     Reserve Special Black Bier Ale (Dark Horse Brewing Company)
My second beer from Dark Horse and I am happy to read that this one has some roots in the U.P. (Upper Peninsula of Michigan). I called the U.P. home for 4 years while at college at NMU. Its a place like no other and carries a "sense of place" like few other locales on planet earth. If you've ever spent any time there you know what I mean. From the Dark Horse site: "Conceived in a dimly lit room on a blistery cold night in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but born and raised here in Marshall, Michigan. The Reserve Special is the oldest of all beers in the Dark Horse family. It has an incredibly “thick” presence and when poured into a glass its color is so dark it’s eerie. The flavors explode onto your taste buds with heavy malt, roast, and chocolate, but stay very balanced. The Reserve Special Black Ale has a hard time being called a stout or porter but it fits nicely into the category of a delicious strong black ale." Here we go... Pour - settles like a stout or a porter. Super dark brown to black with a thin mocha colored head. No light gets through this one, it reminds me of an Imperial Stout almost.
Aroma - coffee, soy sauce, teriyaki, dark roasted malt, charcoal, burnt wood, burnt sugar, dark chocolate, cocoa powder, caramel and vanilla. Yes, this has a lot of nasal complexity.
Taste - sweet, bitter, malty, tangy and creamy all at once. This hits your pallet at full speed and gets your tastes buds revved up immediately. Its an all out assault of coffee grounds, dark roasty/toasty malts, soy sauces, burnt toffee and caramel goodness. Be ready for a tongue that will be working overtime to handle all that this one has to dish out because its not a simple dark ale, this is something different, something special-er.
Overall - complex and delicious. I am still processing the first sip and all it offered. My tongue is dry and yet thirsty for more of this intriguing elixir. Vanilla, coffee, bitter chocolate, caramel and dark roasted malts galore. Hooray for non-conformity.
Would I buy more of it? - yes. I'll be buying more of this for sure. No doubt about it.
Note - From Wikipedia, "The Upper Peninsula of Michigan contains almost one-third of the land area of Michigan but just three percent of its total population. Residents are frequently called Yoopers (derived from "U.P.-ers") and have a strong regional identity. It includes the only counties in the United States where a plurality of residents claim Finnish ancestry. The area is also home to American Indians nations. Large numbers of Finnish, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian emigrants came to the Upper Peninsula, especially the Keweenaw Peninsula, to work in the mines, and they stayed on and prospered even after the copper mines closed. Ordered by size, the peninsula's largest cities are Marquette (less than 20,000), Sault Ste. Marie, Escanaba, Menominee, Houghton, and Iron Mountain. The land and climate are not very suitable for agriculture. The economy has been based on logging, mining and more recently tourism. Most mines have closed since the "golden age" from 1890 to 1920, and the land is still heavily forested today. Therefore, logging remains a major industry.
Posted by Russ Labels: American Strong Ales | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
