Best Features: Dark Fruit Flavours
My Pick
Red Truck Beer Company – Big Black Bock,
7.2%
The name is a little risky but you know what they say, once you go black you never go back!
Full of flavour, Big Black Bock is not for light beer drinkers. This style of beer is brewed in the lagering technique using bottom fermenting yeast at a cold temperature. The resulting beer has a higher alcohol content and is usually crisp on the tongue.
The aroma of Big Black Bock is very intense; fruit including raison and plum, roasted malts, coffee and espresso. There is even a hint of roasted nuts.
The pour creates a dark beer that fills the glass. The heads is fairly loose and wispy indicating a medium body.
On the tongue, the flavour explodes bringing dark malts, coffee flavours and high cocoa content chocolate. The finish is somewhat fruity revealing hints of the raisons and plum essence.
Only available in premium restaurants and pubs but well worth the search.
Locations:
The Whip, St. Augustine’s, The Alibi Room to name a few.
Food Pairings:
Pair Red Truck Big Black Bock with strong flavoured foods including stinky cheese, salty cheese, dark chocolate and molasses. Peppercorn steak, hot wings and spicy Italian food will be cooled by the residual sugars.
The big difference wbeeetn the DFH and the Shipyard barleywines is style. Olde School is an American Barleywine, while Shipyard is English. English beers tend to be more subtle in flavor. Alan Pugsley, the owner/brewer at Shipyard prefers more traditional styles and likely brewed the Barleywine in a traditional English style. English style beers tend to be lower in alcohol than their American counterparts. So 8% ABV is not necessarily low, just low when you’re comparing it to an American style beer.You might have also noticed the big “Cellar Aged” sticker on that. That means that Shipyard aged that beer for a while before releasing it. Not all their barleywines are like that. Aging it will smooth out the flavor a bit. When it’s fresh, you’ll get some more hops bitterness and heat from the alcohol. I don’t remember how old your bottle of Olde School was, but it could have been sweeter because it was aged longer. It’s also likely sweeter because of the higher ABV, which means more malt.