Very lively and highly carbonated but luckily no gusher. Black with intense and thick head. Aroma has plenty of roasted malts also the fruitiness of chilli. Starts prickly. Like needles in the tongue. Later dark chocolate, roasted malts and fruity chilli.

Now here's an interesting one, at least conceptually: a variation on Broers Imperial Stout fermented with a kveik yeast strain and spiced with - wait for it - 'homegrown' Carolina Reaper peppers, one of the hottest pepper varieties in the world (I had no idea these Broers brothers grew their own hot peppers - gives me ideas). Bottle from De Hopduvel shared with Craftmember. Opens with a mean hiss and gunsmoke - but no gushing. Very thick, foamy, plaster-like lacing, yellowish beige-white, rocky head, slowly thinning over a black beer with thin and hazy burgundy edges. Aroma of black coffee powder, cocoa nibs or unsugared black chocolate, iron, dried blackberries, dry bayleaf, chili flakes or indeed dried chili peppers, smoked horsemeat, old dry cigars, hint of hard caramel, toasted brown bread. Sweetish onset, dried prunes, dried figs, very fizzy carb for this style - in fact, overcarbonated for whichever style; still full, dry-caramelly, toffeeish maltiness, remaining restrained in sweetness and quickly shifting to a full-blown roasted bitterness (as in black coffee grounds) - even a bit ashy towards the end. Black coffee and black pepper impressions linger along a burnt toast-like 'breadiness' with a slight metallic edge, but before this all comes to full fruition, a long, heating, burning chili effect from the Carolina Reapers sets in, aided by a gin-like alcohol warmth - and spicing up the finish considerably, even though a yeasty breadiness and coffeeish 'roastiness' remain too. Ends very dry, with that chili maintaining its heat for a long time. I did not see this coming at all - Broers' parcours has been a 'hit or miss' one to me in their years of existence with more misses than hits, but this one certainly is not entirely a miss to me. However, this is, more than average, a very personal annotation for me, because two things are to be taken into consideration here: first and foremost, this beer is strongly overcarbonated and needs to be redone in this respect. Secondly and more importantly, though: your appreciation of this hyper-spicy beer will depend on your personal capsaicin tolerance, and frankly I cannot see this work on the average Belgian market - Carolina Reapers are hot to a degree hardly anyone here knows about, die hard pepper fans aside, and strong stouts are difficult enough to the traditional Belgian palate as it is. I personally can take a whole lot of capsaicin, however, certainly to Belgian standards, and even if this brew is a bit of a one-trick pony, it deserves praise for being this bold and daring on a market which is definitely not ready to embrace such an experiment. Have a point for that alone, ignoring the mere technical error of being overcarbonated - work on this issue, Broers, and you will have a craft beer with balls. Fermenting it with kveik yeast seems like an unnecessary effort amidst this kind of intensity, though...

Bottle from Geers. Cloudy black, stable, foamy, beige head. Aroma initially of green & red apple, giving an infected feel, making way for toast, fig, black pepper, red bell pepper, mandarin peel, chocolate nibs, mocha.Taste has sweetish fig & prune with a sourish berry edge, strong toasty maltiness along with bitter chocolate & coffee roast, spicy undercurrent building towards a peppery hoppy finish, chili burn coming in strongly, overpowering the 'stoutish' roastedness. Chili lingers on but really has that vegetable aspect like bell peppers, rather than a spicy accent colouring the roasted base profile. Medium body, slick texture, lively (over!)carbonation. Aromawise, it just gives an infected or perhaps too young impression. Tastewise, overcarbonation mixes with the chili which the Stout character cannot keep in check. I just cannot enjoy this one unfortunately.