Brewer's Nightmare - Ardmore Whisky BA
BramBrass in Heestert, West Flanders, Belgium 🇧🇪
Brewed at/by: Brouwerij De FeniksStout - Imperial Regular
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Score
7.40
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Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8
8/XII/22 - 33cl bottle from Bierhalle Deconinck (Vichte), shared @ home, BB: 17/IX/24 (2022-1728)
Clear dark brown beer, small creamy beige head, dissipates immediately. Aroma: very roasted, little medicinal, a bit peated, chocolate notes, oxidized. MF: lively carbon, medium body. Taste: sweet start, lots of caramel, dark chocolate, roasted, bitter. Aftertaste: a bit chemical, peated touch, sweet notes, alcohol, chocolates touch, bitter, dry, spicy.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 9 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7.5
The Ardmore version of a series of whisky barrel aged beers executed at different breweries, this one apparently by Brambrass (run by nutjes, honourable rater on this very site) at De Feniks, even if the label annoyingly refuses to mention it; strong stout aged for four months on Ardmore barrels. The series consists of about ten different beers, all aged in different Scotch whisky barrels, and is an initiative by whisky connoisseur Johan Tack, from the Kortrijk region. Medium thick, densely mousy, ruddy mocha-beige head quickly reduced to a steady ring and some patches in the middle, over a jet black beer with only the thinnest of burgundy edges. Powerful and intense aroma of bags of dry peat and indeed peated Ardmore whisky, dried elderberries, bayleaf, unsugared black chocolate, cigar ashes, freshly cut green apple somewhere, dried figs, teriyaki, black coffee grounds galore, marmite, molasses, subtler hints of black cherries, blood, charcoal, varnish and other fusel alcohol effects but fortunately remaining in the background, fermented fish sauce. Sweetish onset with bayleaf- and black olive-like umami accents, deep dried fig and date core, but nowhere sticky; mild carbonation, fit for the style. Very full, oily mouthfeel, a thick mass of marmite-, roasted walnut- and black bitter chocolate-like maltiness gliding heavily over the tongue, going from subduedly sweetish to ever more bitter but in an elegant, supple way, until a deep coffeeish roasted bitterness begins to dominate; at this stage the Ardmore comes in, with a sourish-phenolic peatiness but not exaggeratedly so, maintaining a very malty character. Complex, long, warming finish: bitter coffee and black chocolate soaked in whisky, with a lot of heating booze in the end, a bit astringently so, but also old wood, old tea bag and old coffee aspects lingering about, accompanied by subtler touches of bayleaf, teriyaki and cigar-like ashiness. The wood adds quite outspoken, drying tannins as well as that familiar vanilla-ish note, though the latter remains largely hidden behind all this strong stout power; a long, rooty, almost quinine-like hop bitterness appears after swallowing and clings to the root of the tongue for a very long time. Very powerful, dense, herbal, intense, roasty-bitter and a bit ashy, a tad too boozy for me personally perhaps, but there is no denying that this is a very interesting creation; I had no idea what this series was about when I encountered it at Dranken Pauwels in Heule near Kortrijk so I just grabbed a bottle for the tick, but had I known that this series was so ambitious, I would have bought more bottles for sure (especially considering that they had some of the other variants as well). Reminiscent of Struise's most recent Black Damnation episode, just as intense, perhaps even more so, but still maintaining an impressive level of balance in all that violence, with the Ardmore bringing just an accent of powdery 'peatiness' and heating booze without overpowering it completely. Congrats to Bram Neudt, one of the most underestimated Belgian brewers of the moment, in my humble opinion.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5
33cl bottle from JefVerstraete, many thanks! Euro swap 2/2020. Poured pitch black in color with a tan head. Heavy on the whisky in this version, roastedness, some licorice and tobacco. Some smoke and some ash in the dry finish. Heavy.
Appearance - 10 | Aroma - 9 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8.5
Bottle from Belgian Brewed. Pitch black colour, thick brown foam. very thick and syrupy. Lots of coffee, roasted malts along with vanilla notes and a whisky finish. A nice sipper!
