HAAND ME ANOTHER HAANDBRYGGERIET!

Listen, I was so enamored of that headline last time I used it that I reckoned I should just go with it again. Yeah, I think every time I have a beer from hot-hot-hot Norwegian brewer HAANDBRYGGERIET, I’ll go with that title. This time I enjoyed a bottle of HAANDBRYGGERIET ODIN’S TIPPLE, which is about as cool of a name for a Scandinavian beer as I can imagine. You know Odin – he’s a stud in Norse mythology. In his honor, HAANDBRYGGERIET have made a big imperial Russian stout, clocking in at 11% on the alcohol richter scale and just now becoming available in the United States. It is a lush, velvety stout – very warm-tasting, with licorice and bitter chocolate being the tastes I’m getting the most of. Thick and intense, with an “oily” character to it that I can take or leave.

ODIN’S TIPPLE is made with a single strain of wild yeast, so it also has a bit of that bacterial feel to it, though frankly I didn’t know that when I was drinking it – it just came across as somewhat bitter. I kept thinking two things when I was drinking it: one, that it was a lush and very high-quality “collector’s choice” sort of beer; and two, why the hell am I drinking an imperial Russian stout in late June? I’m going to go on a reds & IPAs & tripels bender for a while now – keep checking this space. Meanwhile, HAANDBRYGGERIET deliver an impressive 7.5/10 with this one.