Darth Vapor
Gistgeest in Deurne, Antwerp, Belgium 🇧🇪
Porter - Smoked Regular|
Score
6.89
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Sloefmans (15519) reviewed Darth Vapor from Gistgeest 2 years ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6.5 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 7
Shortlived cream head over cola-coloured beer. Chili, roast, smoke, wood, charcoal; hints at ketjap. Pipe tobacco, watercolour paint. Restrained smoke, even more restrained chili. Roast and remarkably devoid of sweetness. Medium bodied; medium carbonation; bit oily feel. Better, more restrained as expected. Interesting. Txs to Stef!
Alengrin (11675) reviewed Darth Vapor from Gistgeest 4 years ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5
One of the newer Antwerpian Gistgeest beers, a smoked porter flavoured with chipotle peppers. Foamy, towering high, pure beige, pillowy, loudly crackling head, leaving very little lacing but settling as a medium sized, slowly opening layer of mousse, black robe with thin mahogany edges. Aroma of coffee grounds, indeed dried chili peppers (quite clearly), burnt toast, dried prunes, smoked bacon touch as promised, old raisins, brown bread crust, fried plantain, toffee, ground pecan nuts, hints of cola, dry cookies, tea, dry earth, moist nutmeg. Fruity onset, dried prunes, some vague pear and baked banana, dried apple peel, very fizzy carbonation (bit much for a porter of any kind really) adding a stingy and sourish feel, continuing well into the middle when toasty, brown-bready and eventually roasted coffee maltiness unfolds, with a little bit of caramelly sweetness but much more toasty and eventually roasted to even slightly ashy bitterness. The smoked element remains subtle, but noticeable as a smoked bacon accent in the end, when the chipotle effect also reveals itself in the form of a mild but unmistakable 'piquanterie'. The chili heat remains however equally gentle as the smokiness, so that this coffee grounds-like roasted bitterness keeps prevailing, emphasized by a leafy hop bitter note. Yeasty accents linger in the end, but not to the point where it becomes annoying, though I probably would have preferred a somewhat cleaner profile, with less ashiness and breadiness and more chipotle spice and Rauchmalz - and, perhaps even more than anything, less of that annoyingly fizzing overcarbonation. Alaskan Smoked Porter, the archetype of the smoked porter substyle, seems insufficiently known here... Still, to local Belgian standards, this is not a bad effort, it is quite a 'feisty' little beer with enough darkness and punch to more or less justify the Darth Vader association - which to me (as a Star Wars fan) was probably the foremost reason for buying this bottle in the first place.