Brettish Monkeys
Paddock Wood Brewing Co.

Bottle: Poured a pitch-black color ale with a nice large dark brown foamy head with good retention and some lacing. Aroma of roasted malt with tart and dry bitter notes is singular. Taste is a nice mix of roasted malt with some black chocolate with some tart and lightly sour notes. Body is bit lighter then I was expecting. Interesting experiment but not favorite of this series.

1L howler from Sherbrooke Liquor, a cool-ass find from a brewery that is slowly getting back its game in terms of keeping Albertans supplied with their good stuff. Oh, right, the beer - apparently a Brett-afflicted version of their 1000 Monkeys Imperial Stout, FWIW.

This beer pours a rather solid black hole, with the barest of ephemeral basal cola edges, and two skinny fingers of puffy, thickly foamy, and mildly chunky tan head, which leaves some arching tree branch lace around the glass as things quite slowly sink away.

It smells of funky, gritty bacteria, the sort that have duly infested a nice chocolaty, bready, and caramel malt structure, a bit of homemade red fruit wine acidity, wet cigar ash, a hint of fresh roadside tar, cafe-au-lait, and a surprisingly meek booziness. The taste is strawberry and rhubarb crumble, dark cocoa powder, sour milk-laced coffee, generic, and slightly oxidized red wine, ethereal funky cheese notes, and a still very hard to pin down or even really notice alcohol astringency.

The bubbles are pretty sedate in their barely supportive and not so exploratory frothiness, the body medium-light in weight for the style (both wood and the nasties seem to have that effect), and generally smooth, with a teensy burgeoning creaminess. It finishes not as sweet as I might have been expecting, even with the Brettanomyces a clear and present danger at all times - bittersweet chocolate, mostly, with a varied edginess that could be attributed to any and all of the aforementioned suspects.

Overall - good, good stuff, the guest bacterium doing well (or not so well?) to keep it on the down-low in the funk department, instead providing a thinning aspect that I can easily dismiss. Tasty, still good and chocolaty, and only a bit sour - which more than works for this camper - with the growing dryness an asset as things go gently into that good night.