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| The selection and Kenneth |
I'm a member of the Danish Beer Enthusiasts - and their local affiliate which - at the time - covered my borough ("Nørrebro") in Copenhagen. Later all the small borough groups have joined into one big "Copenhagen" group.
This local group held a lot of their meeting at a bar called "Café Viking" (Street View). From outside it looks like a dank joint, and when you go inside they don't flash their beer selection. But don't be fooled! Look at the beer card and be impressed.
This is were my local group held our Christmas "Lunch" (more like dinner) of 2009. At this Christmas "Lunch" there were a raffle, were I won four matured "Limfjords Porter" Double Brown Stout from Thisted Brewery, donated by our local chairman. Every year he buy a case of this beer, and then matures it in his cellar. I won a bottle from each of the years 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007. He told me to drink them with respect, perhaps after a good meal. I could also buy a current one for reference.
Here my taste butts tinkled - because I have tried this "Limfjords Porter" before at a beer tasting session. Its a black and thick beer with a solid head, and it has a very powerful taste of a stout, which you either hate or love - and I don't love it...
He then told my that this beer will fermint and over time become more like Sherry. So obviously I had to try it!
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| Us, the beers and the TV in the arpartment |
We did eat some good food (what I can't remember) and bought a recent exemplar of the beer.
We lined them up and started with the newest and worked our way through. After each year we summed up our experice of the beer and rated it from 1 to 10, were 1 is crap, 5 OK and 10 is super. Below is our rating.
| Year | My rating | Kenneth's rating | Our experience |
| 2010 | 5 | 5 | Smoky. Pointy. Powerful after taste. |
| 2007 | 6 | 6 | Darker foam. A little more milder. Less pointy foam in the mouth. |
| 2006 | 7 | 8 | Less carbon acid. Much more milder experience. Very drinkable. Very thick and soft. |
| 2005 | 8 | 8 | Sweet, nice. Very soft. Lovely. Almost like dessert wine. Very little taste of alcohol. |
| 2003 | 6 | 7 | Bitter after taste. More taste of licorice. Closer to the new one - working backwards. |
As the table shows my chairman was right. After five years of fermenting the beer taste like a dessert wine - such as sherry. And my personal oppennion is that the beer taste much better after fermenting than the original. I actually bought two beers for our little get-together, and we only opened one, so... only four years to go.
So to answer my initial question. "Can 7 year old black beer taste good?"... Well... Yes, it can.
