Brown with a bit of red added, the nearly black beer has a white head that fizzles down to a patchy ghost of a covering with a heavy ring around the sides of the glass.I get no lacing.
But I get up again.
You're never gonna keep me down.
The aroma is roasty and toasty with oats just brought back off a fire slightly singed but none the worse.
First sip is sweet and roasted with marshmallows and wood intermingling and bringing a coffee tinge to the milky smooth sip. Most of the time I have a complex (and especially dark) beers, I can't call anything milky or creamy in a sip, and I have to go for a full pull of the beer. In this case, I can tell from the sip that this is smooth and sweet (despite the coffee).
Tip-in is light roasted grains and a little hazlenut with vanilla as the carbonation doesn't even let on that this is a carbonated beverage at all. The middle flows into a smoke-filled cauldron of creamy smoothness edged with lightly char-grilled grains. The finish pulls in with a little sweet and a little bitter as the coffee breathes on the whole mouth to give a somewhat espresso trail-off.
Bottom Line: Outside the norm for Bearded Iris, but they show the same kind of know-how.
3.5/5
