Beer Hop Breakfast

Brewery: Mikkeller

Type: Stout

Alcohol: 7.5%

Country: Denmark

Been looking forward to this one for a long time. It brings together three of my favorite things, beer, hops, and breakfast! This beer is also on the top 50 beers in Denmark list I am currently trying to get through. You can check the progress of that here! This is ranked in the top 20, lets see if it earned it's place.

Pours pitch black with a massive overflowing tan head. The aroma is unbelievable  this may be one of the best smelling beers I have ever had. There is a lot of chocolate and coffee in the nose, much like the other beers in the beer breakfast series. The twist on this one is the juicy hops warring for dominance in the nose. It is like smelling a strong cup of coffee with hops steeping in them. Wait that is a pretty good idea, I am trademarking hops coffee! Anyway back to the beer (don't steal my hop coffee idea). The smell is pretty dominated by malts, which is the opposite in the test. Nice citrus flavor mixed in with the dark roasted malt/coffee flavor. It is so hard to describe the taste, it is just so complex. Chocolate and roasted malt mixing with super bitter and citrusy hops, so bitter they make your tongue numb.  This is a very bitter beer, I would say straying into black IPA territory in hop the way of hop bitterness and flavor. That being said the mouthfeel of this one is all stout. The oatmeal gives it a massively full mouthfeel of a standard oatmeal stout but it does finish very very dry just like my favorite IPAs. This beer ticks all the right boxes for me. It is a full bodied roasted stout, but also a hop monster, without getting too unbalanced. I can see why it is in the top 50 and it is for sure my new favorite hoppy dark beer.