OK, so I opened and poured this, and then I took a few photos, and then I took a swig and found myself saying, “Oooh, ” out loud.
Ola Dubh is one of those beers.
There are three editions, all matured in whisky casks of different ages, of which mine is the twelve year reserve version.
Pouring like a black hole with an outer ring of espresso crema for a head, the smell is dark fruit cake, damp wood and booze.
This is a viscous beer that’s full and round on your tongue.
Sticky with treacle, you can’t escape the chocolate and plum pudding body.
Oh, and you can taste the wood as well as smelling it.
There’s whisky here, a crisp and slightly peaty single malt, that brings earth and heather, rain and rocks.
Reading that sentence back it sounds a bit pretentious, but it’s the nearest I can get to describing this beer.
The hops give you crisp crunchy woodland leaf mulch and add a welcome bitterness to the honey rich stickiness of the finish as well as a sharpness to the whisky warmth in your belly.
Ola Dubh is superb.