beer_name: Munich Eisbock
text: Thanks to Jim at Sherbrooke for the sample. Comes in a 650 ml brown bottle. Pours out a translucent almond colour, with a couple of fingers worth of creamy/spongy beige head that slowly settles to a thick cap. The aroma presents toasty and wafery malt with some raisin notes, not overly complex. Flavour still doesn't seem to jive after several sips. A one-two punch of nearly cloyingly sweet malt at first, a brief pause in the middle, and then a jumble of beefed up hops on the finish and long into the aftertase. Sweet, almost worty, malt up front in the flavour, with a bit of a nutty character, while the hops dry things out shortly after, turning things grainy and then spicy, followed by a herbal astringency. The elements are there, but the balance isn't, it's a flip-flop from one extreme to another. Fuller-bodied mouthfeel, creamy smooth and silky texture, with moderate carbonation. Would benefit with some adjustments to refine both the malt and hop content and find a more cohesive balance between the two. While Eisbock is still a fairly rare style on the shelves in general, and Canadian produced ones even moreso, this seems to fall short of the mark for the style in general.