Founders Dirty Bastard
12oz stubby bottle decanted into a tulip glass. No freshness date available. A: Pours a deep deep copper brown, can't see to the other side of the glass, not much carbonation present (which I wasn't expecting too much of anyways, plus this guy is a little to dark to tell what's going on in there) with a sandy one inch head. Decent sticky lacing down the glass even after the head fades away. S: Super sweet malt aromas bubble through. Hints of chocolate and boozy fruit (if that makes any sense) are present as well. This one even smells heavy. T/MF: There is a hop presence here that the inital aroma hides quite deceptivly as a bitter kick greets me on the first sip. Swishing the beer around my mouth, a lot of it tends to stick all over my tongue and finishes a bit prickly on the front and back of the tongue. Very active mouth feel and not quite as creamy as I was expecting, which is nice because I enjoy being suprised by beer as long as they are good suprises. The malt is sweet, but I feel that the hops cover up some of the toasty malt flavors that only seem to come out near the end of the quaff. There is a strange sort of funk to this beer as a chocolatey taste is mixed with the hop bitterness and gives a sort of fermented fruit taste. D: This is quite an interesting and complex beer and quite heavy on top of that, but something seemed a bit lacking overall, I guess my expectations were a little high on this one. Not sure I'd try this again before I tried some other's in this style.