# 1000
Nøgne Ø

Dec. 2013: 250 ml nip bottle, Cardinal Pub & Bar, Stavanger, ABV is 10%. Some sediment in the bottle. Hazy golden colour, minimal white head. Nice aroma of fruity and piney hops, and mild spices. Medium sweet flavour of Belgian ale yeast, demerara sugar, fruity hops and mild spices. Warming mouthfeel, the high ABV is noticeable. Some bitterness in the aftertaste.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

250ml nip poured into tulip 20/2/12

A hazy golden orange with some streams of slow tiny bubbles feeding a short lived film that leaves a single thick partial ring

S smells wit-ish, clove, coriander, orange peel, but then I get big ginger notes, faint licorice, herbal notes I can't place, and a little soft caramel, smells different but solid

T more ginger then the nose, some spruce and juniper, a little sweeter with some honey and almost has a halls honey cough drop thing going on, the ones with the cough syrup in the center, if you've ever had one you know what I'm talking about, a step back from the nose

M leaning towards full, soft from the bubbles, a little slick on the palate, very faint heat a menthol finish

O decent beer but kinda reminds me of cough medicine, something different anyways

I preferred the dark malt of #1001 over this one, I wouldn't buy it again as its way over priced but I'm a sucker for the little gift packs

250ml bottle, sold as a set with the #1001 in black cardboard packaging. I get it now, that this is inspired by the 1001 Nights collection of Arabic stories, what with the genie, palm tree, and dromedary on the label.

This beer pours a hazy, tarnished golden amber hue, with one fat finger of bubbly, and weakly foamy dirty white head, which leaves some random paint splatter lace around the glass as things slowly sink away.

It smells of spicy, aromatic fresh ginger, coriander, thyme, menthol, pale and bready caramel malts, a hint of salty Scandinavian black licorice, and further indistinct herbal, floral notes. The taste is bready, lightly grainy pale malt, a touch of crystallized caramel, white ginger, thyme, muddled star anise, field honey, dry orange peel, clove, and a floral, perfumed alcohol warmth.

The carbonation is quite low, as to be almost ineffectual, the body a decently hefty medium weight, and mostly smooth, with a certain tightness from the alcohol and spice detracting somewhat. It finishes on the sweet side, the grainy and caramel malt holding fast, while the admittedly pungent spices start a long, slow decline.

An English barleywine, run roughshod through an Istanbul spice market, is what this seems like. While the spices are indeed mentioned on the label, they aren't specified in the list of ingredients, weirdly, so it is indeed up to we, the consumer, to figure out what the hell these guys are really doing. And that already seems established - they wanted to celebrate a brewing milestone, and they went looking for a cultural touchstone, any one, to tie into it. Not bad, but not something I care to revisit.