Neptune (The Mystic)
Bell's Brewery - Eccentric Café & General Store

2016 notes:

At last, the final movement of Holst's The Planets as beer-sonified by Bell's. A little light and lilting in the opening passages. I'd better open the bottle before things really get going.

Bell's Neptune the Mystic.

Alc. 9% by Vol.

Solid blackness, with a slim, cocoa-tinged head.

Aroma starts out rich and fruity, dates, figs, plum and peppers, with sweetness replaced by an increasing heat. Interesting to say the least. What else is in here? Sweetness and spice and now turning dry, showing alcohol. Ever-evolving aromas.

Let's drink it down already, while the music seems more mysterious and magical. Just listening to it, I feel like I'm floating past the big blue planet.

In the mouth, it's rich and malty, chocolate and espresso notes on the palate. Heat starts to stir things up a bit, for I know there are peppers involved here, somewhere. Full-bodied, good and thick, but not undrinkable. Lots of flavors playing around in this, some molasses with the peppery heat trickling in.

From the front: "Ale brewed with black pepper, hickory bark, dandelion root, spices, molasses, and maple syrup with cayenne peppers, star anise, raisins and dates added. " Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. Everything but eye of newt or wing of bat.

But it works. It's never too everything. There's good balance here. The hotter elements don't dominate, and the others have their time to shine, too. Tasty. Otherworldly. It's a mystic trip, man.

Pours a dark cola color with a khaki head. Smell of chocolate spice and roasted malt. Loads of flavor in this from anise and pepper to licorice,root beer and cola. Mouth feel sweet with ABV hidden, this bottle it’s 5 years old and still has a ton of flavor with a medium mouth feel.

 

Bottled 7/10/15; drank 9/4/15 @ the Yarchives.

A rough pour yielded a small dark khaki head; almost no lace.

Black coffee & mild peppermint notes in the nose.

Medium thick mouthfeel.

Root beer & milk chocolate flavors up front; sarsaparilla & cream notes on the finish.

Faint pepper heat settled on my lips over the course of the session.

Very unique, but stops short of being revelatory.

I'm very excited to try this beer. I never had it fresh so I will not know how age affected it. Bottled 7/10/15. Poured from a 12 oz. bottle into a tulip.
Very little pop from opening the top. But it did manage to create a thin medium colored tan crown. It sits on top of a pitch black brew.
Smells wonderful. A lot going on and I like that. Smell sweetness like maple or molasses mixing with earthy spices (almost similar to a Belgian. Floral and spicy. Can still pick up those cayennes. And some dark fruit as well, like plums or some fig cookies.
Now that I'm even more excited to taste it after smelling it, here we go. So it's not as complex as the smell is. Assuming some things have died off since it was fresh, but I'm getting some sweetness. It's almost like a dried fruit sweetness. Plums or raisins. Amazingly, although it's not much, there is still a kick from the cayennes in there. They stay in the back of the throat.
The mouthfeel is full bodied and has a maple like sticky sweetness but unfortunately pretty flat. It's also not hot but warming from the cayennes. I could see this as being great fresh.
Overall, this didn't disappoint. I had no idea what to expect with an ingredient list this long and what age would've done to those ingredients. I kind of went into this one blind, but I am happy with the outcome. Can't believe it still has that warm kick from the cayennes. This was fun to try.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thin-looking black body that produces a sandy-colored head with no retention- it fades immediately. The nose offers plenty of roasted malts that in turn showcase coffee and dark chocolate, burnt bread crust, and some of the acidity and lots of the bitterness that comes with all of them. There are also faint baking spices. The flavor is powerful but mostly standard IS notes; coffee, dark chocolate, along with some of the promised additives: nut, clove, and bitter licorice. It would be tasty, except there's an awful rancid and bitter finish to it all, leaving an unpleasant lingering flavor. Body is also abnormally thin for this powerful of a beer. It's only medium- weight.
Another flawed addition to a letdown of a series. At the best of times, this one barely broke the surface of averageness, which itself was a flaw considering all the extra ingredients they used but still couldn't get it to stand out. At other times, which was most of the time, it was usually dragged beneath that standard-threshold by the thin body and overly bitter and acidic flavor. The one redeeming fact is that, based on the other beers, and despite the list of ingredients, I wasn't actually expecting much.