Can shared thanks to Razvan. Gusher. Brown with beige head. Sweet malts, cola, dusty, light nutty, caramel. Over medium sweet, light bitter. Over light bodied, bit astringent aftertaste. Meh.

‘Münchener’ Dunkel brewed in Abidjan in Ivory Coast, in one of Solibra’s plants (the beer and soft drink group owned by South Africa’s Castel). As is commonly the case in African beer, the plant brews beers from different brands that appear in various countries; Guinness is among them, next to – obviously – the different brands owned by mother company Castel. This Doppel Munich originally comes from Bracongo, the brewery founded in 1949 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, also owned by Castel. This Ivory Coast version differs from the original Congolese one – which I had in Brussels years ago – in being 1% ABV less strong, strangely… Anyway, thanks to Ruben for this 50 cl bottle. Mousy, pale greyish off-white, open and thin (and eventually dissolving), shred-lacing head on a deep brown-copper beer with rustic wine red hue, as good as clear, with tiny but lively bubbles of carbon dioxide throughout. Aroma of old dusty caramel candy, pecan nuts, old tea bags, stale cookies, some iron but not as strong as I was fearing, brown bread dough, old dried thyme. Sweetish onset, clean and straightforwardly malty, caramelly throughout with very faint fudge-, ground hazelnut- and old stale cookie-like edges as well as a light metallic aspect, medium to actually quite softly carbonated with a soft, bit glueish mouthfeel; a light herbal (old tea bags, old thyme) hop bitterish accent pops up in the end but the caramel sweet malt profile prevails. Simplistic, but not necessarily more so than the average traditional European Dunkel and less ‘artificial’ than I was fearing – seems like a tasting of African beers can be less dreary than I expected. Not bad at all in its context, at least the same level of quality as its somewhat stronger Congolese original.