Molten Moonlight
De Zwarte Bron in Sint-Pauwels, East Flanders, Belgium 🇧🇪
Stout - Imperial Regular|
Score
7.38
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tderoeck (22946) reviewed Molten Moonlight from De Zwarte Bron 1 year ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8.5
2/XI/24 - 33cl bottle from the brewer, shared @ home, BB: n/a, lotnr: D2B202306 (2024-1179) Thanks to Jan for sharing the bottle!
Clear dark brown to black beer, creamy beige head, a little stable, non adhesive. Aroma: good roast, quite some chocolate, a bit dusty, dried fruits, dates, prunes, some raisins. MF: soft carbon, medium to full body. Taste: good roast, bitter, pretty sourish touch, sweet malts, a bit oxidized, dried fruits, lots of alcohol, nice! Aftertaste: sweet, good roast, dried fruits, chocolate, caramel touch, more dark chocolate, nice stuff!
Benzai (24654) reviewed Molten Moonlight from De Zwarte Bron 1 year ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 8
Bottle at home. Opaque black color, average sized light brown colored head. Aroma and flavor are malts, dark malts and a little roasty. After a while some chocolate notes come through. Chocolate malty bitters, bitter finish in general. Medium body, smooth texture, decent but also a bit fizzy carbonation. Quite alright.
Alengrin (11675) reviewed Molten Moonlight from De Zwarte Bron 2 years ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7.5 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8
Only (briefly) after having marketed a few flavoured 'impies', De Zwarte Bron in Sint-Pauwels (a village in between Sint-Niklaas and Stekene in East Flanders) offers this 'plain' imperial stout without any additions or barrel ageing - seemingly reversing the natural order of things, but all the more interesting if you are familiar with this brewery's house style. Medium thick, pale greyish beige, regularly shaped head breaking quickly in the middle but retaining well around the edge and in flat 'islands' in the middle; black robe with wafer thin burgundy edge. Quite powerful bouquet of dark chocolate and chocolate liqueur, dry caramel, walnut oil, nougat, candied figs, burnt currants, whisky, cold cappuccino, brandy-filled Belgian chocolates, almond, wet leather, hints of powder sugar, blackberry jam, black tea, liquorice, shoe polish. Dense onset, dark fruitiness hinting at dried fig, dried blackberries and plum jam, sweet but nowhere too much so, with a slight sourish undertone; quite lively carbonation for the style, with certain minerally effects, but not disturbingly so. Full, oily body, layers of dark-chocolatey, caramelly and pecan-nutty malts filling the mouth cavity, sweet at first with more emphasis on the chocolatey part, but drying a bit further on - though not developing full-fledged roasted bitterness, even though a coffeeish, 'warm' bitterness is certainly present, reinforced by a leafy hop bitter element. Slight spicy aspects retronasally (black peppercorns and a dash of liquorice), blending well with the dark fruitiness and full 'black' maltiness, while everything is warmed - and in that sense amplified - by brandy-like alcohol, unsurprisingly of course at this strength. Toffeeish and chocolatey sweetness lingers, but an elegant coffee note does too, not from added coffee this time but from malts alone. Not the oldskool roasty and dry 'English style' imperial stout I was prepared for, but a sweet, creamy, warming, chocolatey imperial stout the American way, and in that sense very 'in sync' with what the present-day craft beer consumer expects from the genre. I will not try to hide that the brewer has been a personal friend of mine for decades but in trying to remain as unbiased as possible, I think this beer's very quality simply speaks for itself, and I can safely state that it even exceeds my expectations, biased or not. This is full-blown postmodern craft brewing, totally detached from Belgian traditions (in contrast with many other Belgian attempts at strong stouts which often still show a 'Belgian' spiciness or fruitiness) and doubtlessly appealing to a more seasoned craft beer audience, even without all the frills and barrel ageing trends. I am very sincerely impressed - cheers Jan, this is liquid gold, or 'moonlight', indeed.