Undated bottle drunk on 8/10/06.
Medium-high to high clarity in this bronze/tan-tinted dark brown beer. Some light burgundy tresses when held to the light. Off-white/beige head is initially retained at about one-finger, but rapidly fades to a ring, with fizzy carbonation running about in the liquid. No lacing.
Oxidation, DMS, soggy, nutty, stale malts, some light metallic character and plenty of pasteurization in the nose. So that’s nice. Zippy bitterness on the end, but it almost seems more carbonic and artificially derived, not very hop-like. Some soft brown sugar notes, rather putrid toffee/caramel and almost no yeast apparency, perhaps some acetyldehyde. Well, that will be about enough of that.
The flavor is somewhat oxidized, with a cardboard flavor. Sickly sweet, almost syrupy, underattenuated malt sugars are simple and find no balance. My friend mentioned the whole tea aspect, so it’s funny that other people saw that, and that certainly is a note I find in many dunkels. This however, is just flawed on many levels, showing very poor lagering time. Mouthfeel is fizzy, then watery (apart from the syrupy sweetness). Some light yeast dryness on the end, but it’s a last ditch effort and quite failed. No alcohol apparency. To the drain with you.