In the spirit of winter we are introducing a new experimental brew on tap. It’s dark, bold and illegitimate. “Illegitimate” may seem an odd way to describe the beer. That is because we have tweaked this beer somewhat from a standard dunkelweizen. (A dunkelweizen, for those not in the know, is a dark wheat beer – anyone had an Erdinger Dunkel?).

So it’s a weiss beer, so there is a considerable amount of wheat in the grain bill. To give it its dark, chocolatey and roasted notes we have added a healthy portions of munich and chocolate malt. It has been hopped with a single hop addition during the boil using our favourite spicy noble hop.

We probably should have left it there, because even ze Germans would have approved this beer. However we catastrophically overstepped the mark and introduced some roasted and ground Ethopian blended coffee beans right at the end of the boil. This rounds off this beer rather well, providing a bit of extra tartness and some delightful coffee notes on the aroma.

The end result is a beer that is too dark to style for a standard dunkel, and the coffee beans provide some additional roasted tartness not normally associated with most commercial examples. Hence we have coined it our bastardised dunkelweizen – full bodied, creamy and perfect as a night cap on a cold evening!

This beer will be available on the SMACK! taps from Sunday 7 July. Come have a taste before it runs out!