Bouteille @ ACBF2011. Brune foncée, mousse moka. Arôme malt grillé, fruité avec note de chocolat et de chêne. La vanille si il y en a est très bien cachée ce qui est un peu décevant. En bouche, la vanille est déjà un peu plus en avant mais reste dominée par le malt et le chocolat. J’y note aussi pas mal de grains pour un palais qui est aussi assez épais. Malt utilisé rappelle le carapils et est aussi accompagné de qcq fruits noirs. On peut y noter le chêne qui donne une touche boisé. La vanille reste un peu comme le nom de cette bière présente mais pas seule élément de cette bière. Une bière qui dans son ensemble n’est pas mauvaise par rapport au style, mais qui ne répond pas vraiment à mes attentes par rapport à ce que j’attendais de la vanille.

Bouteille @ ACBF2011. Noire, fine mousse beige. Arôme léger de moka, chocolat avec des résidus de chêne et un côté finement épicé ainsi que accompagné de qcq fruits. En bouche, l’épice du chêne ressort sans pour cela prendre le dessus, cela accompagne parfaitement le moka qui en final laisse un fini allant vers la réglisse. Le malt et chocolat sont épais au palais et forment une sorte de fudge. A noter aussi, un peu de café ou espresso avec l’alcool qui est réchauffant. Un très bel effort de cette brasserie allemand qui n’a pas peur d’innover.

Bottle. Musty lemon, sour milk, and smokey malt aroma. Hazy golden yellow color with small head. Tart lemon peel and lightly smokey malt flavor. Fairly light body. Very interesting - a nice easy drinking beer.

375ml bottle from Bierkompass

A pretty unique mix of wheat beer, lambic and smoked beer. Aroma has hints of smoked ham and taste is sour.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I got the bottle and how big it was and all of that fonefan kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece they knew how much effort I put into getting rare beers. Besides, I’m not going to tell you about my whole goddamn beerhunting history or anything. I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that I tasted in Munich around last Oktoberfest just before I got pretty partied-out and had to come here to dry out a bit.

My host, Jonas, picked up my notebook the next day after a big session and read my rating for Freigeist Caulfield out loud. “Would you care to hear what you had to say?”

“Not very much.”

He read it anyway. You can’t stop that guy when he wants to do something. He just does it.

“Imperial stouts are a type of beer in the stout family. The latter are part of the ale family, of top-fermenting beers.”

I had to sit there and listen to that crap. It certainly was a dirty trick.

“Imperial stouts are extremely interesting to us today for a variety of reasons. Modern brewers would still like to know what the secret ingredients were that the English brewers used when they sent the imperial stouts to Tsarist Saint Petersburg. This interesting riddle is still quite a challenge to modern brewing in the twenty-first century.”

He put the notebook down. I was beginning to sort of hate him. “Your rating, shall we say, ends there,” he said in this very sarcastic voice. You wouldn’t think a German guy would be so sarcastic at all. “However, you scribbled a little note at the bottom of the page.”

“That is all I know about Freigeist Caulfield. I can’t seem to get much aroma out of it besides rich dark fruits and dark sugars, and the plummy notes and sugar-fruitcake character are very interesting. It’s all right as an old ale, it flunks as an imperial stout, and I don’t get much rye out of it anyway.”

He put the goddamn notebook down and looked at me like he’d just beaten the hell out of me in ping-pong or something.

Bottled (from bierkompass.de) Golden colour, not much head. Aroma is fruits, mild sour wooden notes mild smoked notes. Flavour is sour wood, mild smoked wet wood and some brutal sweetish notes, others tried saying it’s very smoked and brutal, sadly I did’n’t find those notes too much.

Bottle at a tasting. Huge thanks to Roman for this bottle. Black with a light brown head. Aroma of coffee, roasted malt, some wood notes, chocolate and acidic fruity notes. Sourish-sweetish flavor with berries, some chocolate and acidic coffee. Medium-full-bodied. Nice and interesting.

Pours viscous, and first almost headless, but a small dark-beige head slowly builds up afterwards from the dark cola-coloured beer. Very vinous nose, liquorice in quite a good measure, and som strange, syrupy sugar; touches of alcohol. Sourish mix with more liquorice and stoutlike burnt/roasted notes, masking the syrupiness beneath. Bit aggressive taste, and a MF that borders on astringency. Quite carbonated, some alcoholwarming. Sticky liquorice keeps hanging around, certainly warming up. I’m just not totally convinced...

Bottle at a tasting. Huge thanks to Koelschtrinker for this bottle! Hazy golden with a white head. Fruity nose with some slightly meaty smokiness and wheat. Sour flavor with wheat, a bit of bread, lactic acid, a bit of yogurt, fruits, some nice smokiness and a citric notes in the finish. Light-medium-bodied. A nice one.

At a tasting, thanks DSG, very little head, hazy lightish orange colour, aroma of wine vinegar, green olives, lemon and a touch of vanila, flavour of brine, with al ight smokiness and a touch of fruit in the back, piercing balanced sourness with a touch of bitterness lurking in the back, Extremely enjoyable.