REVIEW: De Molen Bed & Breakfast

Another grab from my fridge full of beer. Today, we have a new brewery to the blog, De Molen from the Netherlands, with a very interesting beer. Bed & Breakfast, an amber ale brewed with pale and cara barley malts, sladek and amarillo hops, and coffee. We've seen coffee porters and stouts aplenty, and even a coffee IPA, but never a coffee amber. I'm excited to see how this works out. To the beer!

The thing I'm sure you are noticing when checking out the picture up there is the downright ridiculous head. Now, I've been known to over aggressively pour a beer from time to time. I always would rather have too much head than not enough. I can't be blamed for this one though. A very gentle pour resulted in this towering monstrosity of billowy, frothy, loosely bubbled bright white head. It stuck around for quite a while too. Eventually settling down as a solid finger of foam atop the beer. But all it takes is the slightest swirl around the glass to foam it right up again. Underneath all that foam is quite a pretty beer though, a slightly hazy, orange amberish liquid.

The coffee aromas that manifest here are very similar to what we saw in Dayman. It's that sense, of a cup of brewed coffee that's started to go a bit cold. There's a slight biscuity caramel malt, a bit of pepper, and the slightest touch at a faint but bright lemony hop presence. The coffee aromas do dominate the nose, however.

Bed & Breakfast is fabulously creamy. I mentioned before that the tiniest little agitation stirs the foam right back up in the glass. Well, that happens with every sip as well. Every time I take a drink the beer seems to expend in my mouth lending a wonderful creaminess and almost chewy mouthfeel to what is a fairly light to medium bodied beer. Robust, yet mild coffee flavor and bitterness (hmm, that doesn't make a ton of sense. Let's see, there's certainly plenty of coffee flavor, but it isn't a super intense dark roast. Does that helpful at all?) mingles with a slightly sweet toffee/ caramel malt flavor. A very faint citric brightness livens things up and makes for quite a balanced beer.

If you dug the Dayman from Stone, Two Brothers, and Aleman I think you'll get a kick out of this one as well. It's got that same sort of intrigue from those coffee flavors being where they're not usually supposed to be. I don't think it's quite as successful or interesting as Dayman, but it's worth checking out for that amazing creaminess alone.

HD