Tasting Notes: Elusive Brewing: Baker’s Dozen: Portents of Doom NZ BIPA

Elusive Brewing: Baker’s Dozen: Portents of Doom NZ BIPA (England: Black IPA: 6% ABV)

Visual: Black. Thin brown slightly creamy head that leaves suds.

Nose: Blueberry. Vanilla toffee. Pineapple. Peach. Milky coffee. Grapefruit.

Body: Chocolate. Nutty. Blueberry. Bitter coffee. Slight cream. Grapefruit. Nettles. Tingling hop character. Bitter hops. Vanilla toffee. Slight strawberry.

Finish: Very nutty. Slight earthy hop character. Peppery. Grapefruit. Great bitterness. Bitter coffee granules. Slight charcoal.

Conclusion: Sometimes it feels hard to draw the line between a black IPA and a heavily hopped stout. This is not one of those times. This really shows how a good Black IPA is recognisably different.

It does have the bitter cocoa and bitter chocolate you would expect from the more bitter end of stouts, that I will admit yes, but smooth with a toffee character that feels very familiar to an IPA fan in its implementation.

Similarly it feels more than just bitter, prickly hops, though yes it also has that. There is a mix of slightly sweet yet fresh pineapple and tart grapefruit that makes the intense bitter malts easier to drink despite the added hop bitterness used liberally.

There is a subtlety to the fruit as well, a blueberry note that very much surprised me to find for example. I never associated that with NZ hops before, but while it is subtle it is delicious and definitely here. There is a lot of the tarter NZ character, but that blueberry really stands out for making this beer, well, stand out from the crowd.

It has lovely dark malt bitterness, great hop prickle and bitterness, a freshness that makes it easier it drink and shows the NZ hops wonderfully. Also blueberry. A lovely BIPA, definitely worth it.

Background: First up, this is not one of Elusive’s many, many West coast IPA variants they have done recently. Instead it is a new Black IPA, another IPA style I adore and feel is often under-represented these days. YAYZ! A New Zealand hopped Black IPA at that, I love NZ standard IPAs, so a black IPA take definitely had my interest. I don’t know much about the collaboration partners. Baker’s Dozen. Will have to see if I can find out more, a quick google suggests they have won a bunch of awards for their beers – but these days that doesn’t always mean much. Their line up looks cool – mainly described as hop forwards cask ales. Will have to keep an eye out for them. This beer’s had a complicated tasting history. My first can I started doing notes on aaaand, knocked the darn glass over, spilling a good 75% of it. Bugger. Not done that for a while. So I grabbed another can. And drank it before I could do notes. This is the third can, now finally having notes done for it. Also I’m typing this on a new keyboard as the beer went all over my old one and utterly fucked it. Between the two tastings I listened to two different History Of Guns Albums, Apophenia and Flashes Of Light – pretty much their entire line up is free at the mo on bandcamp, so I grabbed a bunch of LPs I had not heard before. This was another beer grabbed from Independent Spirit. Repeatedly, due to that spilling.

Tasting Notes: Kilkerran: Heavily Peated Small Batch

Kilkerran: Heavily Peated Small Batch (Scottish Campbeltown Single Malt Whisky: 59.2% ABV)

Visual: Pale light gold. Fast thick streaks come from the spirit.

Nose: Oily. Peaty. Apples. Smooth yet lightly medicinal. Grassy. Slight apricot. Water makes slightly more obvious medicinal.

Body: Honey. Golden syrup. Tannins. Slight tea bags. Apricot. Peaty. Smoked meat. Raisins. Water adds green grapes. Fatty butter. Red grapes. Vanilla.

Finish: Dried meat. Smoked meat. Generally meaty. Raisins. Water adds vanilla and more smoked meat.

Conclusion: Ohhh this no longer feels like a work in progress like the peat in progress releases, this feel like how a peated Kilkerran should do. As mentioned in the background it seems peat in progress and small batch heavily peated are often released during the same years, so this isn’t the natural endpoint of those, but still, this feels like a finished product and a worthy one at that.

Initially coming across as just oily and peaty, as you acclimatise to that you start to realise there is a sweet, apricot like set of notes along with both red and green grapes working there in the background. Such a fruity range behind an impressive level of peat. Even more so, behind all of that there is still that traditional grassy Campbeltown character helping give it some savoury grounding.

It makes it feel much more polished than my previous encounters with Kilkerran peated expressions. There is usually that peat meets grassy character, but this has much more. You need a touch of water to really get the best of it, a lot of the notes are hard to grasp when neat, but with that the lovely, more fruity range comes out.

A genuinely good release. If the end point of the peat in progress leads to anything similar to this I will be happy indeed.

Background: So, previously I have tried Kilkerran peat in progress, which seemingly was the peat equivalent of the work in progress early whiskies they released of Kilkerran while they only had young whisky available so were not ready for standard bottlings. This is not peat in progress, this is small bath, so does that mean they have finally reached a time they can release a standard bottling of peated Kilkerran? Apparently, nope, these small batches have been released for a while. So what makes this small batch and not peat in progress? No idea. Ah well, I’ll take any excuse to try some more Kilkerran. This was the final of the whiskies in Independent Spirit’s Burns night whisky tasting. Saving the big peat bomb for the end. Despite having had a lot of strong and strong flavoured whiskies in the night I did my best to try and turn out decent notes. Hope you like them.

Tasting Notes: Ardnamurchan: Cask Strength Release 2023

Ardnamurchan: Cask Strength Release 2023 (Scottish Single Malt Highland Whisky: 58.1% ABV)

Visual: A light, clear yellow gold. A mix of slow and fast medium thickness streaks come from the spirit.

Nose: Dried beef. Slight dry custard. Light smoke. Fresh dough. Cake sponge. Sour dough. Water adds apples.

Body: Honey. Lots of meaty peat. Smoke. Lightly medicinal. Light apple. Water adds raisins. Makes oily. Apples and pears come out. Apple pie and sugar dusting. Nut oils.

Finish: Smooth medicinal style. Some vanilla. Oily smoke. Methanol candles air. Water adds apple pie and sugar. Praline.

Conclusion: Ohhh, this is nice and has such a great nose. Neat it is pretty intense with dried beef and smoke, slightly medicinal which surprised me, a smoother take on the harsher whisky notes. It is slightly closed due to the strength but still very nice.

Water then changes that massively. Still a good bit of peat, but sweeter and smoother. There is absolutely lovely apple pie sweeteness, yet with raisins dashed through it, a mix of lighter and darker fruit around the smoother peat character.

There is now such a range of flavour, still with a touch of those medicinal notes and still notable smoked meat, but now so much more open, sweeter and chewier with that. It has the sweet, it has the rich, it has the peat, and even that medicinal touch, it feels like it is ticking all the boxes of what I want from a whisky.

A freaking massive with with a massive range. Another banger from the ever improving Ardnamurchan distillery.

Background: Ardnamurchan has really been earning my respect over the past few years – from their early interesting batches they have been getting steadily better and better with nearly every release. Pity they use blockchain stuff, which always seems like a solution looking for a problem that has not already been sufficiently fixed by much more environmentally friendly methods. Ah well. Anyway. Fourth drink in the recent independent spirit Burns night tasting. I was surprised to find out this uses 87% Peated malt, I was expecting the cask strength alone to give it weight, but to find a peated dram as well gave a bit of extra excitement to this one. By this point I had tried a few drams, but still tried my best to turn out semi decent notes.

Tasting Notes: Thompson Bros: 1969 + 2017

Thompson Bros: 1969 + 2017 (Scottish Whisky Based Spirit Drink: 6 Year Old: 40.1% ABV)

Visual: Bright deep gold. Fast thick streaks come from the spirit.

Nose: Vinegary. Nail polish. Sour cider apples. Oak. Water makes it … still smell like the same terrible notes.

Body: Smooth. Kind of empty. Dry toffee. Bready. Water adds more notable toffee.

Finish: Empty. Unleaven bread. Pear drops. Some water adds nail varnish. More water makes fatty butter and some toffee.

Conclusion:This is so deeply disappointing. So, as I put in the background, this is basically very old ( not technically) whisky, combined with young (not technically) whisky for a mix of great aromatics and body. The best of old and new. It should be great, right? Nope. Dogshit.

The nose is, to put it bluntly, fucking terrible. Vinegary meets nail polish., It is fucking dire. Considering the interesting aromatics of the 52 year old spirit is listed as why they made this, I am wondering where those things went, as this is dire.

The body is better, in that it is pretty much empty and nothing. Yep, I am saying actual jack shit nothing is better than what came before. Sooo, not good is what I am saying. You may not have caught that due to the subtle way in which I implied it.

Water makes an actual attempt at the very basics of what you would expect from a whisky, In the body anyway. The aroma is fucked any which way. You finally have some toffee, so, erm now some flavour. Congratulations, with time and water it finally manages part and only part of the most basic bits you need to be whisky like.

As an experiment it is interesting.

As a (technically not) whisky it is dogshit.

Background: Oh I was so excited for this one. Technically not whisky, but close enough I am shoving this in the whisky section for my own sanity. So what is it? Well the vast majority (68.4% of the blend) is made of what once was whisky blended in 1969 and at a now epic 52 years of age has fallen below the 40% abv need to be whisky, so is now a spirit drink. This was a bunch of casks the Thompson Bros bought at risk and found it light on the body but really enjoyed some of the aromatics so decided to try and do something with it. 19.4% of the blend is their first ever batch of single grain …well what would be whisky, but they had not been officially licensed then so it is technically also spirit drink anda 6 year old one at that by my calculations – so despite the fact it brings the abv back up over 40% it cannot be called a whisky, even though if it had been made while licensed it would count best I can tell. Finally 12.2% of it is a 2013 distilled unnamed Islay whisky to add some more body. So I was very excited for this – I often find old whisky – stuff over 30 years, tends to be a bit light for me, but interesting – so the idea of very old whisky, matched with young whisky for some more body, sounded a very cool idea to me. Of all the (kind of) whiskies in the independent spirit Burns night tasting, this was the one I was most excited for

Tasting Notes: Thompson Bros: Dailuaine 2016

Thompson Bros: Dailuaine 2016 (Scottish Speyside Single Malt Whisky: 7 Years: 57.1% ABV)

Visual: A deep gold whisky with slow puckering from the spirit.

Nose: Caramel to twix. Honeycomb. Light wisp of smoke. Oily. Heather. Wood shavings. Light black cherry yogurt. Water adds blueberry.

Body: Strong! Thick fatty butter. Drying. Dried blueberries on digestives and shortbread. Water adds rich plums. Fruitcake and fudge.

Finish: Dry oak. Ash. Fatty butter. Drying. Dried blackcurrant. Dried blueberry. Shortbread. Water adds plums. Fruitcake. Dark rum. Slight cloves.

Conclusion: Oh this opened up so much with even just a touch of water. Neat it is very strong – the aroma just punching out sweet caramel to honeycomb along with some dark fruit. All this is just accentuated for the better with that drop of water.

Neat the body was kind of closed for me, others in the tasting enjoyed it, but I found that, due to the strength, it didn’t really show itself to me. Like this is had a kind of fatty butter quality and just hints of the dark fruit the aroma promised. Now water makes it what it should be, bringing out full on plums and caramel that makes the whisky shine here.

Then as we head back into the finish you get real dark fruit packed into a variety of biscuity flavours. Again, good neat, but expands massively with water. Top and tail this whisky is good at any point, but the body really needs water to show itself.

With water this is epically fruity, with plums, fruitcake, everything making it really dark, heavy and delicious, with spirity leanings thrown in. At this point, now it has opened up, it is amazingly rich and rewarding – a dark xmas dessert style whisky, covered with spirits.

Like this it is a genuinely great whisky. Enjoy just a touch neat to see how it is like that, then dive in with the water and really appreciate it.

Background: Another one from Independent Spirit‘s Burn night tasting. This is an independent bottling from Thompson Brother’s who have been very much impressing me with their bottlings and their own, very hard to get hold of, whisky. This is a bottling of Dailuaine, not one you see much. At the tasting we were told all the badgers on the bottles was a nod to the Flora and Fauna bottlings of Dailuaine – which is a nice touch. This is one of 1006 bottles and was aged in an oloroso hogshead. As always with tastings I did my best to turn out decent notes despite the range of alcohol being consumed and limited time. Apparently Dailuaine uses stainless steel rather than copper condensers, which is an oddity and probably explains a lot about the unusual nature of this spirit.

Tasting Notes: Loch Lomond: Single Grain

Loch Lomond: Single Grain (Scottish Highland Single Grain Whisky :46% ABV)

Visual: Pale. Light yellow grain. Fast, thick streaks come from the spirit.

Nose: Apples and pears. Light polish. Oats and other cereals. Soft vanilla. Waters adds grapes and bubblegum.

Body: Light alcohol prickle. Bubblegum. Lemon drops. Unleaven bread. Water adds mineral water. Pear drops. Slight rougher alcohol.

Finish: Lemon drops. Alcohol air. Peppery. Sesame seeds. Water adds mineral water notes.

Conclusion: I am, mixed on this one, let us say. First impressions were great. As I got in and got the first whiff of the aroma I got lovely fresh bright green fruit with a soft cereal set behind that. It smells like it will be so easy drinking, with a lot of promise of maybe something more. There is a light alcohol prickle but that doesn’t mar that promise too much and I’d expect water to smooth that out.

Sipping it for the first time is when things get weird. It is still lovely and drinkable with a mix of lemon drops and an interesting and unusual bubblegum character – but now there is a slightly rough alcohol character to it. Only slightly so, but it results in a slightly odd whisky feel that doesn’t quite appeal to me.

The way out in the finish is better, lemon drops again now with a peppery underline that helps ground it. So overall a mixed whisky with some good points.

Water, well I had hoped it would settle the rough alcohol issue. Instead it brings out a minerally ..erm..mineral water character, a touch that I am never really a fan of, except in very small amounts. Though this does lower over time, which helps let the more fruity notes come out.

It gets better over time definitely, but still a mix for me. Some lovely apple, pear, lemon drops and such notes. Lots of good stuff now, just not 100% for me, still some sign of the bits that don’t work, however very much reduced. Definitely will be 100% the whisky for easy drinking for some, and still an interesting one for me.

Background: So, Single Grain Whisky, what do you think this was made with? A mix of cereals? Nope, despite being a grain whisky this is made with 100% Malted barley, however since it is made in a column still it is a grain whisky despite that. Interesting. First of five whiskies in a very good Burns Night’s whisky tasting at Independent Spirit. There is also a peated version of this, taking advantage of the fact it is malted barley to make the rare peated single grain. I have to admit I have that one on my list of something to try at a later date. As always with tastings like this I had more scattershot notes than normal but I did my best.

Tasting Notes: Tucher: Nurnberger Rotbier

Tucher: Nurnberger Rotbier (Germany: Rotbier: 5.5% ABV)

Visual: Hazy amber to red. Large off white head. Lots of small bubbled carbonation.

Nose: Cinnamon. Slight lemon. Slight ovaltine. Lightly earthy. Slight rye crackers.

Body: Rye crackers. Sweet chewy toffee. Slightly earthy. Ovaltine. Peppery.

Finish: Light lemon cakes. Cinnamon spice. Rye crackers touch. Sour dough. Flour.

Conclusion: A lot of red/amber beers have not been my style over the years. Some stand out bangers go against this rule, but in general the style is not one I naturally gravitate to and its not often a must have for me.

This one though, this one is very solid.

It’s very chewy, in a good way. It has just enough lager like easy drinking character but is very malty and chewy real toffee to ovaltine flavoured base.

Around that is sweet cinnamon spice that helps spark that base up a bit, and a mix of rye, earthy and peppery notes that ground it on the other side. While it is heavy set for a lager style of drink it is still surprisingly easy to drink. The flavours really set in to stay after a while, so not one to session but it works perfect as one to savour, bursting with flavour and shows that it can really work the bigger range of flavour and heavier flavours without sacrificing what makes it easy to drink. I feel like so many attempts to make craft lagers should just have looked at this rather than pissing about with hopping them up like an IPA.

This shows the cool notes that can come with red beers, but makes it much more rounded than most I have encountered, and definitely more drinkable. Are all rotbiers like this? I so I will have to dive deeper into the style as I love it.

Background: Darn, googling how this thing tends to be categorised for style online gave so many results and so varied, so I just plumped for rotbier in the end. Screw it, that is what it is. Rot is red in German so, literally red beer, but bottom fermented like a lager so not under amber ale. There are amberish lagers, but, sod it, rotbier seems distinct enough I am happy using that as the style. I’ve had a soft spot for Tucher, since it was a mention of them in a comic that introduced me to weissebiers. This, is not not a weisse, but is a Tucher beer. Another one grabbed from Independent Spirit, they really are getting in such a range of German beers at the mo. Went with Siouxsie and the Banshees:Hyæna as backing music, because, why not? Ok a German band would have made more sense thematically but … LOOK OVER THERE A SQUIRREL!