Orkney Dragonhead Stout (Bottle)

Aroma:Black chocolate... Appearance:black good head... Flavor:good rosted malt flavor,sweet...

Black colour with a baige head. Roasted chocolat aroma and a dry roasted thin coffee taste. Light body and a thin finish.

The label references the land of blue skies and clear waters. Now, if it’s anything like the Land of Sky Blue Waters, you know I’m in for a treat here.

Very dark brown colour. No particular head. The aroma is of cheap chocolate - nasty corner store stuff - and oatcakes. At least the oat cakes I can vibe off. I haven’t had those in a while. I should buy some. The body is light for a stout, matching the gravity. There are the requisite hints of roast barley and greasy spoon post-clubber, pre-trucker coffee but mostly you get a lot of that plasticy ghetto chocolate - like Hershey or Toblerone or some nonsense like that - and more oats. It’s fairly sweet, which is fine for an oatmeal stout. There is a slight bit of brown sugar in the finish. But wait! There’s more. Once it gets a little warmer a big whisky note comes out. I know it’s fanciful - trendy even - to suggest whisky in a beer from Scotland, but I’ve consumed enough of the stuff to know it when I taste it. Sure, it’s not very peaty and you could argue it’s closer to Bushmills than anything Scottish, but you know what I mean. Anyway, this element and the cheap chocolate only halfway incorporate themselves into the rest of the beer, and the roast and coffee notes are kind of like the two geeks sitting off in the corner talking about Star Trek at the prom while everyone else is trying to score. There’s just not a lot of cohesion - the elements in this beer don’t want to hang out with one another. So while there are some good things going on here, on the whole I feel less impressed than I should be.

dark brown colour with a light brown head. Roasted malty aroma with a light chocolate note. Roasted malty flavor with hints of some sweetness and a bitter finish.

Pours black with dark brown menisci and a medium light tan head. Aroma of heavy molasses, chocolate syrup, some hops, dark fruit, and hazelnuts...but the blackstrap molasses aroma is the strongest. Tastes malty, with a big hop presence, coupled with some finishing chocoff. The hops dominate the taste, shadowing the molasses. If this one tastes like it smelled, it would be a 4.2. However, the taste is a bit of a let-down, and the palate is watery, non-complex, and not very well balanced. I hate to take this one out back and kick its ass, because it showed such promise, but it leaves me no choice. Not worth the price.

(Bottle 50 cl) Not entirely black, this has a reddish tint. Very light and dry but not really bitter. Lovely aromatic and slightly smoked. A fresh easy-to-drink beer. 060305

Bottle @ Pullman, Helsinki Finland Backlog 2 April, 2005
Thin and well attenuated (BB11/05). No off tastes, though. Rather boring, actually. Maybe some roasted notes in the end.

Black colour. Thick white creamy head. Sweet and somewhat smoky nose. Flavour is roasted, malty and slightly acidic, with hints of chocolate. A quite ordinary stout, still not bad.