If it feels like we had this only a couple of days ago, it is because we did (a couple of couples of days ago, really). It is American, and that is a good excuse to have it today, on the last day of tOMoH's version of Dryanuary (no Single Malt Scotch Whisky). The eagle-eyed reader will have noticed two exceptions to that adventure, namely on the 17th and on the 27th. Live with it. TOMoH does.
As outlined the other day, StilL 630 has a full range dedicated to collaborations with (local) breweries. This is the seventh of those collaborations, and it is 4Hands' Absence of Light, distilled, then matured "for at least a year."
StilL 630 1yo Presence of Darkness (40.5%, OB Beer Collaboration Series VII, Oak Barrels, B#2, b#524): nose: oddly enough, it is full-on rye whiskey and/or Irn Bru. I say 'oddly', because it is distilled beer, therefore barley, not rye. Underneath that bombastic bouquet, we find teak furniture, drinks cabinets, oiled shelves, and polished dashboards. Then, it is dried citrus peels galore, a mix of pink grapefruit, blush orange, and Red Shaddock, peels so dried they are crispy, but floating in a bowl of teak oil. That citrus points more and more insistently at beer, India Pale Ale, to be precise, fruitier and juicier, balancing promises of acidity and bitterness. I swear I can smell hops in this, even! The second nose confirms the first, and sprinkles sawdust over it all. Some of that dust is ash, in fact. Phwoar! One can smell the foam of a freshly-poured IPA without much recourse to one's imagination. Astonishing. Mouth: the attack is, again, very much like an IPA's, fruity and bitter like citrus peels. Swirling it around the mouth helps teak furniture come back via retro-nasal olfaction, but all the tongue captures is bitter pink-grapefruit peels, and unripe blush-orange juice. Only time bathing the mouth allows woody notes to surface more clearly -- teak oil and iroko pencil cases. The second sip cranks up the acidity, and we have cherry-flavoured cola rubbing elbows with blush-orange segments, augmented with a drop of teak oil or carbonyl, for good measure. Finish: the arrival has an unexpected dash of coffee spilled on a teak shelf. That merely clears the runway for the now well-known citrus peels to take off. Again, we have pink grapefruit, blush orange, and Red Shaddock. The finish is noticeably less woody (a drop of teak oil, still), but beer becomes more obvious -- not just extrapolated from the citrus notes, but from a lingering cereal-y barley-mash bitterness. It lasts a while too! The second gulp is sweeter and positively tastes like cola (cherry flavoured again, probably). There is not much acidity to speak of, at this point; instead, we find a softly-bitter note reminiscent of mahogany shelves, and moist draff at the death. This is very good. One year old? 'kin 'ell! 7/10 (Thanks for the dram, JS)
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