Single Malt Dark Munich
Cismontane Brewing Company

In a world where the hop series and yeast series has been performed, perhaps it was inevitable to see someone pick up on the malt series. I'm going dark for this one. 500 ml bottle purchased and consumed at Cismontane Santa Ana. On to the beer:

Dark Munich is a dark copper colored beer with a short head on top. Specs of visible sediment stick out slightly from the body of the beer. Not much retention of head. But its nose is sweet and brings a fruitiness to it. Sweet bread, bread crust, dates, sweet and solid.

For a quick second, the taste of a kiss of dark chocolate sets the table for this beer. It remains sweet like the aroma, with bread crust, dates, and even husk accenting the flavor. The beer has a light body, is gentle, and to me makes itself a dunkel which is a pleasure to drink.

 

 

 

From the Cismontane single malt series using all Munich malt from Best Malz, sampled alongside the vienna and pilsner variants.

Pours dark orange-amber , cloudy with the best head pour of the variants, stark white, almost a full finger with decent retention and flecks of lacing on the glass.

A bit of roast with layered sweet bread, the house yeast imparts a noticeable sourdough note to couple with the added complexities of the darker vinous fruit, cider and red berries.

Despite the color of this beer I found this one to have the least amount of sweetness, crusty bread, and grain husks form the foundation. The house yeast adds a green apple tartness with a backing of gentle and dry red wine/vinous fruit. Finish is slightly tart and bready like a mild sourdough.

All of the beers in this series possess barely adequate carbonation and an overly substantial body for their respective styles. Alcohol is a non factor but the slightly tart note near the finish of this beer knocks out any drying feel leaving the heavy body to linger.

The vinous fruit flavor from this beer is off putting though it is just personal preference. I found the clean breadiness of this malt type to be supreme to its brothers. Overall I think the idea of a single malt series is original and interesting though alone these beers would all be sub-par. I wish they were made a bit lighter, analyzing one atop another was a challenge.

We've all seen the single hop IPAs in the market and there exists brewers like White Labs that dabble in yeast, bravo to Cismontane for bringing malt into play. All we need now is a collaboration of brewers to do a single source water series.