On keg at the Hanging Bat. Appearance - amber to brown. Thin head. Nose - big booze note. Definitely smells like sake or glue. Some earthy spice and salty herbs. Taste - big sea buckthorn up front. Salty seaweed too. Savoury and red fruit too. Palate - close to medium bodied with a tangy middle and finish. Very long. Overall - the nose underlays this completely. The taste is so complex.

7-3-6-3-13
On tap @ What's Brewing 18. Pours hazy yellow, with a small creamy head. Aroma is lemonade, white sugar, rice pudding and marzipan, as well as minerals and wooden notes. Medium body, with soft carbonation. Flavour is lactic acid and tart notes of hay and wood, as well as lemon peel, rice pudding and marzipan.

One of Wild Beer’s great successes, a bit hyped, a collaboration with several other brewers; 75 cl bottle from Gedeelde Vreugde with wax. Apparently this is a super strong lager (so not a Belgian strong ale as shown here) brewed with rice, sea buckthorn, yuzu and two types of seaweed – quite an idiosyncratic piece of culinary art indeed. Snow white, lacing, medium thick, moussy and stable head (retaining better than expected seen the ABV) over an initially clear, warm straw golden robe, hazy and with a touch of orangey ‘old gold’ with sediment added. Sweet aroma (more so than expected) of baked apples, rice pudding and cooked rice, ripe pear, sweetbread, limoncello (probably the yuzu), lemon candy, vanilla custard, calvados, ripe banana, sake, but only subtle (fresh green) seaweed. Sweet onset, honeyish residual sugariness, banana- and ripe pear-like impressions as well as melon and fried apple, softish carb, thick and full, creamy-vinous mouthfeel; the sweetness is even a bit cloying, insufficiently countered by the added saltiness and by the sourness I was expecting from the sea buckthorn. Seaweed and salt remain very understated in this big, sweet ultra-strong lager and just when their delicate features begin to pop up, they are scorched by a heating, strong calvados-like alcohol effect joining in with the sweetness; yuzu remains limited to a candied lemon-like accent. I don’t like strong lagers to begin with even when they are excessively pimped like this one – way too sweet and alcoholic for deserving such a hype, with the added ingredients suffering underneath that sweetness and booziness. Quite disappointing, really, but have an added point for originality.

F: thin, white, quick gone. C: yellowish, bit hazy. A: sour fruity, bit orange and tangerines, probably sea buckthorn, lemon. T: sour fruity, sour yellow plums, tangerines, bit vinous, bit tarty, bit salty, mineral, lemon boozy, bit oily mouthfeel, it is hard to rate this as a beer and as BSA style not at all but somehow it is not bad for me, something really different, I like it, enjoyed, 75cl bottle from Tilquin English Beer Festival 2018.

Draft at Tallinn Craft Beer Weekend 2018. Clear pale yellow color small white head. Aroma of lemon, light stonefruit light booze. Taste is earthy lemon and herbs. OK

0,2 litre taster at Håndverksøl festival. Cloudy Golden wit white head. Malts, hops, Rice and spices.

Draft @ Tilquin English Beer Festival 2018. Pale golden colour, some foam. Strange nose of lemon, rice, tart fruit (seabuckthorn?). Taste is tart, lemony, light salty notes, strong alcoholic. Strange beer.

Tap at TCBW 2018. Pours slightly hazy golden. Aroma is sweet, spices, fruits, some sourness. Flavor follows the nose. Alcohol is rather covered. Overall: kind of weird, but i like it. --- Beer merged from original tick of Blackfriars Nanban Yadokai on 05 May 2018 at 19:09 - Score: 7