Friday Beer Review

Friday, November 30, 2007

Winter gives us two things: dark beers and the ability to more easily lager beers. The best of both worlds, a dark lager, is up for today's offering.

Many of the contributors here meet up on Thursday nights at a friend's house who has a kegerator. You chip in some cash, and by the tiome we drain it, he's got enough to buy a new keg. Normally, he takes his trips to Michigan Brewing Company. I've done a slew of out-of-state and foreign beers, I figured it was about time to highlight a Michigan beer from what I think is a consistently good brewery.

Every Thursday for the past month or so (we are clearly not drinking fast enough), Greg has offered our group of nerds Michigan Brewing Company's Bavarian Dark. It is an absolutely lovely Munich Dunkel.

Out of the keg, this deep, smokey offering pours a dark mahogany color with beautiful ruby highlights. It has a 1- to 2- finger head with retention that lasts almost the whole glass, and leaves a sticky, lovely tan lacing all the way to the end.

The aroma suggests a very drinkable beer; it is balanced towards malt, for sure. Bready, more like toasted bread crust. A scant hint of chocolate and a surprising (as it is not common for the style) smoke smell; not "camp fire" like a rauchbier, but just smokey. A tinge of hops makes an appearance towards the end of the nose, but definitely the malt dominates.

On tasting, I got some big-time toasted malt, not of the sweet variety but more of the bready/toasty variety with some sweetness. I get some chocolate, some nuttiness, but I also get this really beautiful smokey taste under the malt. It's like a smoke/coffee flavor that I found to be tasty and perfectly complimentary to the overall beer without overpowering the malt. It's there, but it's not the most prominent. I don't really expect that taste for this style of beer, but again, I think it enhanced it. Very subtle (but not weak) hops.

This beer has a nice medium body to, thickened a bit by the dextrins from the malts. It is a great, clean lager taste, accentuating the breadiness of the malt. This is definitely a "session beer" as I find myself downing one after another every single Thursday.

3 comments:

steves 1:24 PM  

This was a great review. I sampled this last night (as Greg and I crushed you) and really liked it. I hadn't noticed the smokiness, but now that you mention it, I can say it was there.

Sopor 1:31 PM  

Hmmm Bavarian Dark... That stuff's pretty good!

Honestly, I think everything MBC makes from the Brown and darker is pretty damn good. The brown is an awesome session ale, the Porter is one of the easiest drinking beers I've ever had, and the Stout is spot on to the style and tasty.

Melissa and I head over to MBC on Monday's pretty often to cash in on the $20 mix-n-match cases. Great deal. When we're used to paying $10.13 for a sixer in Portland, driving 40 minutes to stock up on beer once or twice a month ain't too bad!

Also, I tried Arbor Brewing Co's Espresso Love last night... WOW! Do we need another beer review on ATK?

Rickey 7:47 PM  

Mmmm... Smokey coffee flavored beer. Sounds freaking delicious.

Post a Comment

Followers

Potential Drunks

Search This Blog

  © Blogger template On The Road by Ourblogtemplates.com 2009

Back to TOP