Brains Craft Brewery 'Black Mountain'

One of the things I like most about the Brains Craft Brewery is the labels they use, nice cartoon style brewery set up depicted, and usually little unique characters or items added for each different beer, lovely little details have gone into them.

'Black Mountain' is described as a 'hoppy Black IPA' , 5% and as with all their bottles 330mls. I picked this one up at Wally's Deli in the Royal Arcade in Cardiff, paid £2.35. It was brewed in conjunction with the Craft Beer Youtube channel.

Poured pretty black but with a small head that went soon after the photo.
Nice medium body, little toffee aroma, and a little floral and spicy elements. It does not however give the 'explosion of hops' promised from the Amarillo, Pacifica, Citra, Summit and Apollo hops used. The 'coffee, liquorice and burnt toffee' is there but also quite muted.

Overall its an okay beer,but compared to other well known Black IPA's its a bit of a light weight.
Its been reviewed reasonably well on untappd on cask so I thought that perhaps it has lost some of that freshness in the bottle, but seeing as it was only available in late December in Brains pubs this bottle isn't that old really.

Last year and the next

Happy New Year to beer drinkers everywhere, and everyone else too.
Drink beer, none of this dry month garbage, that's what I say.

Anyway, like several other bloggers that commented over the last couple of months, I am also guilty of slacking on the post front, in fact I think I averaged about 3 posts a month which is rubbish compared to previous years. Ah well, must try harder!

The promise I've made on this blog about this time in the last couple of years has been to feature more Welsh beers in reviews, and whilst not increasing the number it has held at about the 35% mark.

I again didn't do the Golden Pints awards but I suspect Tiny Rebel and The Celt Experience would have come out well, especially Celt. They are going from strength to strength, and looking back on untappd last year I rate them usually as a 4/5 most of the time, and am always impressed.

The new year looks good, and with the news from Craig that Brewdog are locating a puppy factory in Cardiff that's a great start.

Happy New Year.