83/100) Mikkeller Breakfasts

I have set myself the goal to review three beers or ciders every week for 100 weeks. I will be learning about beer and ciders more as I do this, and if I am successful in this venture, I will have tried about 300 unique drinks. If you're curious how I'm doing, the number in the post's title tells you which week I am in now.

Beer Geek Breakfast, Beer Hop Breakfast, Rauch Geek Breakfast

Beer for breakfast? What else did you think coffee stouts were for? A while back, I brought up Founder's Breakfast Stout before I really knew much about the style. (Founder's Beers) An Oatmeal coffee stout is characterized by a strong, coffee-like malt character with a silky smooth mouth feel. However, Mikkeller, a brewery out of Norway, has make some Breakfast stouts for the beer geek. Suffice to say they went crazy with it. With each of these "Breakfasts,"their potency made it hard to drink more than a few ounces. I could not imagine drinking a full pint of any of them.

Beer Geek Breakfast) Do you need a shot of espresso in the morning? This would work. It is so rich and dark that even light will not penetrate its heavy malts. In fact, when I poured it out, the sediment from the bottom of the bottle came out in large chunks. I'm not sure if that was a good thing, but I drank it anyway. The main flavor was coffee, and I mean straight up coffee right down to the finishing bitter astringency. There was barely any sweetness and very little I could consider chocolate, but the burst of bitter didn't linger. Since I'm not a huge coffee person, I didn't love this one, but you might! ☆☆☆

Beer Hop Breakfast) This was my clear favorite of these three because it reminded me of New Holland's Dragon's Milk Reserve Series Triple Mash. The Beer Hop Breakfast just has a bit more hoppiness, a lot more coffee, and about half the ABV. The hop character came through in the finish as a soft twang, and a sweetness made this beer quite easy to drink. Just like the Beer Geek Breakfast, this beer poured black and filled my nose with a strong coffee beans. ☆☆☆☆

Rauch Geek Breakfast) Rauch means smoked, and in this case, the malts and oatmeal(I presume!) both were smoked before being processed into wort. At some point then, a heaping dose of coffee was added to the mix. In my opinion, the two flavors were both good, but just didn't work well together. In in the initial, the rich, astringent coffee dominates while the finish contained all the smoke. I enjoy smoked beers, but something about this one's finish lacked for me. I think it was that there was no malt sweetness to balance out the smokiness. ☆☆☆