Great British Beer Festival 2010
ABV: 3.5%
Origin: Bodegraven, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands
Website: www.brouwerijdemolen.nl
Revelation Cat Whole Milk Mild
This is a beer deserving of the description ‘eclectic’: a cross between two traditional and somewhat neglected English beer styles, mild and milk stout, commissioned by an Italian and brewed by a Dutchman. The idea was dreamed up by beer guru Alex Liberati, of Rome’s celebrated beer bar Brasserie 4:20, for his Revelation Cat beer firm. Like some of the cutting edge brewers now doing the rounds in Europe, Alex doesn’t have his own kit, but works at other people’s breweries. For this beer, he approached Menno Olivier at De Molen, no stranger to collaborations on unusual beers, and Menno perfected the recipe.
It involved obtaining supplies of proper English mild ale malt, once a mainstay of British brewing but now something of a speciality line, and expensive to ship across the North Sea in small quantities. The hops are the Czech varieties Premiant and Sladek, the latter one of the Žatec hybrids. The beer is also dosed with lactose, the unfermentable sugar that lends a characteristically sticky sweetness to milk stout — the label states 25kg was added per 800l, which by my reckoning works out to about 31g/l.
The result is a dark brown beer with a fine, thick yellow-beige head. The rather oily and inviting aroma is tinged with drinking chocolate powder and dark malt, leading to a big bodied, sweetish and aromatic palate with the quality of milk chews, lifted by tangy, lightly acidic fruit and a touch of roast. A soothing, decently chewy and very lingering finish has cinder toffee notes and a light touch of roast.
The beer attracted deserved interest at the Great British Beer Festival — all that trouble to source the mild malt was clearly worthwhile. I’ve a soft spot for dark, sweetish low gravity beers anyway, but even if you don’t, this is well-balanced enough to please, and that indulgent oily lactose note is enough to make a cat purr.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/revelation-cat-milk-mild/110751/
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