Sammy
Cellar West Artisan Ales

looks more brown in the glass than black, but another mature and interesting farmy brett beer from cellar west. as much as a lot of them taste like they use the same brett culture and are thus really similar in their fermentation profiles more or less across the board, they seem to have it dialed in pretty well with whatever they are using, and i cant complain. its cool in this dark ale, almost like a funky schwarzbier, with a light body against the deeper grain flavors, really pretty compelling stuff. its also uniquely hoppy, so that the bitterness of the roasted grain meets with the hoppy bitterness before the finish and washes the palate in a rather intense round of flavors and sensations. there is light smoke, dark cocoa, burnt wood, and some fluffiness to the grain, barley and wheat together most likely, and there is a great funk to the brett here, very mature and developed, nice with the oak, rustic, dank, wet animal, burlap, earthy and weird, lightly medicinal like iodine too, but it isnt sour really, almost a lambic sort of funk to it, very cool with the dark grain. i thought the hops might make it seem fresher or fruity or something, but they dont, nicely bitter and lightly piney without adding any new school hop character to this hardly at all. dry at the end, some roast lingers with the hops, better carbonation than it looks like it should have on the bottle pour, real lively feeling. overall another cool brett beer from these guys, who remain one of the more underrated operations in colorado in my opinion...