Explosive bottle; black color. Light aroma, delicate roasted malt, light vanilla. A good Porter, quite velvety, nice coffeish note, with just a vanilla touch; some residual sweetness. Would be a very good Porter, better without the vanilla.

Bottled. Dark brown with rich head. Strong aroma of cocoa and cinnamon. Sweet, roasty anmd fairly mild with clean mouthfeel and lots and lots of cocoa powder flavour. Herbal spices rather than bitterness in the finish. Another pleasant beer from Nøgne Ø.

Nearly black beer; creamy beige head, quite stable. I nearly swallowed my Adam’s apple, when at the end of the bottle, the yeast left the bottle in one loud splash. Nose of black cardemoms, sweet frying fat (zoete lies), leafy, even earthy. Again baadi elaachi , some leafy, and chocolatey notes; typical stout-like malt flavours, but without the associated acidity. The little salty touch is there, however, as well a discreet malty sweetness, getting almondy warming up. Quite carbonated, medium bodied, slightly viscous texture. Another excellent beer from this Norse brewery. The Dolle Brouwers from the High North?

A dark brown beer with a small collapsing brown head. The aroma is sweet malty with notes of licorice. The flavor is very sweet with notes of cinnamon, licorice, and milk chocolate.

(Bottle conditioned, 500 ml). The good people of Nøgne Ø have brewed as many as 4 different Yule/Christmas beers for the Yuletide of 2004. "God Jul" and "Julesnadder" are continued from last year with revised recipes, new ones are "Underlig Jul" and this one, their vanilla porter "Julenatt" (= Yule/Christmas Night). Black colour, thick tan head. Aroma of vanilla, roasted malts, hot chocolate and dark fruits. Flavour is rather sweet, dominant vanilla, roasted malts, coffee and plenty of chocolate. A roast and hop bitterness make the aftertaste tolerable. Nice for a change of pace, a decent "dessert beer" for those with a sweet tooth. But like I said in my rating of another vanilla beer: "there’s probably a reason most beers DON’T smell and taste strongly of vanilla". I’m not a big vanilla fan, but for those who don’t mind, this is probably as good as it gets.