TSTBRW 06 Mint the Chocolate
Brouwerij De Koninck in Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium 🇧🇪
Stout Special Out of Production|
Score
5.89
|
|
Sign up to add a tick or review
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 4
Minzig malziger Antrunk. Durch die Minze wird das Malz eingedämmt und kommt kaum noch hervor, süffig, zum Ende dezent bitter. 9/8/7/8//7
Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 3 | Flavor - 4 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4.5
Draught at Foeders in Amsterdam. The sixth installment of this series of experimental brews, now with added wodka-soaked cocoa nibs and fresh peppermint leaves. Textbook cobweb-lacing, off-white, moussy, well-retaining head over a very dark purplish bronze beer with burgundy hue, still translucent so not the opaque black one would expect from a modern 7+% stout. Weird and to me very off-putting aroma of ’dropwater’ (liquorish water) much more than anything else, I guess the cocoa and the mint combined establish this effect, next to indeed peppermint but more in a candy kind of way than the ethereal and ’green’ aroma one would find in e.g. peppermint tea, chocolate milk made from old dusty cocoa powder diluted in tapwater rather than milk, cough syrup, caramel, wet hay, banana, perhaps some wet dog somewhere. Sweet onset, hints of raisin and candied fig with some banana ester, slick body with medium carbonation, thinner than expected from a beer of this strength. Caramelly and slightly nutty, even lightly toasted malt sweet core with a mild bitter edge, but drowned in this ethereal, sweet-and-spicy, cough syrup- and peppermint candy-like added flavor, very strong liquorish effect much more than anything genuinely chocolatey, some warming alcohol in the end, very low in hop or even roasted bitterness. I have had a few mint beers before and liked none of them one bit - I guess menthol is just not my kind of taste - but this one is ridiculous: quite unique and an experiment indeed, but one in bad taste more than anything else. Too thin and not nearly roasted enough to deserve the ’stout status’ in this day and age, and then completely collapsing under the weight of a completely unreasonable amount of added flavors, this to me is bordering on undrinkable. I guess the gimicky aspect of it may appeal to some consumers but this is definitely not my beer. Conceptually at least, this kind of reminds me of the quixotic approach direct competitor Palm has shown in their Arthur’s Legacy series: it seems as if the brewers behind this kind of projects, have no clue whatsoever as what has been happening internationally in the past couple of decades and stick to the old Belgian cliché of resorting to basic Belgian ale styles and naively pumping in odd ingredients or overdoses of spice to make them different. I have nothing against the use of more exotic ingredients nor against experiments, but I at least expect them to be carried out with technical skill and a sense of good taste, and both to me are absent in this preposterous caricature of a beer.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8
Draft at De Paas. Black with a tan head. Aroma shows up the mint and dark chocolate with heavy licorice, malt and caramel. Flavour is above moderate sweet and moderate bitter. Medium bodied with the mint hanging in the finish and light carbonation.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5
Tap @ De Heeren van Liedekercke. Almost black with a lasting light brown head. Aroma is sweet, malty, dark malts, chocolate and mint. Flavor is quite sweet and moderate bitter. Sweet and moderate bitter finish. 190317
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4.5
On tap at Delirium Cafe, Bruxelles. Pours black, medium beige head. Light chocolate, some mint, quite watery, very thin and bland. Medium bodied. Unlike Perennial 17 this chocolate mint experiment was unsuccessful.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 3 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 4
@ Meug 2016. Pours black, clear, small white head. Smell is minthy. Taste is minthy, some cocoa in the finish. Pretty minthy, and far from balanced.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 4 | Flavor - 2 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4
Draft glass @ ’t Antwaerps Bierhuyske. Idea / concept sounds good even if very oddly USA, mint & chocolate combo is unknown in Belgium. Apparently the beer got a lot of press. Result is abysmal in my opinion & everyone at the table disliked it. This tastes like the bartender spit out his mint chewing gum into a very thin & extremely metallic stout. Further tasting notes are overkill really but I don’t mint some excess. Black, tanned head. Nose is extremely metallic, empty otherwise, mint chewing gum in the worst way, very thin chocolate, poor. Taste is extremely metallic, awful mint chewing gum like some spit it out in the glass in the worst fashion, green mint, thin very poor chocolate, hugely metallic. Body is hugely thin especially for the ABV & very metallic. This TSTBRW series started out well but between this & #05 I have lost all faint in it. This is just abysmal. Maybe it appears to the vast crowd of casual beer drinkers but I couldn’t drink this.