Black Orchard
750 capped bottle. $8.50 from Beer Run in Charlottesville. Appearance: Really dark brown with ruby highlights in my tulip. Very fizzy. Big light brown head mostly fades to a thin rim. Almost no lacing. Smell: Weird, I guess. Malty and oaty and a little chocolate. Some dark fruit. Its pretty spicy and theres some tart orange peel smell that's kind of sharp. Complex and, yeah, weird. Not bad though. Taste: More weird than the smell. To start, everything about the taste is limited by absurd carbonation. OK, flavors similar to what I smelled-- slightly chocolatey, oaty, a little dark fruit, very spicy, tart orange peel. Some bready yeastiness in the finish. It all almost comes together, but not quite. Mouthfeel: I like a highly carbonated Belgian, but this is like a Coke almost. Way over carbonated. Otherwise, the mouthfeel is also very thin and almost watery. Drinkability: Overcarbonated, overspiced, over-reaching and underachieving. Its not really bad, but its not good, and I'll not buy or drink another one. It just doesn't work, and the closer I get to the bottom of the bottle, the worse it gets. The final insult is constant burping of subpar beer due to the carbonation.