Bottle from Deconinck. Hazy dark brown, stable, frothy, beige head. Aroma of date, candied plum, pear, dark toffee, wet wood, brandy, molasses, vague varnish, peat, whisky, liquorice. Taste has very sweet date, blue plum & pear wrapped in a thick toffee & nutty malty body, bitter middle providing bitter liqorice & herbs, giving off some phenols, as well as an edge of leathery-smoky umami. Herbal hoppy finish, spicy liquorice with sweet yet also sourish dark fruits, smoked wood accent & peat, strongly warming (peated) whisky & brandy alcohol. Medium body, syrupy texture, fizzy carbonation. Needs some polishing or perhaps ageing to really become rounded, but all in all this is quite my style.

Pours dark brown; Big creamy off white head. Smell is sharp, peat, mild toffee, traces of chocolate. Taste is full, sharp bitterness, intense carbonation, peat, very clearly so, but also blended in. Some chocolate. of course it's to peated for me, but I dont hate is as much as I though I would. Peat dominates (to me) but doesnt overpower 100 % of the basebeer.

Tall Poppy collaborating with a Chinese brewpub to create this peated Scotch (as we say in Belgium, or 'wee heavy' in Scotland), an idea I do not recall having seen before, as peaty effects are usually applied to stouts. Very curious for this one. Quite a violent gusher, streaming out of the bottle neck upon opening - sigh... The foam settles as a medium thick but visibly thinning and eventually almost completely dissolving, large-bubbled, audibly fizzing and almost immediately open, yellowish beige head over a misty mahogany brown beer with deep ruby red glow. Strong aroma of indeed peat in a clearly iodine-like way (of the kind my grandmother used to pour on wounds), melting dark chocolate, whisky, walnut liqueur, clove, figs soaked in 'jenever', maple syrup, brown sugar, stewed pear, vague background hints of beef 'bouillon', brown bread, actual dry peat, heavily sugar-sauced pipe tobacco, wet clay, thyme. Sweetish onset, brown sugariness coating clean fruity elements of fig, pear and black cherry, but the flavour is marred by sharp, quite harshly numbing overcarbonation, adding a less fitting sourish aspect; rounded bready and toffeeish malt sweet body with that sourishness creeping underneath, but more emphatically turning toasted bitter in the end, enhanced by a leafy, spicy hop bitterness which mingles well with this toasty malt bitterness. More predominantly though - and early on - a strong booziness develops, whisky- and gin-like, with a notably wry and bittering-peppery effect, drying the root of the tongue in an astringent, (to me) somewhat obnoxious way; meanwhile that iodine-like peatiness unmistakably dominates retronasally. Traces of toffeeish and toasty malt bittersweetness withstand the strong alcohol presence more or less elegantly - but all in all, this beer is still a tad too boozy for me, as if the malt bill (contrary to many peated strong stouts I had) is just a tad too thinnish to support it completely (or it is thinned by the alcohol to begin with). This beer at least partially collapses under the whisky-flavoured booze, but this gets better in the end when the yeast sediment is poured in and things get a bit more 'fluffy' and well-bodied. Furthermore the peatiness could have been a bit more elegant (this is very well possible, as proven by e.g. some of Dochter van de Korenaar's peated beers) and obviously the gushing and overcarbonation are technical flaws, but I do appreciate the idea, and I sense that a great beer might come out of this concept with more finetuning and restraint. Interesting, but too much on the crude side to be as enticing as I was hoping this would be. Extra point for originality and audacity, though.