Holy Fuck

Mikkeller Black Hole Imperial Stout

Barrel Aged Peated Whisky Edition

Holy fuck. It's all  I can think. The same two words running around in my head. The fellas at Mikkeller are like Mozart, Pythagoras, Jimi Hendrix & Dr Shulgin all tied into two Danish brothers with a small brewery in Copenhagen. How do you make a beer like this? How do you take water, malt, roasted barley, flaked oats, dark cassanade (raw sugar), honey, hops, coffee, vanilla and ale yeast, pour it into an Islay whisky barrel (Lagavulin methinks...) and end up with this nefarious, sadistic, dominatrix of a beer?!


I love the way it pours like a black waterfall leaving coffee coloured lace down the side of the glass. I love the way the aroma penetrates the mind from metres away. I love the way the first taste slaps you upside the head like an old Polish grandfather and leaves you incapable of thought and speech as all your synapses run around like Israelis at a doof, trying to figure out why this thing that looks like a black beer tastes like Islay whisky and feels like the first time you really got properly fucked by an older woman.


All wank aside, this is truly a masterpiece of brewing - an Imperial stout aged in peated whisky barrels that resembles a Lagavlin whisky with a hint of toasty coffee. Complexities abound with seaweed, iodine, campfire, camping coffee, molasses, fir trees, hints of hops and fresh rainforest aromas to name just a few. The 13.1% ABV is very noticeable but the resulting warmth makes for a big, complete finish to the complexities of the brew. I could happily sit on a bottle of this on a cold winter's night as one might do with a true bottle of whisky. Holy fuck.