Brewery: De Dolle Brouwers
Location: Esen (near Diksmuide), Belgium
Style: Imperial Stout
ABV: 9.0%
Version: bottled
Source: Beermerchants.com

Open It! beer number three, and my last one for the evening, was De Dolle Special Extra Export Stout. This bottle of De Dolle Special Extra Export Stout arrived as part of a BeerMerchants.com self-mixed case that I ordered back in July.

De Dolle are a Belgian brewery with some odd (or maybe just tongue-in-cheek?) ideas about stout (“Stout is an old-fashioned beer, but still popular in English speaking countries”? Try telling that to the Danes…) and this was the first of their beers that I’d encountered.

Pre-warned by Mr Dredge, I carefully opened the bottle over the sink and prepared for a lightning-quick decanting, but I must have been lucky with this one: the beer behaved itself and I got pretty much all of it into the glass.

As you can see from the pic, De Dolle SEE Stout poured with a thick, oily, black body and a huge tan head. First impressions: a light effervescence cuts through the luscious mouth-feel. Flavours are big, rich and delicious: dark chocolate truffle, vanilla and port-wine flavours abound, with a dry mocha-coffee edge. Deep and sensuous, this is a beer most definitely to be savoured, which is what I did for the remainder of my Friday OpenIt! evening.

Delicious stuff – just the sort of robust, flavourful stout I thoroughly enjoy – and one that I won’t hesitate to buy and try again if the chance presents itself. Speaking of: looks like Beermerchants.com are out of stock at the moment, but then the De Dolle website does say they only brew stout twice a year, so I’ll just have to keep my eyes peeled. Either that or raid John Clarke’s cellar… ;)

Brewery: Hardknott [@Hardknottann]
Location: Millom, Cumbria, England
Style: Red IPA
ABV: 6.5%
Version: Bottled
Source: Utobeer, Covent Garden, London

Friday Night was Open It! night, so I brought out a trio of beers that I’d been saving for a while. First up was Hardknott Infra Red. I (literally) grabbed this bottle off the shelf on a visit to Utobeer earlier this year (I think it was their last one) and had been saving it ever since.

The first thing I noticed was the thick, spicy hop aroma that poured from the bottle when I cracked the top. Infra Red poured with a deep, copper-red body and a frothy beige head.

Hardknott Infra Red is a very savoury beer. The first sip brought a flood of flavours that were all about the hop-burn. It was slightly sour (in a Belgian Red kinda way) and slightly metallic, with a long, lingering dryness, and hints of something that was struggling towards sweetness but never quite arrived. Burnt sugars – caramelised roast veg, something like that – came in towards the very end but there was still nothing you could call ‘sweet’ about it.

All in all we’re talking a distinctly acerbic, bone-dry, big IPA in a very definite Brewdog Hardcore mode, rather than what seems to be a more common sweet malt base for the big US-produced IPAs that I’ve sampled recently. Definitely a beer for the more adventurous palate, but one that rewards the bold-hearted with a big, brash blast of hoppy flavour. I liked it a lot and I’ll be buying more the very next chance I get.

This order actually came in about a month ago, but I’m only just getting round to sampling some of the contents. In a weird bit of mathematical synchronicity the whole lot (including p&p) came to £50.00 exactly.*

First up:

• Kernel Porter and Pale Ale
• Viven Porter and Ale

The Kernel beers were one of the main reasons for putting the order in, and I’d heard good buzz about the Vivens as well.

Next:

• Moor Old Freddie Walker, JJJ IPA, Peat Porter and Fusion

The other main reason for ordering… heard nothing but great things about these beers, looking forward to trying them.

And finally, to make up the 12-case, a few miscellaneous Belgians:

• Het Anker Gouden Carolus
• De Dolle Special Extra Export Stout
• Van Steenbergen Gulden Draak
• Brasserie Lefebvre Floreffe Blonde

Tasting notes to follow on all of the above in due course!

*Okay, okay, I confess. I hunted around for a bottle priced at £1.80 to make up the round number. Mild numerical OCD strikes again.