Just because you could...

Someone's been mulin' De Molen. The following beers were suitcased back from Amsterdam by my lovely wife, who chose them from the wide selection on offer in De Bierkoning. They're not what I would have picked, but I fully admit I was intrigued by the descriptions.

In a world of degenerate beer it's wonderful to find one called Koffie & Toffee that contains neither as an ingredient. That's especially true because it's a Baltic porter, a style which rarely benefits from craft-style dicking around. This has all the classic hallmarks: a clean lager body and a big vegetal tang of old-world hops. And yet it does manage to live up to the name. The coffee side isn't huge and is a standard feature of the style, but the toffee is a bonus sweetness, entirely complementary to the rest and adding an appreciable chewiness when the ABV is a little on the light side, at only 8.5%. A straight-up beer with novelty characteristics? We're through the looking glass here, people.

Snoep & Spin is the unlikely offer of candyfloss-flavoured barley wine. The good news is that they've got one part of this right: it has the artificial pink-tasting sweetness of candyfloss. I checked the ingredients to see how they did it. The answer: candyfloss. There's not much else, though, just a very characterless base beer, thick and hot as befits 10% ABV. Hops? Malt? No, it all gets buried under the sugar and suchlike nonsense. Nobody wants candyfloss flavoured beer, and if you don't believe me, drink this one to find out that you don't either.

Today's first imperial stout is called Kiev & Mule, being as it's brewed with ginger, lime and mint: an unusual approach to the style, but that's De Molen for you. In the glass it's a very dark brown and proves to be as thick as it looks. The base stout may be 10% ABV but it takes a back seat in the flavour, putting spicy ginger, spritzy lime and, to a lesser extent, aromatic mint, in first. The first two give almost a feel of sushi, which is not what one expects from big strong stout. Big strong stout arrives later, and there's a solid heavy roast and a kick of vegetal hops in the finish. It's tremendous fun: mostly a gimmick that tastes more like ginger beer than imperial stout, but which also has the goods for anyone looking for classical attributes. Good times.

Cocktail hour concludes with Rozekoek & Pinklady for which a helpful gloss tells us means "Glaced cake & Pinklady". OK, but I'm none the wiser for that. It purports to be another barley wine, at 10.5% ABV, and the only unorthodox things on the ingredients list are apple juice and squashed cochineal beetles. We're very much on the same page as we were with the candyfloss one: it's monstrously sweet, with the aroma suggesting a sticky raspberry or cherry candy that's never been near real fruit. I don't think I would have picked out the apple from the flavour without knowing it was there, but yes, it does taste of apples, and cake, and fake cherries. It's not very beery though: something this strength should at least have some malt heft or heat, but it doesn't. What happens when you take a gimmick beer and remove the beer? You get this weird mess of a thing that has no resemblance to real barley wine. It is bright pink, though, so at least the beetle employees did their jobs competently.

A rare mononymous beer follows to finish. Balcones is another imperial stout, this one named after the Texas distillery which supplied the barrels it was aged in. So definitely not bourbon then? It smells and tastes a lot like a bourbon-aged imperial stout, very big on the vanilla, leaving the stout's chocolate unsure as to whether it's sweet milk or bitter dark: there are elements of both. This is the fresh 2024 edition, and I think it's an advertisement for letting it mature a while, or buying an older bottle, as it's a little hot and harsh, with more splintery dry oak than is ideal. There's some good fruit complexity in the background -- raisin and plum -- and I think that will come out more after the beer has been allowed to mellow. As is, it's decent stuff if barrel-aged stouts of 11.7% ABV are your thing. I think I hold De Molen to a higher standard, however.

By and large, these are gimmicks, and should be understood as such. All of them are completely honest and upfront about their nature, and they deliver what's suggested. If candyfloss barley wine is what you feel the beer scene has been missing up until now, I heartily recommend them all; if not then you probably needn't have read this far.