Black Is Beautiful
Tall Poppy Brewing Company in Kontich, Antwerp, Belgium 🇧🇪
Collab with: Weathered Souls Brewing CompanyStout Regular Out of Production
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Score
6.47
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Appearance - 2 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 4 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4
15/XI/22 - 33cl bottle from Geers (Oostakker), shared @ home, BB: VIII/2024, bottled: 5/VIII/20, lot: 2020/0006 (2022-1629) Thanks to ElManana for sharing the bottle!
GUSHER ALERT!
Clear dark brown to black beer, big aery irregular beige head, unstable, dissipates quickly, non adhesive. Aroma: very yeasty, apple skin, a bit infected, dirty, stomach acid, pretty oxidized. MF: lively carbon, medium to light body. Taste: roasted, very bitter, unpleasant acidity, watery, coffee, yeasty. Aftertaste: apples and apple skin, roasted, tastes infected to me...
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 7.5
Bottle from Geers. Hazy black, quickly thinning, frothy, beige head. Aroma of prune, fig, liquorice, toast, black tea, orange zest, spices, brambleberry. Taste has sweet dried prune, fig, vague chocolate; herbal-spicy middle with hints of tea & liquorce, rather sourish brambles too, still balanced by a toasty, chocolatey, rusk-like body. Dry, toasty, herbal hoppy finish, vague hint of clove, sourish dark fruits underneath, more tangible coffee ground. Low alcohol warmth too. Medium body, slick texture, fizzy carbonation. Too spritzy, too weirdly sour & herbal, yet drinkable. On a sidenote: racism is despicable, but I cannot help but notice how the biggest 'antiracists' focus the most on skin colour. Think again, people...
Appearance - 2 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 7.5
Double stout using the Black Lives Matter movement as its theme - I can see the link with a black beer style and I am convinced that this is (naively) well-intended, but isn't this, paradoxically perhaps, reaffirming stereotypes a bit? Anyway, a collab with Weathered Souls in San Antonio, Texas, intended as an American style double stout and decidely not an imperial one - for a change. Violent gusher: beer spouting from the bottle neck after lifting the cap for about a millimeter - making me lose about 1/4 to the sink, fortunately the gushing stopped as quickly as it came. Deep ruddy-brownish, remarkably dark, audibly fizzing head - indeed fizzing away like the head on a glass of coke, leaving nothing but an interrupted, wafer-thin ring of tiny bubbles just seconds later - and absolutely nothing at all minutes after that; pitch black robe with a hazy mahogany edge remaining barely visible. Aroma of burnt blackcurrants, brambleberry juice, black toast, coffee grounds, medlar, elderberries, bitter black chocolate, soaking wet leather, bayleaf, wet black peppercorns, hints of stale sweat, apple peel as used in hookah tobacco, some faint salmiak perhaps tucked away in the background. Spritzy onset, overcarbonated for a stout but in a 'fine-bubbled', not too obnoxious way, still leaving room for sweetish-and-sourish impressions of blackberry, red apple, medlar and elderberry; slick body, feeling thinner than its 7+% ABV would suggest. Lightly oily, brown-bready malts very quickly shifting to strong toasty bitterness, burnt toast as it were, though not becoming exaggeratedly ashy; a dim but firm sourish undertone meanwhile runs through the whole, not just from roasted barley, but presumably from mild infection as well (linked to the strong gushing). Ends with considerable roasted bitterness, old black coffee grounds and that sweaty note doubtlessly linked to the infection as well, all paired with a peppery and very leafy hop touch (bitter tree leaves), remaining embedded in black-toasty bitter maltiness and graininess. Earthy notes in the end, ongoing 'foresty' blackberry-like sourness remaining a tad too strong even for a stout, and lots of bitterness balancing on the brink of astringency. I assume this would have been a 'beautiful' black beer if executed correctly, I am all into unpretentious, straightforward stouts (double or not), but my sample clearly suffers a bit from an onsetting infection, manifesting itself in unmanageable (and therefore very unpleasant) gushing, a deep and somewhat 'dirty' sour streak, overcarbonation and overt earthiness in the finish. Too bad, but my - relative - faith in this Antwerp microbrewery so far does not waver. I will not, however, be able to say that anymore if the other Tall Poppy beers that I bought last week, have the same technical problem... As for this one: benefit of the doubt, also out of sympathy with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Appearance - 9 | Aroma - 7.5 | Flavor - 7.5 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 7
Pours intensely black, medium small , darkly tanned stable head. Scent is roasty, intense ashy, burnt, yet has a sweet impression as well (chocolate, dark fruits ). Taste is full, very roasty, bitter start, burnt, ashyness is mild though. Dark chocolate and coffee rise up to the end. Relatively dry, and decently fullbodied. Bit high on the carbonation to my preference. Decent.