Beer - #607 - Hallertau Liberty - BDSM

Or more correctly Hallertau & Liberty Hopstock 2015 Collaboration - BDSM Fresh Hop Imperial Schwarzbier. So tonight it special beer, special music, special numbers and that special party.

Fresh hopped. Bier das Schwarz Massive.

It's a keg only beer so I have 1 litre bottle of an 8% ABV Beer, so this would be 6.31 standard drink units, this would be around 240 calories a serve size.

Brewed by Hallertau Brewbar & Restaurant in the style that is Schwarzbier or Black Lager, and they're in Auckland.

Hallertau Brewing announce BDSM, a Motueka fresh hopped Imperial Schwarzbier brewed in collaboration with our friends at Liberty Brewing Co. 

[caption id="attachment_11157" align="alignleft" width="300"] A session of BDSM coming up, what's not to like[/caption]

A dark German style lager that balances roasted yet smooth malt flavors with moderate hop bitterness.

Bier das Schwarz Massive was made using 80kg of wet Motueka cones in the hopback. 

Tastes similar to an American style Cascadian  black ale, but it's malts are more European. The wet hops impart a citrus aroma, giving the chocolate a distinctively JAFFA twist. 

So what could possibly go wrong? A beer that I belive won the people choice as the best of Hopstock this year, and on my radar but I thought out of reach. Until today.

I pop the top and I get a rich chocolate aroma mostly, it's enough to make a man smile.

Of course coal black pour, that's not difficult to pick, very lively, and the cup runneth over, all over. I knew this was going to happen and yet so unable to stop it.

Aroma in the glass is still the same dark cocoa chocolate, and the first sip is just something delicious.

Delightful amount of bitterness, lovely amount of the chocolate dark roasted thing, and a great mouthfeel that ends in a sharp and tangy finish.  If anything this is over carbonated, too much bubble fizz action going on on the tongue. Could explain the finish.

Oh and great lacing in the glass as you drink, I like that, just for aesthetics of course.

This is another beer at the slightly her end of ABV-ness and so I might need a safe word, this would be easy to get carried away with.

It is pretty much everything that everyone said, both sides the good and the bad, I lean to the this is a good beer end of the scale, to be honest there wasn't much at the other end, a lack of dissent.

A deserving winner though? Perhaps, but it isn't a common style, and looking back on other dark lagers I've had I tended to enjoy them. I guess this is a different beer that is don't well. I've noticed that as it warms the hop character becomes more apparent, which is really nice. I wonder if I might have voted differently, I picked the Deep Creek/Behemoth Yin, and IPA, as my beer of choice, I guess when you don't take in all the choices you go with what you know.

The pdubyah-o-meter rates this as 9 of its things from the thing. this is really something nice. I'm burping away in-between singing along to music that seems to be getting louder with each week of the dial. I'm loving the hop 'roughness' that's arrived, as it does just before the roasted burnt notes kick in, and well before the tangy finish. Clever stuff, the safe word appears to 'another please'.

The double dip review

Am I enjoying it? Gosh yes, it was everything I thought it was going to be and a bit more. For once the expectation and experience gap was non-existent.
Would I have another? 'another please' is my safe-word ford this :-)
Would I share with a friend on a porch and set the world to rights? I would and you would beg me for another, or not. I think that this is a beer that would sit well mid-evening if you were serious about it being a talkative evening, because after a few you might stumble into mumbling about love and other things undefined.

Music for this, well it was vinyl night in and there was a selection of things going on, Pink Floyd, Elbow, Jack White, Mike Oldfield, David Bowie, The Police, Dire Straits... it was quite a party, for one.

[gallery type="rectangular" ids="11149,11150,11151,11152,11153,11154,11159,11169"]

In amongst all the lovely was 'Elbow', and the song 'Some Riot'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_kk9WZ2zLw

A friend of mine grows his very own brambles
They twist all around him till he can't move
Beautiful, quivering, chivalrous shambles
What is my friend trying to prove?

SCHWARZBIER

Dark brown to black. Medium body. Roasted malt evident. Low sweetness in aroma and flavor. Low to medium bitterness. Low bitterness from roast malt. Hop flavor and aroma, "noble-type" OK. No fruitiness, esters.

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Beer - #242 - Garage Project - Day Of The Dead

Keeping in theme with heavy metal then, or not, I have the pleasure of a Garage Project beer, this one  "Day Of The Dead" Brewed by Garage Project in the rather mixed style of a  Spice/Herb/Vegetable beer, and they are of course in the windy city of Wellington, New Zealand.

The brewer says "Black Lager" though , for this, a 650ml bottle of a 6.7% ABV beer, making it in NZ 3.44 standard drink units.   This would then be similar in taste then to the Rogue Farms – Dirtoir Black Lager that I had and rated a high 9, he said hopefully.

Lager, but not as we know it. Garage Project’s Day of the Dead - astrong black lager inspired by the Aztec beverage xocolatl, “a bitter, frothy, spicy drink” combining cocoa and chili. Brewed with smoked chipotle chili, refermented with organic blue agave syrup (the basis of Tequila) and conditioned over raw cocoa nibs - rich and dark, Day of the Dead is smooth and drinkable with a complex mix of smoke, chocolate and restrained chili heat. A true celebration of the dark side. First available November 1, in celebration of  El Día de los Muertos - Mexico’s Day of the Dead.

Opening you get a cocoa aroma,  Pours with a decent head, dark dark black (it does say black lager), but the aroma is hard to pick now.

To the taste though. This is sort of lager like, but it isn't. They've faffed with it of course, and then this loses the 'aaah' in lager.  What you get is a brief familiar lager introduction taste and 'bang' a sucker punch of spice zing. Not a punch in the mouth, more a playful punch on the arm.

So I'm a little confused, this is 'hot' in the way that that hard to describe, there is more a pinch at the back of the throat, and you play with trying to identify what exactly is causing it. I have no idea, so I refer to the label,  and some chipotle in tequila has been added. Makes Sense.

Not sense ending in -ible because this isn't at all sensible.  It is a good thing though. Because (a) you have no idea what you're drinking, a lager or a spiced beer (2) if you drink it all you forget that it's 3 1/2 drinks you just had, because (c) you can't easily pick that you have a beer of stronger than normal. But this brings me to (4) Could you go another ?

I don't think I could, and I have a La Calevera Catrina, in the fridge, the companion to this, and that by all counts has Chilli that might kick your teeth in - (I'm kidding) (I hope).

As this  gets warmer it begins to gather more body about it, and turns it hands to a more porter like profile. But with a kicker that is more muted but there, like a mosquito in your ear at night, just out of reach, and it appears to tail off the more you have, or the warmer it gets, and it's only a matter of degrees.

This would be a fantastic "to share" beer with friends as a discussion, and the pdubyah-o-meter says at 8 this would be a very good idea. It's not at all like the Rogue Farms Dirtoir Black Lager, but that's a good thing, because they're really not the same thing.