1001 Beers: Black

Not too long ago, about 5 days ago actually, we took a little test in my class on the subject of Cardiology. It was only about 200 questions and only took me around 4 hours to finish it. By the end of the test I was just filling in blanks with my best guesses because I did not want to leave knowing for sure that I failed. I only thought that I was border line when leaving the testing room. We had a long weekend, in which I worked the whole time, but I decided not to do anything school related the whole time and I figured Tuesday I would see what happened from there. There was no way I expected the test to be graded at this point, but to my surprise... They were.

This got me sweating a little bit because I really do not remember anything that I had filled in and at this point in the class it was one retest and then a boot out of it. A little bit of pressure I would say. But I was relieved to receive my test and find that it said 92% on the top of it. I even asked the instructor if this was a typo lol but sure enough, I guess I know what I am talking about. I thought this called for a celebration of sort. I was going to go home and treat myself to a Victory Dinner and a nice beer. I had no idea what it was going to be when I made this decision but I knew it had to be worth it. I almost pulled out the Sierra Nevada and Dogfish Head Life and Limb but I then decided it was not time for that to be released. My next instinct was to go big. Hell, after this feat, I needed to. That is when I decided it was time to open that Mikkeller Black that I got from Bottle Revolution a while back. I think it was just as sweet that it ended up to work out for this series as well!

Brewer Mikkel Borg Bjergso describes this imperial stout as "one of my experiments." It is one of the many that have succeeded as the Danish Brewer has quickly proved himself as a craftsman of challenging beers since the first brew in 2006.

I find it interesting when I explore a new brewery, or in this case, a brewer, and learn a bit about them. I knew before that he was a gypsy brewer and did not have a set location for his production. Just that he traveled and brewed in various locations but before this beer I have only had one or two others from him. I plan to try and check out as much of the line up as I can but the ones I have had before were a great introduction... though, nothing could have prepared me for this.





Beer Number 18: This beer was hot right off the bat. I thought the nose was a bit tamed and you could really pick out the coffee-esque scents from the dark malts and maybe some raspberries and plums. That is where the subtleness ended though. Again, this beer was REALLY hot! I swear I got some pepper in here but it could have just been the alcohol. Which would not surprise me being it clocked in at 16.5%. Though, everywhere I look says 17.5%. I wonder if there has been a change to the recipe or something recently? After I was about a quarter of the way into the bottle and the alcohol relaxed a little, I was able to get a bit of chocolate at the start of this one. It had a very distinct sweetness that was laying over the malty background of this beer as well. The beer was surprisingly not thick and chewy at all. It was still a full bodied beer though and it did not try and hide that one bit. For sure a must try.

For dinner I decided to grill one of the Rib Eyes I had in the fridge and some mashed potatoes. The only thing that could ever make that better would be surf and turf! Plus, I love broccoli... Weird, right? So that made planning dinner very easy.

983 Bottles Of Beer To Go!

Cheer!