Bottle at the Funky 8, Brooklyn, NYC. Rich. Great chocolate cake character. Very well balanced. I enjoyed this one.

Location: 22 oz bottle from Buy Rite, 9/9/12, Not the best use of Rating #2400

Aroma: The nose is caramel/chocolate malts, nutty notes, and some earth
Appearance: Pours a dark orange-amber-brown color with a beige head and minimal lace
Flavor: The taste is mostly malts (caramel, chocolate, dark fruit), with minimal bitterness
Palate: The body is medium, leaning light, a bit watery, with a short, imperfect duration
Overall Impression: This one is OK, but it isn't a favorite for me.

22nd November 2009
ChrisOs Kook Tasting. Hazy brown beer. Chocolate nose. Aged chocolate malt. No hops or anything else just light powdered chocolate.

Bomber pours deep rutty amber with minimal head. OK, let’s crack this Riddler. In the aroma I get big smashed cherries, brown sugar simmering plums and pomegranates as well as lesser amounts of earthiness and Christmas like spices. The taste is similar with bold cherry, plum and pomegranate fruitiness edged with a bit of roasted malts, earthiness and some yeasty spiciness. This is a bold fruity brew where yeasty spices and pomegranate tang attempt to balance the sweetness.

Bottle at Chriso’s Kook Tasting 09. Hazy brown, beige head. Milk choc on aroma. It’s alright, some malt. Fine.

22oz bottle-pours a rich tan head and dark copper color. Aroma is sweet medium malt-toffee/chocolate/peat, spice hops, yeast. Taste is medium malt-toffee, peat, metallic hops, clashes.

Bomber drunk on 8/24/07
Another very nicely conditioned bottle, with a humongous, rather dense, well-retained head and moderate lacing. Head is a chalky-beige while the body is a dark amber-mahogany. Clarity is medium-high to high.
Sweet caramel-like malts in the nose are joined by mild esters and somewhat-more-than-mild phenols, lending a black and white pepper-like nose. Breadiness sits on the end, with hints of roast and chocolate that keep things quite dry. As it warms/breathes the sweetness gets a bit stronger, and that maltiness gets a bit more sloppy, lending too much breadiness and an almost bittersweet caramel-vanilla note. Too much yeast activity without the requisite bottle refermentation to help smooth things out (no yeast to re-uptake all the phenols and other biproducts). Medium strength of aroma, light alcohol vapors on the finish.
Rather basic, aromatic-like malts lend caramel and some touches of raisin and roast, while creamy-sweet vanilla and honey notes are too sweet with warming and give way to strong phenolic spiciness, bordering astringency, on the finish. Due to the carbonation, the texture is strong however, with fairly tight carbonation. Gets too bready and yeasty on the finish (with minerals and chalkiness that don’t seem appropriate), however, and there’s some overt alcohol as well. Rather uninspiring, pseudo-Belgian in my book.

Bomber - Much like their other offerings, the flavor imparted by their house yeast really overpowers this one - it looks nice - dark ruby with a creamy tan head - aroma of cocoa and caramel, with some vinous, fruity character and light dough - the flavor slams the palate with the rock art taste - this subsides briefly for some dry cocoa and brown sugar flavors, along with some earthy tartness - then it’s all that original taste again - I like it a lot more than some of their other offerings, but I guess that isn’t saying much.