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dark

just one more

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Just what I was hoping for, another stout!  And it is an imperial, and a pretty good alcohol content too.  Oso Brewing has put on an almost sinister label, warning the weak off it I guess.  Called La Penúltima, it plays on Spanish drinking culture, where every drink the next to last.  At 15% I wonder if this one wouldn’t send you home right after, though. 

It pours out like chocolate syrup, and even has a little bit of that smell around it. It isn’t an overly sugary kind of chocolate, a little bit sharp, something you wouldn’t actually drink on its own, but use as a flavoring. The beige head deflates a little but stays firm looking if a little thinner. The chocolate carries over into the taste, giving the beer a rich chocolate shake feeling. It’s dark chocolate of course, so not cloyingly sweet, but there’s hardly any bitter to be noticed. It doesn’t leave much aftertaste behind, but there is a kind of feeling of weight that does stay. Oddly, the beer itself feels very smooth and light. It is a lot like a gourmet milkshake, with the high quality dark chocolate and natural, fatty milk. It’s a treat for sure, maybe so much that it has to be…the ultimate.

to the top

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Suddenly, a large can!  I almost expect it to be a low or even another non-alcoholic beer, but it is Penthaus, Attik Brewing’s weizen bock.  A good style to fiddle with, connected to a very seasonally influencing country.  What I wonder is if it will lean into a champagne taste to go with its name.

It’s oddly dark for a weizen, but bubbly and sporting a jaunty little white head. The aroma is very standard beery, a little malty and a little grainy. The flavor is sweet-and-sour, with a little bitter punch at the end, sort of a reminder of warmer days past. Although bocks can have a sweeter and maltier flavor, this one’s almost sugary presentation is a bit of a surprise. The beer also has a pretty heavy mouthfeel, more like what you expect from bocks. It’s clean enough at first, but starts to layer up over the course of many sips. Certainly not champagne, or even cava, with enough attention you can start to sense clove and other spices sneaking out, but it’s definitely a more modern iteration of its style.

in the shadows

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So finally we had some rain yesterday, a good day for sitting in the window and sipping on a nice dark beer.  I kept my porter until today, though.  When I was browsing, there it was, sitting proudly on the shelf, all in its brown bottle, like a cone of chocolate.  Onso porter might not have that chocolate touch, though, being porter rather than stout.  There will probably be a little fruitiness to it, which is acceptable.  Now that it’s not 100 damn degrees out, even a little black beer stickiness won’t be so bad.  Cerveza Rodonda, show me what you got.

Extra foamy, and I’m a little surprised the bottle didn’t overflow on opening. The head is barely tinted beige, but the beer carries a pretty good dark color. It’s dark brown, not black, but good enough. There isn’t a strong puff of aroma at first, but letting it sit out allows just a hint of pickled plum to waft out and settle over the area near the bottle. In the glass there’s more of a light raisiny scent. The taste also has a lot of dried fruit rather than fresh, prunes and raisins over plums or apples. As a porter I would expect it to have some fruit to it, and along these lines. It’s a very subtle and unassuming flavor, displaying a little heft in the mouth but going down softly and not leaving hardly anything behind. Left to its own devices, the beer develops a wisp of smoke in the aftertaste, adding some interest and complexity to a solid but otherwise simple brew.

Supplier: Birra Y Paz

Price: €3.70

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