Domino Real Estate
Mikkeller ApS

 

330ml bottle - made in conjunction with something called Domino - I'll have to look that up. How is this not a Belgian Strong Pale Ale?

This beer pours a clear, bright medium golden yellow colour, with a teeming tower (natch) of puffy, loosely foamy, and fizzy dirty white head, which leaves some splendid tacky webbed lace around the glass as it very slowly abates.

It smells of semi-sweet, grainy pale malt, Belgian yeast, indistinct earthy spice, very well blended citrus and pome fruity esters, and some plain leafy, weedy, and perfumed floral hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy pale malt, a lesser edgy wheatiness, some reduced phenolic Low Countries yeastiness, simple syrup, ethereal tropical fruit, a tame earthy and musty hoppiness, and some subtle metallic booziness.

The bubbles are fairly restrained in their gentle-seeming frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and mostly smooth, with only a small alcohol astringency poking its nose in here where it's not really wanted. It finishes off-dry, the mixed sugars tempered by subtle hop and booze alike.

Overall, this is a pretty agreeable brew, one lacking the typical yeasty overkill of the contract brewery in question. A solid Belgian-style golden ale (no idea where the American conceit here comes from - oh, right), with no real flaws, and rather easy to put back for its north of 16-proof wowee sauce quotient.

a golden strong ale with a goofy label in collaboration with domino records. i dont quite like it as much as the white lung they did together, but its another interesting beer very much fitting into the mikkeller portfolio. im not sure there are any crazy spices or ingredients or processes at work here, but the beer is interesting enough. clear honey colored with an inch of white head. it smells like candy sugar a little bit, belgian golden without the belgian yeast it seems, more of an english doughy ale yeast with a fresh fruit profile in there too. its quite hoppy and sweet at the same time in the taste. bitter in the end, but fighting through a white sugar thing, this easily could have been fermented down to over 9% if all the sugar were to be eaten. notes of pineapple and booze in here, vegetal hops, seemingly simple but also sort of unique at the same time, a little oxidation too, which seems weird in a newer beer. mikkeller is such a prolific brewer, not everything can be delicious and world class, but its all very interesting beer, they have a special ability for that. worth trying if you like the curious strong ales, price was right too...