Beer – #1,115 – Garage Project – Belly of the Beast

For the First Sunday of Spring, since how Spring starts on the equinox, it’s a Garage Project Belly of the Beast. A Pastry Porter if you will, or a porter with some flavours added. It is also the start of a summer time daylight savings change, it’s all happening.

I’ve also even brought some new vinyl music to listen to, Slowdive have a new album that I’m partial to.

Garage Project of course make the Garage Project Belly of the Beast an they do that in Wellington, 🇳🇿  New Zealand, as a Porter – Imperial style beer, that is 12% ABV.

What is this new devilry? 

Belly of the Beast, the darkest of dark magic.

Imperial dessert porter, fortified with muscovado sugar, infused with toasted almonds and freshly roasted cacao nibs, then blended with four year old bourbon barrel aged beer. Irresistibly rich, deliciously dark and terrifyingly complex.

Fly you fools!

Brewers notes

So, What could possibly go wrong?

That’s really a rich aroma that bursts forth, chocolate and that sweeter steeped fruits.

A glorious pour of a thick dark beer with a coffee coloured foam head that doesn’t have much retention and tastes to a hint of itself quite quickly. That aroma keeps giving in the glass.

This has a really big mouthfeel, and there’s a little bit going on, there’s that sweetness, of course, but there’s a lower slightly sour kick from this, it’s not a bit deal, or off-putting but it is there, but that initial billowy pillow stays with the beer each sup.

There’s also quite a nice warning glow from this as you drink it.

I’m not sure however that I’ve made the right choice for a Sunday afternoon beer, and this might have been more prudent later on., but you know sometimes you mist if you must. Nothing wrong with this being an afternoon beer, but at 12% possibly not your starter beer. The upside is that as the first beer it becomes an untainted experience, I’m not trying to build on something, or call back to the last beer I had in some kind of comparative fashion.

The pdubyah-o-meter rates this as 9 of its things from the thing. For all the things it’s not a deep or nuanced as you might want it to be, all the flavours and action are on the same plane, there’s nothing lurking in the deeps, even as this warms

The double dip review

• Where did I get it? The local Liquorland of course.
• Am I enjoying it? It I quite nice but it isn’t really wow!
• Would I have another? I might not, there are a lot of really good dark beers, this is one of the good ones but there are others. I paid NZ$20 for this, it’s not over-priced for what it is, the Liberty Prohibtion Porter is slightly bigger serve size for similar money, but that’s to come.
• Would I share with a friend on a porch and set the world to rights? it really is nice because you can talk about the nuance of vanilla, cocoa, fruits and that and you’d be right about them all.

Music for this:  I’ve brought the Vinyl version of the Slowdive album ‘Everything is Alive’ and it is speldid. This is classy Shoegaze of the finest type and has had multiple flips and plays.

Porter – Imperial

The Imperial Porter is a substantial, extra-strong dark malty beer with a complex and flavorful dark malt character with a restrained bitterness. It may have a range of roasted flavors, generally without burnt qualities, and often has a chocolate-caramel-malty profile. Stronger, more bitter and often with more dark malt qualities and dryness than of regular Porters but lack the overt roastiness of an Imperial Stout.