17 June 2010

Arse Gratia Artis

What is up with this label? A candidate for Pump Clip Parade, or an attempt at being classily arty (in the way that nightclub signage sometimes tries to look classily arty)? Maybe there's some kind of Danish gag that I don't get. I dunno. I suppose all that matters is that the headless, armless nude bird did mean that one more bottle of Mors Stout got sold, to me. The brewery is Refsvindinge, on the island of Funen, just between Zealand and the Danish mainland.

Mors is as full in texture and flavour as one might expect a 5.7% ABV stout to be. The body is totally opaque while the head is thick and creamy, lasting all the way to the end. That said, you also get a good cleansing fizz, as befits a decent bottled stout.

The nose would have you expect to find dryness in the ascendant: roasted barley, perhaps. But on tasting the initial carbonic dry flavours are quickly followed by a rich and thick chocolate flavour, with half the sweetness of creamy milk chocolate, and half the biting bitter cocoa of top-quality dark.

A very satisfying beer and far more sophisticated in the drinking than its toilet-wall labelling might suggest.

14 comments:

  1. Does look a little like a neon sign outside a strip club. Or at least what I imagine one might look like *cough*

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  2. The complete absence of seedy strip clubs in Germany must be quite a culture shock.

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  3. "The complete absence of seedy strip clubs in Germany must be quite a culture shock. "

    You just not looking hard enough or around Munich! ;)

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  4. ... or Hamburg, or Berlin, or Frankfurt ...

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  5. Oblivious, I suspect there was a little irony there... :D

    Münster doesn't have as many as those other places. Not that I've counted!

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  6. Apparently there's Atlantis Tabledance Club!!!!!

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  7. So much for "What happens in Munich stays in Munich."

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  8. "Mors Stout" = "Mother's Stout", so it would appear that the drawing shows mother. And, yes, I think this is another of those things you have to be Danish to make any sense of.

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  9. Oh hooray: we've gone from weird to disgusting. Great. Thanks Denmark!

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  10. Damn! I feel I should delete all references to strip clubs now! Feel.. so.. dirty..

    Is this anything to do with the old myth (at least in Ireland, anyway) that stout was good for nursing mothers? At least they didn't have some hot neon chick breastfeeding on the label! Small mercies.

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  11. Barry, the great Mrs Beeton in the 19th century recommended nursing mothers to drink Cooper, a half-and-half mixture of stout and porter.

    At least this one isn't called "mother's milk stout".

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  12. So uh, you're not a fan of this bottle art eh? Haha I have to say I agree with you... yech

    I'm intrigued by this beer. I love a nice drinkable stout that still packs in a ton of flavor. Other than the milk/dark chocolate combo on the palate, what other flavors come through? Do they transition in an interesting or complex way? Or were you more surprised to find this much chocolate flavor in a beer with relatively low alcohol and an ugly bottle? ;)

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  13. Well obviously with Mr Cornell watching I can't possibly recognise "transition" as a verb. But it's not a madly complex beer: it does chocolate, it does dry, and it leaves you to enjoy that. I've seen it done as well and better at much lower ABVs (Dungarvan Black Rock springs immediately to mind). But as to the bottle art: that's just Denmark, bless 'em and their nearly uncontrolled access to the retail beer market.

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