muzzlehatch (4424), Burlington, Vermont, USA Apr 1, 2005 New England Road Trip Easter ’05 with MartinT, tiggmtl and Rastacouere, beer #54. Bomber in the hotel room. Thick cola appearance...oxidized, chocolaty nose...bitter coffee-chocolate initially in the mouth promises much but delivers little as the body is dull and lifeless, thin and sour-fruity...just not good at all, but how much is due to poor bottling/storage I don’t know.
tiggmtl (4179), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Apr 2, 2005 Stale chocolate and bitter coffee grounds in the oxidised aroma. Opaque dark brown with very shy, large-bubbled, fully-diminishing tan head. Fruity, powdered chocolate and coffee grounds with some candied malt flavours. Lifeless and flat. Slick, syrupy mouthfeel. Though this bottle was purchased at the brewpub only hours previously, there were major problems with it. Sampled with MartinT, muzzlehatch and Rastacouere. MartinT (4377), Montreal, Quebec, Canada Mar 29, 2005 From a low-filled bomber bought at the brewery : Coffee and oxidized berries seem bothered by the brown sugar...Plums and yeasty cocoa are distraught by the near lifeless body...Spices slowly abandon their post...Another terribly sad bottle job by Watch City which will have to be re-rated from the tap in the future... Rastacouere (5409), Montréal, Quebec, Canada Mar 29, 2005 660mL. Reddish brown garnet. Low apparent carbonation contributes to the formation of a bare off-white ring. This is a bit unsatisfying for that type of beer. Extremely weird aroma emanates from obvious oxidation and carbonation problems through the bottling line that we’ve encountered in the past from Watch City. Their stuff seemed to be pretty good in the past, so I hope they can get this fixed, because this one made me think of a particular Simpsons episode in which Homer waters his old father’s field with plutonium thus developing a genetically modified mix between tomatoes and tobacco. This beer smells like tomacco as I imagine it, very seedy, cigar like and chocolatey/vanilla. Dull palate, a bit roasty, but overall stale due to oxidation, uninteresting malty, wheaty and yeast interplays. Uncarbonated texture, this could have been pretty good under other circumstances, but they seem to have been selling problematic for a while.. Pigfoot (2225), Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA Dec 21, 2004 Okay, contradictions start right away here..Belgian Dark, says the label, but this is listed as a "Tripel Brown"??? Tripels are not brown...who the what the hey?
Anyway, the appearance? It’s a terribly dark brown color, we may as well call it black, with a head that’s a mere whisper that turns into a tan ring around the edge of the glass.
Aroma: liquor, right off the bat, but sweet, albeit twisted, almost medicinal..and that’s all I can pull out! Other than to suggest...Jagermesiter?
Taste: that same feel comes through here, thick, pungent, viscous, more like a port wine than anything I normally encounter in a beer, equipped with roasty malt flavors, a thick, full, very nice texture...this was an unexpected beer, delivering things that clearly deviate from the norm...amd I’ve got to nod to that! Didn’t match anything I’d encountered before, so it was very hard to compare and evaluate. For an experience and experiment, I gotta give this props!
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