The Fundamental Blackhorn
Hornbeer

Copenhagen 7/11-2017. 50 cl bottle from Meny, Østerfælled Torv, Kbh Ø. What looks like a sketchy mole with sunglasses on the label. The version I am drinking holds an ABV of 10.

Pours opaque dark dark brown with small beige head. Settles as thin layer of foam barely covering the surface of the beer. Moderate lacing and retention.

Aroma is strong and rich. Roasted coffee, dark bitter chocolate, dunghill and warm asphalt.

Medium strong carbonation and thick oily palate.

Flavor is strongly sweet but nicely balanced by a solid coffee bitterness. Aftertaste is bitter with sweet notes and surprisingly light for a beer with an ABV of over 10.

Fat, creamy and roasted fellow.

Thick black with a quickly receding chocolate-coloured head. Smells like chocolate syrup. Mostly sweet going down, a bit of alcohol bite, then a bitter aftertaste, maybe from the hops. Oak/Walnut aging barely detectable to me. Quite pleasant anyway

May 2012: Sample at Copenhagen Beer Festival. Pitch black colour, brown head. Strong roasty aroma and flavour with notes of coffee, liquorice, oak and walnuts. Can’t detect the honey. Not too sweet. An excellent and powerful beer!

 

 

 

 

 

had a ways back at a tasting from notes...
Looks black with a deep red edge, has some peaty smoke, licorice, charred wood, faint coffee, earthy top soil, no booze anywhere, I get some grit and a charred finish, intense dark stuff and I'm grooving on it

Pours dark brown, almost black, beautiful frothy tan head.
Aroma has lots of coffee, cocoa, tobacco, roasted malt, little molasses.
Taste is bitter chocolate, cold brewed coffee, moderate amount of hops, bitter finish.

 

 

500ml bottle - so, this is sort of the un-peated Black Magic Woman, then?

This beer pours a solid black abyss, with the barest of red cola basal edges, and two fingers of puffy, very loosely foamy, and quite bubbly dark brown head, which leaves a bit of random descending alien warship lace around the glass as it genially abates.

It smells of roasted caramel malt, some biscuity toffee, a buttered white bread weirdness, cafe-au-lait, weak black licorice, muddled citrus/pine west coast Americana, a free-range ashiness, and some leafy, weedy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is bready and doughy caramel malt, some soused-up toffee measures, raw brown honey-flecked sugar, edgy anise spice, bittersweet cocoa powder, a still hard to love mixed citrus and piney hop bitterness, and some moving in without a permit metallic booziness.

The carbonation is fairly understated in its plainly rendered frothiness, the body a solid medium-heavy weight, and mostly smooth, with a hard to pin down creaminess always at the outer gates, as it were. It finishes generally sweet, the cocoa, honey, and malt seeing to having it their way (apologies to Burger King), alongside the lingering generic hop bitterness.

Overall, this is yet another big-ass brew from this Danish concern, but one with a claim of '120' IBUS. Let's address that, shall we? Ok, nothing here suggests a huge (I can only picture M. Trump right now, fuck) hop offset, but there is just enough actual bitterness hanging around here to keep this offering from going off the proverbial rails.

 

 

 

 

 

Pours black with a dark tan head.
Nose shows liquorice, woody notes, sweet malt, caramel and chocolate fudge.
Heavy and decadent flavours, with lots of roasted malt, some liquorice and a whack of booze.