Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast

When misfortune strikes, there's a risk it will turn your whole outlook sour. The nastier elements of life appear and try to sap your appreciation of the good things, and you must fight the battle with the forces of inner darkness and rediscover your spirit. Thus it is that, after some creep stole my wallet last night, I will respond by opening a geeky beer I'd been saving for a special occasion.

And it could hardly get geekier than Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast. After sampling the wonderful Mikkeller Monk's Elixer, and having read so much about Breakfast, I'm expecting great things here.

Let me just note, however: I am not actually drinking this beer at breakfast. It's just after a late lunch, actually.

Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast pours a rich "inner darkness" black, with a thin tan foam like the crema on cup of espresso. This is logical enough, as this oatmeal stout is made with coffee.

The taste is deeply burnt malt and hop-and-coffee bitterness, loaded with the flavours of baked raisins -- the kind you find at the edges of a raisin bun, where they've blackened against the tray in the oven. The lingering bitterness means this sipping beer lasts a long time. It's cold coffee left in a cup and rediscovered in the late morning, mixed with scalded molasses and 86% cocoa chocolate.

Wonderful stuff. Life is good.