THE first 15 minutes or so of the acclaimed 2007 movie There Will Be Blood involves Daniel Day-Lewis’s oil prospector character rooting around underground with all manner of tools before finally striking the black gold that would make him unimaginably wealthy and powerful.
This expansive epic came to mind this week as I cracked open a bottle of Duel from Beer Hut, and not just because the movie features, at its heart, a duel of sorts between Paul Dano’s small town preacher and Day-Lewis’s burgeoning magnate.
There are various shots of black oil pouring from underground wells and when you get a heavy, imperial stout, it just oozes out of the bottle into the glass like slick oil.
Of course, the similarity more or less ends there, although there is something decadent about sipping away at a 12.5 per cent barrel-aged stout which puts you in mind of the excesses of Day-Lewis’s ultimately wealthy protagonist.
Beer Hut aren’t planting any wells in south Down, but they are refining their beer-making as this latest creation owes much of its value to its rarity. Just 750 bottles have been released into the wild, although the draught version has a recent hit at the Portrush Beer Festival, so here’s hoping for a repeat run.
The beer itself is a collaboration with the nearby Killowen Distillery, who provided the whiskey barrels for the ageing. To be precise, the stout spends 10 months in barrels which have previously housed bourbon and peated rum.
The result is a complex and intriguing imperial stout which brings a fresh flavour experience on ever sip.
The beer, as previously signposted, pours a rich, oil black colour in the glass with a thin, tan lacing on top (it’s far too subtle to call it a ‘head’).
There’s rich, roasty aromas along with a whiffs of burnt toast and sweet bourbon.
The first thing you get on the palate, is the sweet bready malt flavour. Not sure if Veda is too niche a reference, but that’s very much the upfront vibe here. This gives way to a sticky treacle-like sweetness and a nice warming alcohol feel. It’s not one of those ‘hides-its-strength-well’ kind of imp stouts, but rather the high abv contributes to the cosy feel.
The ageing gives it smoothness, but the peated rum barrels also help impart an earthy and very faintly sour hint to proceedings.
