Honey Dark Beer
Browar Witnica

Pours clear,chestnut brown in color with one quarter inch head. Taste is big honey and pumpernickel bread. Medium body, moderate carbonation, slightly sweet. I get some kvass and honey beer combined. Interesting and tasty. I will get this again if I can find it.

 

(500 ml bottle, code PO#98071, 'unpasteurized dark beer with the taste of honey'; purchased bottle off shelf, along with one of its pale version as well; the labels of each do not appear to be the current domestic Polish versions... decanted into a fat tulip)

* copied almost verbatim from my review of their pale version

L: polished-clear, dark-garnet colored liquid; two-finger tall, rocky, cottony, off-white froth atop... keeps a broken, messy, bubbly cap, even lacing in crusty splotches*

S: very much the same as the pale version, with an intense, highly-expressive earthy honey character at the fore... while the pale version has undertones of pretzel, this one is beginning to inch toward brown bread

T: pretty much everything I tasted in the pale version, with the base beer here though more resembling a Munich Dunkel (or a Czech dark lager? I wouldn't know first hand, or maybe just a generic dark Euro lager - Heineken Dark, for instance?)... about halfway through, and a subtle, vaguely wood-smoky, roasty-toasty, dark grain character starts to build in the aftertaste

F: ample carbonation, mildly effervescent in the finish; approaching medium-bodied, with some of its roundness and mellow viscosity I'm sure coming from the honey added... a touch of residual film left on the palate, but short of sticky; delicate spicy/boozy stun buzzing the palate*

O: the same recipe as the pale version, with perhaps merely a touch of brown color and melanoidin presence - why stray from what works?... yeah, the honey should probably be toned down a bit, but it's remarkable how the dark lager is very much present and expressive at its base ... these two are the first beers I've had which remind me of Atlantic Brewing's Brother Adam's Bragget Ale, which I first and only once had (buying a bottle at the brewery) in 2007... if you love honey, both of these BOSS beers are very nice, don't let my ratings fool you - it's just a question of balance (1732)