Ramen To Bíiru
Mikkeller ApS

Look - copper color with nice rimming and lacing
Smell and taste - slightly spiced malty body with a slight belgianish yeast
Feel - light and dry
Overall - ok

Taste; tart tangy, sweet bread, semi sour dark fruit notes, slight acidic, Brett yeast character. Funky, tart bread yeast nose too. Dark amber hue, mostly hazy, super tall foam cake from live yeast, sticky lattice on glass. Medium/full body.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11.2oz bottle best by 12/15/17 poured into a Teku glass
A: Fairly hazy brown with a huge head that required a very slow pour
S: Brett, grain, hay, barnyard
T: Brett bomb. Some hay/barnyard/tropical fruit/funk
M: Medium-bodied, crisp, pleasant carbonation
O: Certainly unique. If you don't like funk avoid it, if you do give it a try

Pours a deep golden color with an intense foamy head, the beer itself is a little over carbonated. Good clarity though and no sediment.

Aroma of hay, malt, slight fruit, a bit of barnyard.

The taste is Brett influenced funk with dry grain in the finish. Very dry and carbonated and the funk is pleasant though restrained. White pepper, damp hay, sweet malt and faint lemongrass.

Overall, it's a decent dry Belgian pale, a bit nicer than most American made versions of a Belgian pale or Brett beer; Brewed at De Proef there is little mistaking why.

330ml bottle, with some strange D & D artwork on the label, and the name nowhere to be found, in English, anyway. Purportedly made for the restaurant of the same name run by Mikkeller in Copenhagen (ramen and beer).

This beer pours a clear, medium copper amber colour, with a teeming tower of puffy, chunky, and fizzy ecru head, which leaves some random splattered and sudsy lace around the glass as it very lazily subsides.

It smells of gritty and grainy pale malt, a lesser caramel sweetness, old wet socks, an earthy yeastiness, indistinct sugary fruit, and very plain leafy and floral noble hop bitters. The taste is bready and doughy caramel malt, a twinge of biscuity toffee, laid-back Brett funk, some tropical stone fruitiness, a bit of white wine must, and more understated leafy, grassy, and floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is quite active in its mouth-filling frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and mostly smooth, just that twitch of Brett funkiness scratching at my proverbial hull. It finishes off-dry, the lingering caramel malt really only contending with that persistently gentleman-like Brett character.

Overall, this is certainly one of the more enjoyable Brett-infected pale ales that I have yet to come across - the big caramel malt sweetness doing well to off-set the acrid funk factor. Easy to drink, and somewhat engaging, I'm guessing that this would go well with something hot and spicy from the titular ramen resto.

 

 

sometimes i write something negative about a beer and i read it later and it makes me sad, like i forget this is public and i might have hurt some feeling someplace or whatever, and it makes the whole idea of being critical about beer seem futile, and i hate that. then i think about how i try to be objective and all, and the i see the haters. objective criticism and hatred are two different things, and in these trying times (beer and certainly otherwise), i think the line gets especially blurry. mikkeller can open all the restaurants they want, only the rich and lucky of us will visit them all (denmark, thailand, iceland, japan, cali, whereverthehellelse), but i think its way too easy to be negative. this beer is a bretty pale ale, hoppy and belgian at the same time, dry and funky, sessionable for miles, interesting, distinct, even a powerful aphrodisiac with a little context. mikkeller knows no boundaries, and thats what attracts me to this beer the most. i always get the unexpected, even when i expect the unexpected, i am still surprised. this is some desert island swill, and i would happily rot away on that island if this was cold and fresh. haters be damned, doomed, and cast away! palm tree shade dwellers rise up, hammocks swing, ale flow. some tuna nigiri with my fingers from my chest, no soy sauce...