Dutch Beer of the Week - Bonus Bottle

BROUWERIJ RODENBURG POPULUS 6921 (BARREL AGED)

Happy New Year! And what better way to celebrate with an additional, and very celebratory, Dutch Beer of the Week.

I've already told you plenty about Brouwerij Rodenburg but this beer is a little bit special. For a start it's an 11% quadruple so a very big beer. On top of that it's been aged in a Martinique rum cask for extra complexity.  We'll come back to all of that but first a bit about the odd name.

6921 is in fact the postcode of Populierenlaan in Duiven, which is in the east of the Netherlands, not far from Arnhem.  Apparently 10 local beer lovers live in or near Populierenlaan and decided they wanted to make a beer of their own - Steve Gammage at Rodenburg was happy to help out and so Populus 6921 was born.  They 10 are all name checked on the label too - and it helped of course that one of the ten was Marco Phillipsen who (I think) is one of the main men at the Mitra off-licence chain. 

Back to the beer.  This comes in a corked 37.5cl bottle and immediately on popping the cork there's an enticing aroma of rum (in fact I stood for a few moments just sniffing the cork. Make of that what you will).  It's a red-brown beer with a complex aroma with malt sweetness, spice, rum (or course) and a fruity wine character all jostling for attention. They keep this up as you drink with a notable fruitiness developing (fruit's right up there with malt  in the handy tasting profile on the label).  There's some warming alcohol at the end but this certainly doesn't drink like an 11% beer.  I'd try it again but I think it's been quite a limited edition.