Skitbit Oct 2017: Sonnisaari APA

Brewery: Sonnisaari (in Finnish)
Country: Finland
Style: American Pale Ale
Abv: 4,5 %
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What about the beer?

Colour is hazy golden orange with a large natural white head. Aroma has grapefruit, lemon and mild pineapple. Taste begins with bitter grapefruit bite. Rough grapefruit and spicy pine take over with herbal side tones. Towards the end really bitter pine and strong herbal flavours take over. Aftertaste has heavily bitter pine and somewhat harsh dry herbs.

Roughly bitter and piny American Pale Ale. The good thing is that despite the low abv there's character in the brew. Tha bad side is that the character is really rough, harsh and possibly a bit earthy. Not so impressed but not very disappointed either. If Sonnisaari makes a miss, I'm glad that it's with this style.

Ölbeat

Since Sonnisaari has, despite it's rather short existence, become one of my trusted Finnish breweries, one miss won't spoil our relationship. On the other hand, the song I picked is one "half a hit" after a long line of bad misses from this band. The only thing wrong is that it kinda pays respect to another Finnish band Yö which has always sucked big time. 

Popeda: Helvetin Pitkä Perjantai (YouTube)

From the 2017 album Haista Popeda!, the song was written by Jimi and Costello Hautamäki. 

Skitbit Dec 2016: Tanker Külmale Maale and Sori Brewing Dark Humor Club Hot Chocolate

Exceptionally, I didn't have or at least I didn't make notes of any mentionably bad Finnish beers from the end of November until now. So instead, expectably, I picked a couple of Estonian brews that might be nice from someone's point of view but from mine weren't. First is from the sadly-not-lost archives of October, and second is from the beginning of December.

***

Brewery: Tanker
Country: Estonia
Style: Imperial Stout
Abv: 8,5 %
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What about the beer?

Colour is black with a finger-thick beige head. Aroma has strong fresh mint with some malts and dark chocolate. Taste begins with a medicine-like strong mint or even menthol bite. Mint-covered slightly roasted malts take over. Sweet fresh mint even covers the bitterness near the finish. Aftertaste has mint all over with some medicine-like cleaned freshness.

So I got the Yellow Belly effect: just Kahlua replaced with mint liquor. No, no, no! People should keep herbs out of the kettle. This isn't beer, this is cough syrup. Didn't work at all.

Ölbeat

Spice, even in a beer, can be nice. When it's there in tolerable amount. When you get run over with an army of mint leaves, it's not. When it reminds you of a short but yucky youth experience with mint flavoured liquor, you get some other pretty annoying things picked from your youth memories. Like this so-called song.

Spice Girls: Spice Up Your Life (YouTube)

From the 1997 album Spiceworld, the song was written by Spice Girls, Matt Rowe and Richard Stannard.

***

Brewery: Sori Brewing
Country: Estonia
Style: Imperial Stout
Abv: 10,2 %
@RateBeer

What about the beer?

Colour is black with a tiny beige crown. Aroma has roasted malts, dark chocolate and espresso. Taste starts with roasted boozy bitterness. Bitter strong espresso with faint dark chocolate hints takes over. Towards the end growing bitterness with alcohol dryness drowns the other flavours. Aftertaste has bitter dark chocolate and dry roast.

Aroma promises something a lot better than the taste delivers. Boozy bitter domination until the end is too much. The chocolate flavours don't come out as expected. After all, this is named Hot Chocolate. Or is that some kind of dark humor, too?

Ölbeat

The name of the brewery comes from a quarter in Tampere city centre, where e.g. the city police station is situated, and not so much from the Finnish diminutive of anteeksi (sorry). So it's probably polite to respect the city where the Sori guys Pyry and Heikki learned the basics of brewing. And what could be better way to show respect than a song about the singer's and his friends adventures with other Tampere ice hockey club, by a Tampere-based oldie rock band. It's dark humor, at least. Sori, everyone.

Popeda: Mää ja Tapparan mies (YouTube)

From the 1992 album Svoboda, the song was written by Alex Harvey, Hugh McKenna and David Batchelor (Tomahawk Kid) - the Finnish lyrics were written by Juice Leskinen.