Kundmüller: Weiherer Doppelbock Holzfassgelagert: Rum Cask (German: Doppelbock: 12.1% ABV)
Visual: Lightly hazy yellow to apricot body. Very little carbonation, and a thin rim of bubbles but no real head.
Nose: Clean. Raisins. Apricot skin. Rum and raisin ice cream. Pencil shavings. Honey. Cake sponge.
Body: Golden syrup. Honey. Watered down rum. Raisins. Sticky feel. Brown sugar. Apricot skin.
Finish: Custard. Treacle. Sticky honey. Tannins. Spicy red wine. Cake sponge and cream filling. Dry alcohol.
Conclusion: This is really sticky, yet not as thick as you would expect from that description. Quite clean up front, but gets heavier and stickier as you hold on the tongue, resulting in it leaving a long lasting sheen when you swallow.
The slickness is a mix of golden syrup and honey that leads into heavier treacle in the finish. There is really not a single note subtle here, it is all big pounding stickiness all the time.
Beyond that is the rum and raisin character, yes shocking I know considering it is rum barrel aged. Kind of rum and raisin ice cream in how it expresses itself I would say, but drier than how that sounds. There is also a touch of apricot skin, which is one of the few flavours that matches what I would have expected based on the lighter color of this beer for a doppelbock. This is a dark tasting beer in a light coloured body, even the honey and golden syrup taste on the darker side of the range.
In the finish you finally get some contrast to what came before, with a strong tannin character and spicy red wine notes – a very long lasting character that is still sticky but a break from the nigh cloying sweetness in the stickiness that came before.
This beer is … fine, good even, but probably best shared as even half a bottle of it makes the sweetness become cloying, and at 12% abv the full 750ml bottle becomes a bit much, so definitely a sharer on that. In fact the dry alcohol character is a very evident note, and gives away the alcohol in a very obvious way. I like having some character of alcohol in a strong beer, but prefer it better integrated than this. So with that said, this is a very expensive beer, VERY expensive, and quality or complexity wise it is not a patch on, say, the much cheaper Aventinus (for a weisse doppelbock) or Salvator (For a standard doppelbock).
I think the problem is for such a strong beer it is very single minded, so while initially enjoyable it wears out its welcome pretty quickly and for the cost I expected a lot more.
Enjoyable, but far better beers that are far cheaper are easily available.
Background: So, in another example of the fact I have been terrible at putting up notes this year, I did my notes for this on New Years Eve. In my defence it has been a weird year, right?. This was grabbed from independent spirit – a rum barrel aged doppelbock caught my eye as something I definitely wanted to try, and was an excuse to break out my Aventinus glass again. I had tried an imperial stout from the brewery a few days before this, and that had gone well so had high hopes. Now it was a tad pricey to say the least, another reason I broke it open on new year. Went with Rumkicks: Born Rude as some Korean pop punk backing – because rum-kicks you see. I am simple in my amusement.
