Paradox - Islay (Batch 001)

Bottle at The Cad’s Pure Mad Rocket Mon The Beezer Tasting in 2010. Pours opaque brown with light bubbles for a head. Lightly attenuated aroma, with some brown sugar, hard alcohol and roasted malts. Flavor is nice and sweet with very mellow peat, light char and roast, and faint cocoa. Medium bodied with soft carbonation, it seems a tad thin. Sweet finish with dark malts and further notes of peat and roast. Very, very good.

21st September 2008. Opaque black beer. Heavy smoky peaty whisky dominates but there is a sweet lactose milky tone as well. Initally I found this beer hard work but it ultimately provided some rewards for perseverence.

A deep dark stout with almost no head, of white. The aroma on this is quite intense and interesting: tobacco, leather, phenolics, wood essence, bitter chocolate, whiskey barrels and tar. In mouth, a nice sweetish and peaty chocolate, with light sweet fruity notes, intense yet subdued, complex yet almost quaffable. Bieropholie import, BB 03/03/2010.

bb 01/01/10 # 001 pours dark brown, mocha head. aroma was reminiscent of a previous Brewdog, lots of smoke, char ashes in the nose that seemed almost too much, thin whiskey. flavor, lots of wood, burnt ashed to the max, char overly present. Interesting beer but the overall mouthfeel turns this experience in something that wasn’t for my palate. As the beer warmed up, the whiskey became a little more present with some chocolate malts though everything was ruined by this overly dry ash/wood/tobacco.

12 oz bottle from Liquid Solutions Batch 001 BB 1/1/10. Nose of smoke, chocolate, and more smoke. Black with an almost nonexistent head. Flavor is charred whiskey barrels with a slight whiskey note and some chocolate, the charred character simply overpowers the rest of the flavors.

bottle from plan-b. bbf 30-12-2008. as Batch 006. sampled 05-03-2009 dark brown almost black, small thick light brown head. peaty , hoppy, smoky aroma. not as extreme as i had expected. a little vanilla perhaps?. well rounded. flavor has distinct islay characters, smoked peat, sweetness, vanilla, toward the end it gets more bitter and charchoal and smokey. ends very smokey and roasted. 10% alc. totally hidden. If you like stuff like laphoriagh you’ll love this flavor.

Brown bottle, 330 ml, best before 03/03/10, via Importations Privées Bièropholie (directly from the brewer’s personal reserve as we had ordered too many cases!), savoured on January 9 2009; eye: black, opaque, tiny ring of cappuccino head, slight lacing; nose: lots of peat and smoke, powerful, roasted almost burnt malt; mouth: peat, smoke, roasted almost burnt malt, light wood, slight hops, light pepper, light saltiness, very long finale in peat with a good presence of smoke, medium-full body, inky feel, lightly bitter, light astringency, lightly oily texture, not much carbonation; overall: quite good FRANÇAIS Bouteille brune, 330 ml, meilleure avant 03/03/10, via Importations Privées Bièropholie (directement de la réserve personnelle du brasseur car on en avait trop commandé!), savourée le 9 janvier 2009; œil : noire, opaque, très petit anneau de mousse cappuccino, très légère dentelle; nez :beaucoup de tourbe et de fumée, puissance, boisé, malt rôti presque brûlé; bouche : tourbe, fumée, malt rôti presque brûlé, léger boisé, très léger houblon, léger poivre, léger salé, très longue finale en tourbe avec une bonne présence de fumée, corps moyen-corsé, sensation d’encre, légèrement amère, légère astringence, texture légèrement huileuse, peu carbonatée; en résumé : très bonne