Cellar Series: Cowboy Breakfast
Põhjala Brewery & Tap Room

Copenhagen 8/2 2021. 33 cl capped and waxed 33 cl bottle from Kvickly at Copenhagen, Central Station, Kbh K. Abstract wet-looking painting on the label. Looks more like a rainy afternoon in Talinn than the prairie.

Pours opaque dark brown with a small beige head. Settles as 0,3 cm thick layer of foam covering the surface of the beer. Moderate lacing.

Aroma is intense with a strong sweet odor mingling with earthy and more sourish bitter fumes. Dark chocolate, caramel and toffee. Bitter coffee. Tobacco and cured leather. Whiff of compost. Dark sweet alcohol.

Light carbonation. Thick, viscous, smooth, soft, fat, almost flat texture.

Flavor is intense with a strong sweetness followed by a medium strong bitterness. Aftertaste is sweet with a boozy streak. Lingering. Finish is sweet with a boozy burn.

Now I can't decide if I ought to move in Põhjala's cellar or if I should become a boozy cowboy.

 

 

Served in a goblet from the bottle.

Appearance: Dark black body with a dark tan head rising a notch over one fingers length off the body.

Smell:

 

Another great one from the Cellar Series.

 

 

Bottle: Poured a pitch-black color stout with a large dark brown foamy head with good retention and some lacing. Aroma of floral coffee notes with some bourbon notes and light chiles notes. Taste is a mix of black chocolate notes with some bourbon and vanilla with light woody notes with some chiles and light fruity notes. Body is pretty full with good carbonation. Interesting mix of flavours but maybe there is just too much going on at the end of the day.

L- Pours jet-black, even a halogen torch held on the back of the glass doesn't get a photon through (versus, often that test reveals a 'black' beer as deep ruby-red). Pours with 1mm mega-ultra-fine bubble tan head.
S- Whisky is the most prominent note. The rest, relatively, seems to hide in obscurity. .... How to rate.... hmmm
T- Boom!, WHISKY!! A MEGA-whisky aspect here. It's so dramatic I struggle to divine anything else. - Ditto above^ -
F- Ok 12.5% is not going to me shy but I've had a dozen beer higher, to 15.4%, and IDR then having quite this 'insane sledge-hammer' ABV% sense to them. It's certainly fun, glad I'm not driving the next 24hours...
O- Good gawd I think I need a lie down after this one. I could say if you don't like whisky don't bother here, BUT then again my wife isn't a fan of whisky at all and she found this one quite OK+interesting.
Might be just a bit too OTT/Drama+$$$ for me to repeat buy.
330ml bottle £5.50 BB: IDK/can't find it at all, either way I imagine this beast perhaps 'never goes off'. Bought from TremblingMadness/York as part of a large pick-your own consignment to London.

 

Pours a pitch-black coloration with a small, fluffy head. Smells of roasted, caramel malt, a strong black currant aroma and lighter chocolate and coffee, with just a hint of vanilla, chili and charred oak also coming through. Taste is a great balance of roasted, caramel, slightly peated malt, black currant, dark, bitter chocolate and coffee, with lighter notes of vanilla, chili peppers and just a hint of tobacco smoke, licorice and bourbon-soaked oak. Finishes with a light/medium bitterness and some black currant, chocolate and coffee lingering in the aftertaste. Full mouthfeel with a medium/rich body and medium carbonation.

While this a very enjoyable Bourbon-barrel-aged Imperial Stout with a strong black currant presence and good chocolate/coffee notes, as well as nice barrel presence of vanilla and musty oak, I would have loved for the coffee and chili additives to come through a bit more strongly here, which kinda remain in the background a lot more than I would like. Overall, I'm kinda torn on this one; while you could argue that it has a rather nice and mellow balance of flavors going on, it's not quite bold enough for my personal expectations, with the coffee being rather subtle and the chili hardly noticeable at all, although the black currant does come through very distinctly here.

Bottle at Las Buenas Pulgas, served in a balloon glass. Black color,.medium brown head with long retention, sticky lacing. Aroma of chocolate, liquorice, prunes, chili, some bourbon and coffee. Full body, creamy texture, good carbonation. Sweet finish. Taste of chocolate, chili, though not much aggressive, prunes, coffee, bourbon, liquorice. Pretty good.

 

 

 

Got this one at the Duvel guy in Utrecht

From a bottle into a snifter
Cellar Series
Bourbon BA imperial stout with chilies, black currant and coffee
Best before 25 October 2020

APPEARANCE: Clear dark brown pour yields a three finger, medium looking, somewhat creamy, light tan head with great retention. Clear black body with higher levels of carbonation evident for the style. Head slowly recedes to a full, creamy cap and leaves lots of lacing on the glass. A splotchy wisp remains until the end leaving some decent lacing as the glass empties. Mediocre color but good head.

SMELL: Huge nose on this one. Lots of coffee, sweet vanilla cream, some butterscotch, oak, and bourbon for sure. Some dark chocolate, slightly smoky chili aromas, licorice notes and wood. Really aromatic and decadent.

TASTE: Oak, roasted coffee, vanilla cream and lots of booze up front. Flavorful. Some light chili and wood character at the swallow with a good dose of spicy alcohol as well. Bold and lingering finish of slightly roasted, bitter coffee, sweet vanilla and toffee flavors, butterscotch, all trying to peak out from under a blanket of woody booze. This is quite woody and spirit heavy all the way through, unfortunately.

PALATE: Medium body and slightly higher levels of carbonation on the palate. Lighter than most in the style, creamy enough for sure, goes down fine and finishes a bit drier. Some decent heat lingers.

OVERALL: This is definitely a woody spirit bomb if there ever was one. The nose starts out really nice but in the flavor department, the spirit just takes over, and not in an overly good way. This seems as if they just dumped few bottle of Jim Beam into the tank before bottling. I can imagine there was way too much bourbon in the barrels still and instead of emptying them and letting the beer sit in the barrels for a long time, the spirit was left in there and the beer was in and out rather quickly. These guys are definitely one of my favorite in Europe but this one is a little abrasive.

 

12 ounce bottle, I think it’s dated but I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out. Poured into teku glass.
Pours on the darker side of dark brown, big foamy head with excellent lacing. The nose is baker’s chocolate, ash, charred wood. Starts out with sweet maple, black currant, dark fruit, then transitions into really roasty, char and a ton of lingering smoke. The smoke just stays and stays.
Really complex, really interesting but the amount of smoke bothers me and I had to knock the taste category down for me.