Wild Beer Co: Put It In Your Pipe (England: Stout : 5.1% ABV)
Visual: Black. Coffee brown bubbles that don’t quite cover the entire body of the beer.
Nose: Smoke and kippers. Slight oils and tarry. Bitter coffee. Black olives. Feels thick. Toffee undertones.
Body: Smoke. Oily character. Coca chocolate drink. Black olives. Treacle and toffee.
Finish: Cocoa Puffs (the breakfast cereal) , Quite sweet chocolate. Still slightly tarry. Slight hop character. Cocoa dust. Slightly medicinal. Green tea.
Conclusion: Now this is interesting, smoked and distinctly so. Oily, yet with a very sweet chocolate character below. There is a tarryness that would normally come with a liquorice flavor that I dislike but no such notes are evident here.
Curiouser and curiouser.
The lighter chocolate main body allows for toffee notes that the smoke would normally overcome, and similarly in the dry finish there are more subtle notes with a green tea character. Black olives flavours add weight but don’t overpower anything else.
All this and, yes the smoke works very well.
In my early days of drinking I couldn’t get along with Rauchbiers. In a more extreme example I once even poured away the most part of one as it tasted like an ashtray to me at the time. Now I’m a bit more hardened to such flavours, but even so I can appreciate what they have done with the balance here.
Smoke and medinal touches are but one element amongst all the chocolate, toffee, green tea and olives. A turbulent mix but one I’m very happy to have tried. I am glad I limited myself to a third though. It is very full bodied and not for sessioning despite the reasonable abv. It is a weight on your senses with dark smoked flavor balanced against the lighter but still full flavoured treacle sweetness. If you get one of the big bottles I recommend bringing a few friends around as well.
Well worth a try just to say you have and an intriguing beer.
Background: Ok, none of my photos really came out well focused on this one. The last of the wild beer reviews from the tap takeover in Bristol. This one is a new released best I know and normally comes in a large 750 ml bottle like the Ninkasi. So I was pretty chuffed to get the chance to give it a try at a third for sampling. While this is the last of the reviews on the day, I did grab two more Wild Beer Co bottles from “Corks of Cotham” so expect more soon. This stout is made with a significant amount of smoked malt during brewing. I hoep you enjoyed this mini Wild Beer burst of reviews.