Brewdog: Nine To Five Wizard (Scotland: Weizen Bock: 7.5% ABV)
Visual: Overripe banana to browned body with huge ripe banana coloured mound of a head.
Nose: Dried banana. Light cloves. Moderate hop character. Raisins. Vanilla custard. Orange skin. Fudge.
Body: Vanilla custard. Orange crème. Banana custard. Some hop character. Crushed Blackpool rock. Hop prickle. Light greenery. Quite thick. Some crusty bready character. Hop oils.
Finish: Lime sweets. Vanilla custard. Candy floss. Raspberry hard sweets. Some bitterness. Slight peppermint and pepper. Crusty white bread. Hop bitterness and character grows over time. Tart grapes and bubblegum.
Conclusion: It is amazing how fast things can change with hoppy beers. I had one of these when it first came out and it had quite the fresh, bitter hop kick. Very much felt like an IPA meets hefeweizen beer. I broke this open for doing notes, under a month later and it has really mellowed in that time.
The malt is much more prevalent now, pushing banana and vanilla custard styling at the base, with light pepper and clove notes making its weizen style more evident despite that. It is a beer with a quite thick mouthfeel, and a lot of body brought by the nearly 8% abv – not traditional weizen feeling, but with enough calls to it that the style is not lost.
The hop character is now more in the flavor than in raw kick – there is still a moderate hop bitterness and character, and also some oily noble hop mix late on, but general it mixes smoothly with the malt base.
The flavours are grapes, orange and raspberry delivered from fresh fruit to sweet crème in style, to hard boiled sweets after that. It is quite artificial sweet feeling, giving a candyfloss and bubblegum style to the middle of the beer.
There is a lot thrown into this, a lot of mixed up elements from traditional weizen spice, strong malt load, noble hop stylings and flavours, to mashed up hard candy fruit flavours. It is enjoyable if slightly brash and a tad overwhelming and not completely coherent in how it comes together.
It’s lost a lot of raw power since I first tried it, but has gained a much greater range in those few weeks – so I have no idea where this will go from here. It is fun, but the overly candy sugar sweets notes may get wearing – however in moderation it gives a heck of a lot in a short time.
Background; This came out very close after the prototype beers did, so instead of another Brewdog shop order I just grabbed a pair of these on take-out from Brewdog Bristol. Another one of Brewdog’s canned lines with cool neon style art on the cans. This one a German style weisse beer but with new world hops. I had one shortly after grabbing it, but with all the prototype beers to do notes on, waited a couple of weeks to do notes on it. Let’s face it, if the beer gets notable worse in under a month and doesn’t warn you it is not a good beer choice in the first place. Drunk while listening to Selfish C**t – No Wicked Heart Shall Prosper. Grabbed in my youth where the name alone for a punk style band made me grab it. I was more easily impressed by rude words back then. The mix of stripped down punk, discordant electronic backing and angry lyrics means I do come back to it every now and then, so stood the time better than such a shock named band deserves to.
Advertisements
