Kerozeen (Homebrewery Tetten)

Ah now here's a bottle which knows how to present itself.
White cap. Check.
Cork (actual, real, natural cork, not that silly putty crap they call cork these days). Check alright!
Spiffy label, listing origins, ingredients, specifics. Erm. No check. Just a dark 500ml bottle containing (if I'm to believe Dennoman) another brew from the Tetten guys.

That's right. Jugs.

This brew is called Kerozeen, and I'm guessing it's based on the Petrol I tasted sometime earlier this year. Dennoman warned me: this one's got "a splash" of Amaretto in it, and while that's not my favourite booze, I'm willing to try anything as long as it's swimming in stout.

So detach the cap, pull the cork (with a resounding POP I might add) and HOLY SAINT ARNOLDUS PRESERVE US we have a gusher on our hands!

Thar she blows.

I swear, as soon as that bottle went pop and started evacuating its contents all over my kitchen sink, I started to pour gently into my designated stout glass (*) and stopped pouring just past the half way mark, but she just wouldn't stop. Like someone had dropped an Alka Seltzer in there.

 

*) Note to Self: I need to find a decent stout glass, rather than this blasphemy.

 

A bit of cleaning got most of the sticky mess moved to more distant memory, and some ten minutes later, most of the head has subsided and I can finally take a sniff without half a foot of foam blocking most of the fragrance.

 

And fragrant it is. You get oodles of deep dark roast, a hint of coffee/chocolate with dark red fruits, interlaced with a boozy presence of what I'm guessing it almonds, but I'd be hard pressed to correctly identify them without Dennoman spilling the secret.

 

Weird and slightly unpleasant mouthfeel: it's a bit thinner than I expected, and definitely thinner than the Petrol. The excessive refermentation gives the beer a tingling, introvert buzz on the mouth, which I don't really identify with this kind of beer. Carbonation is otherwise ok, but the beer is saturated with carbon dioxide, which, together with the booze, detracts from the robustness it might otherwise have displayed.

Booze, then. Oh yes, there is booze here, and from what Dennoman told me, I'm guessing most of the boozy presence is due to a liberal addition of a non-beery beverage.

 

A bit more than this went in.

And I'm talking about the bottom part.

 

Fortunately for me, the almonds in the booze haven't invaded the brew, and instead are subtly (if such a term applies for this beer) present as a fine, sweet-yet-dry flavour, which nicely complements the roasty malt backbone of the beer. The booze is quite up-front, petering out into a nice and solid, chocolatey-roasty, albeit slightly thin malt vibe.

 

The aftertaste, not surprisingly, is on the sweet side of things, yet ironically countered by enough bitterness to make this a non-sweet beer.

 

While this is far from a perfect brew, I'm liking this one a lot. It's a bit dodgy, and hardly the epitome of equilibrium, but it's ballsy, without going so far as to slap them smack on the table.

If weren't such a hazardous pour, I'd gladly be serving this to any visiting stout afficionados, and I'm sure they wouldn't object.

 

Beer: Kerozeen

Brewery: Homebrewery Tetten 
Style: Stout. Too thin to be an Imperial, so I'm calling this a pimped Export Stout

ABV: I'd say somewhere around 9%

EBU: -
SRM: Deep deep dark dark but just on the paler side of black
Served: 500ml bottle

Tetten crew, good job but there's work to do. Get the refermentation under control, and balance the body with the booze. Other than that, I'll have a couple of these if you have any to spare.

 

As well as the recipe. (hey it never hurts to try does it?)

 

Greetz

 

Jo