8 Wired: C4 Double Coffee Brown Ale (New Zealand: Brown Ale: 8% ABV)
Visual: Chestnut red brown. Moderate coffee coloured large bubbled head.
Nose: Roasted nuts. Massive rich coffee and milky coffee. Creamy. Shortbread. Slight cheese puffs.
Body: Rich rounded coffee mixes with bitter coffee. Big hazelnuts. Bitter chocolate. Some milky chocolate. Slight cheese yeastiness. Kiwi and grapes in the coffee.
Finish: Very bitter coffee. Roasted nuts. Bitter chocolate. Slight mature cheese dusting. Kiwi fruit. Vanilla.
Conclusion: If you have looked through the notes above you may have noticed that I have basically just been listing coffee and chocolate, with whatever qualifying adjectives I can find. Pretty much all the flavours come from those two root elements, but describing it as such really doesn’t do the beer justice. In the style of Beer Geek Brunch Weasel the coffee is an element distinct in itself that can be dissected and analysed as much as the beer can.
There is a fruitiness to the coffee, subtle vanilla notes to the bitter chocolate. Rich and rounded they are backed by the understated base beer which adds nuttiness and a very slight note of mature cheese, an almost yeasty feel that is texture more than anything else.
I am very impressed by how they do this, the brown ale part of it is much closer to the American interpretation of the style than the tarter UK take. It is sweet, frothy and very malty and doesn’t have the acidic touch you can get in the UK.
It all comes together in a way than means that the small number of elements have a fractal complexity below and a luxurious style. It is utterly smooth and just builds to a wonderful symphony of flavor.
I wish I had enough experience of coffee to describe it better. So instead I will concentrate on that odd, very light cheese like element that starts out intriguing and becomes a vital element. It is a yeastiness style around which the coffee builds and this means that the beer character is kept intact so you don’t just feel you are drinking alcohol coffee. Overall this is a show of excellence in a crowded coffee beer market.
I love this beer.
Background: Picked up from Brewdog’s guest beer selection, this sounded a bit special. Coffee has been used in a lot of imperial stouts, but not so often in the oft overlooked Brown ale to my knowledge. 8 Wired have done pretty solid by me so far, so I put in some Nine Inch Nails and broke this open.
