fairly sweet up front, but then an interesting salty, smoky note becomes noticeable. So now that spicy note in the nose makes sense. Peat it is. The salty, smoky peat character couples with notes of chocolate and a host of (though in no way dominating) burnt characteristics (acidity, dusty burnt grain, and a touch of coffee). This is an interesting beer, I was not expecting this at all. The smoke actually adds something like sweetness, which couples with the residual malt sugars. This is quite a tasty brew, once again I am quite impressed with this brewery and of course I always love tasty, lower alcohol brews.