Charkoota Rye
New Holland Brewing Company in Holland, Michigan, United States 🇺🇸
Smoked / Rauchbier Rotating Out of Production|
Score
6.71
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including malted barley smoked over cherry wood. Its smoke-forward body is balanced with tones of deep mollasses and caramel, with a crisp, clean lager finish.
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Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5
Taster at Bavarian Lodge. Slipped in a taste while waiting for Surly Darkness. Brown, thin head, just like a cask porter. Could not pick up much smell, I think the glass had just been washed, and the folks next to me just got potato pancakes and strong senf. But tasting reveals a really mellow smoke character. More like the rind of a Gouda cheese than any bacony property. Sweet, but with a clean lager finish to keep smoky aftertaste away. Got a touch of cherry or even sweet lambic at the finish.
Huh! Only my 15th new Holland beer? Thought I’d had more than that. Though there are four more waiting in my cellar.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5
Bomber. Pours a dark brown that shines nice and red when held up to light. Two fingers of dense foam sits on top and aromas are... well... odd. Bacon and smoke are there for sure as is a bit of saltiness and cherry wood. The bacon smell is more like bacon before it is cooked however, so it’s not great for a beer... it also smells a little salty. Sure enough, it’s there in the flavor pretty thick, too. We bought a slab of homemade bacon last year and this is exactly what the smell/taste is like. Not like that fake stuff in the store. I guess that this might do it for some people, but I like my bacon on my plate and my beer in the glass... mixing those two worlds just seems wrong... just wrong. In addition to this ugly mashup of breakfast and beverage, there are a couple of other flavors I could live without... a bit of a fake smoke presence and (ugh) a somewhat nasty preservative (reminds me of borax or something along those lines) taste. I can pick up the rye and maybe some chickory a little more as it warms, but man... this is kind of a mess.