Black Kolsch
HighWheel Beerworks (Dorćol Distilling+ Brewing Co.)

A black IPA? I dunno, it says black kolsch on the can, and I personally think kolsch is much closer to what it is than black IPA. It tastes like a kolsch with some darker malts added to the mash. A damn tasty kolsch, tasty like the woman on the can.

Heh, if highwheel Betty is the blonde, highwheel Letty is the Brunette. I like girls, and no amount of modern social stupidity can brow beat me into back-tracking on that.

Can you please get to the redhead already? I kind of have a thing for redheads...

But I digress, and who really cares that much anyway.

The bottom line is that once again Dorcol has made a damn good beer.

What's more is that IMO Dorcol has perhaps the best opening salvo of beers first tried from a new brewery of all times. I think I've known about Dorcol about two years now, and really just about every single beer they make is at least damn good enough to be memorable, but often in the epic, stupendous, ginormous, Olympic or Titanic categories. Keep up the great work!

number 16 in their experimental series i believe, its a dark version of betty. i have a hard time classifying this as a kolsch because, well, kolsch isnt black. its a fine beer, actually i liked it a little better than the betty, but it has the same lack of cold conditioned crispness that the betty has, which made that one taste and feel a little off the mark for the style to me, and this one certainly doesnt have the right fermentation profile for the style, none of their beers really did. the darker grain in here is nice though, a little bit of bitter roast to balance the lighter malt sweetness, and a little bit of astringency here somehow actually keeps the body kind of light. subtle raisin and even rum notes to this, with a drying finish and some light metallic sort of mineral property there at the end. a little better carbonation than some of the others had in here, and light enough in body to be considered easy drinking for a darker brew. i wish the yeast was more classically german, and had been allowed to dry this all the way out, but even with its imperfections, this might have been the best beer we had from these guys during the week...