Beware the gnomes.
They look friendly and gentle and fun.
But they’re mean.
Mean I tell you.
This is D’Achouffe’s brown beer and it’s a thing of beauty.
McChouffe pours a deeply dark red wood brown and smells of All Bran and apples.
Cereals and orchards.
Lovely.
It tastes almost gentle.
Almost.
Over ripe red apples, crushed pears and a glassful of sloe gin make up the main body of McChouffe.
There’s also a nice herbal green bouquet, full of coriander, rosemary, even a hint of sage.
And hidden away in the darkest recesses of D’Achouffe’s toadstool home are a pile of biscuits coated in toffee.
It waves hello to you from the window of its Smurf-esque prison, more a distant flicker than a flavour.
As you swallow the hops go all brown dead leaf dryness, crisp and crunchy and full of brandy snap candy caramel.
McChouffe, like all the beers I’ve tried from this brewery, is just too easy to drink.
A few weeks ago it led me to the messiest beer related evening I’ve had in a long time.
As I said before, beware the gnomes.