22oz bottle from DrDogBeer as part of Secret Santa 2009. Thanks Tom.

Pour gives a chestnut brown color with a vivid, lively look. Good clarity and some decent head, lace and retention. The beer looks inviting.

This brew is all about a complicated array of malts with some hop presence in the finish. There are a lot of competing sweet malts jostling for attention, and in the end I feel it gets a bit muddled. Too complicated in the malt department.

The other dominating feature is the earthy, almost peat like taste. It’s NOT smoked, but the organic, soil like character seems to cloud the clarity of the beer. Very prominent and it’s not a funk based thing at all – muddy!

It drinks OK, and I am not saying that I did not like the beer, but it’s a little too crowded in terms of tastes and experiences for me. The beer does not drink very cleanly at all, and for me that’s a bit of a problem.