Beer – #770 – Funk Estate – Super Afro~Disiac

I gave in and brought some Funk Estate Super Afro-Disiac, not a hard choice as it seems like a Stout kind of evening really. Not sure about needing a ‘lift’ but what they hey, can’t knock it ’til you tried it.

Imperial Stout brewed with ingredients that got positive effect on “night time exercise”. Its packed with chocolate, vanilla, honey, figs and maca Root.

This is 8% ABV and 55 IBU things in my 1 litre bottle from the fill station, 240 calories a serve size, making this 6.6 standard drink units of beer.

Brewed at Funk Estate in the style that is Imperial Stout and they were in Wellington, but moved to the sunnier and all around better Auckland New Zealand

You’ve got hot little hands on our annual Valentine’s Day sexual imperial stout. It’s silky smooth, and packed with chocolate, vanilla, honey, figs and maca Root. Share this with someone you love xoxo.

Needing a Lift?

The idea for a beer to get you in the mood came to brewer Shiego Takagi when he was eating oysters with a friend at Beervana. Many breweries had added the well-known aphrodisiacs into Oyster Stouts, so why not take other aphrodisiacs and try to craft a delicious, super sexy beer?

Takagi reasoned it needed to be sweet and dark with a little hop bitterness, so he combined figs, cacao nibs, honey, oysters and maca root powder – all ingredients purported to improve your “night-time exercise” as he puts it.

We can’t vouch for its efficacy as a Cialis substitute, but we can vouch for the taste.

A big, rich, velvety stout that is gloriously hedonistic and exceptionally complex.

So, what could possibly go wrong?

That i a strange and muddled aroma on opening. Muddy, but then it cleared to be coffee, faintly though.

Pitch tar black pour with a giant mocha coffee coloured head that is firm full and showing no signs of fatigue. I had a good listen and it’s not noisy, so not going anywhere in a hurry.

That is full and intense, and somewhat unexpected. Really bold bitterness, really bold sweetness and hints of saltiness perhaps.

There’s a lot going on in there, it’s hard to pick exactly what it is, and some of it might not quite belong in the party, that annoying uncle that insists on dancing, annoying. But what?

The more I drank, and being honest, probably more than I intended, I got used to the strange tastes and they became familiar and settled down to a truce.

I was admiring the lacing on the glass when then I thought I have not idea what Maca is, then I googled it and wished I hadn’t.

I’ll then tell you what this is. A beer that leads you to be distracted with other things, like the music I’m listening to ( I moved on to Charles Bradley for a bit of funk/soul/R&B), and the beer became a secondary interest. Which happens sometimes.

I also marvelled at the lacing left in the bottle as I poured the last half, I’m easily led astray.

This though might indicate something about the beer and the confusion/explosion of tastes that this, and how it might just be one too many.

and so continues the most meandering of beer drinking hours.

… and we’re back in the room …..

This is let down by a lack of lasting and persistent aroma, its a deep dive to find it, and it ends up with that earthy note. There’s little bitterness and not a lot of lingering taste to spark the palate on the way through, and although the tastes all combine to give you the feeling of a full beer it’s somewhat emperors new clothes, an illusion.

Don’t get it wrong the taste is nice and all that, but it isn’t memorable. Like I image the night might be if you’ve been at the fill station, because this is slightly on the wobbly side of beers, where the urge to snack might be the most important thing at the end of the night, and lets face a bed full of crumbs isn’t ideal.

I’m conflicted by a beer that on one hand wasn’t hard to drink, and has a nice quality about, leaves a nice taste in the mouth and had some nice flavours that sparked and were enjoyable, but were at the end of the evening not all that memorable.

The pdubyah-o-meter rates this as 7 of its things from the thing. I’m not being harsh this really isn’t a beer that stands out or makes itself known or has much of a presence. It is nice beer, polite beer, flavourful beer, consistent drinking beer, but it is just that, nice and polite and not forward, and sadly not engaging or memorable.

The double dip review

Where did I get it? The Fine Wine Delivery Company had it available.
Am I enjoying it? I’ve not not been enjoying it.
Would I have another? I think not.
Would I share with a friend on a porch and set the world to rights? I don’t know that I could look myself in the mirror if I did. this is nice but nothing to write home about, it’s ‘not all that and a bag of chips’ Frankly it talks a good game. I then wrote twenty one more words because a one thousand word thing is better than one less than that.

Music for this: Dip into the past masters for ” Kings of Leon ” and “Only By The Night” on Spotify

Only by the Night is the fourth studio album by American alternative rock band Kings of Leon, released worldwide in September 2008

IMPERIAL STOUT

Imperial stouts are usually extremely dark brown to black in color with flavors that are intensely malty, deeply roasted and sometimes with accents of dark fruit (raisin, fig) or milk sourness. The bitterness is typically medium and often the low sie of that. Imperial stouts are strong and often exceed 8% by volume.