Hercule Stout
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Realizing that I’ve already had two imperial stouts this week, I decided the only sensible thing is to keep going down the darkened path.
My wife bought me a bottle of Hercule Stout, a Belgian beer emblazoned with the image of Agatha Christie’s famed detective, Hercule Poirot. Indeed, his is an appropriate visage; this bottle of beer would certainly keep the detective busy, hunting down clues.
The first mystery to arise is the name of the brewery. My label says it is brewed by “Brasserie Des Legendes” in Ellezelles, Belgium. However, the brewery website states the name as “Brasserie Ellezelloise”. If there’s been a name change, I’m not sure which is out of date — the website or my bottle. The only thing not in question is the slogan of the brewery: “La Bière des Collines”, which translates as “The Beer of the Hills”.
The squat, 11.2 oz bottle is capped with a swing-top. According to the label, the beer is refermented in the bottle. I braced myself for an explosion of beer as I swung the metal hinge forward — and though there was a resounding pop, nothing but vapor escaped.
The second mystery presented itself as I poured the stout. Black beer splashed into my glass and a huge head errupted, but wave after wave of some strange — but not unpleasant — aroma gurgled out.
I held my nose above the agitated stout and inhaled deeply. There’s plenty of roasted malt, but there’s a zesty sweetness I couldn’t place. Chocolate? Toffee? Raisins? Elements of all the above are present in the aroma, but eventually I settled on anise. Yes, there is a definite anise aroma — but even that seemed to miss the mark.
On the tongue, the beer starts of sweet, with more sweet toffee than I’d expect in an imperial stout. That zesty, raisiny-sweet taste is still present — sometimes it seems like anise, sometimes not. As you swallow, the bitter roast seems to rise from your throat and swarm the vacated space in your mouth, warming and leaving you awash with roasted bitterness.
What could that elusive taste and aroma be?
I’ve been compared to Hercule Poirot in the past (sadly, yes, this picture is of me), but it took no great leap of intuition for my detective work to pay off. Instead, I simply found the beer’s description on the brewery’s website.
The Brasserie Ellezelloise website claims the scent and taste is spruce. The site elaborates, describing the Hercule line of beers as:
…very malty, but dry, with a hint of sweetness in the finish, and perfectly hopped. All three share a very distinctive and intoxicating spicy aroma of fresh spruce that suddenly, irresistibly, fills the room when the swing-top is released. This unique house character probably derives from the strains of yeast used by the brewery – and possibly from the fermentation in oak – because the beers are made entirely of malt and hops, without any spices or sugar.
Then again, the explanation uses the words “probably” and “possibly” when describing the spruce character — so perhaps there’s still some sleuthing to be done.
Hercule Stout is an interesting beer; I enjoyed it, but the Belgian yeast and that “spruce” character distracted and seemed out of place. I completely agree with John LeMasney of BeerCritic.com when he describes Hercule Stout as “more of a brown ale than an imperial stout”. The only thing “imperial” about this stout is it’s 9% ABV.
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3 Comments
July 15th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Thanks as always for the shout out!
July 17th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Shortly after I posted my thoughts on Hercule Stout and linked to John’s BeerCritic site, user JpKoff posted a comment to the BeerCritic review that I’d be remiss not to quote here. JpKoff writes to John LeMasney:
“i don’t know if it can be labeled as a ‘brown ale’. this is a typical and one of the only examples of what could be called ‘belgian stout’ (as in ‘belgian white’ opposed to ‘german white’). The great difference is that it is much, much, sweeter than umm, ‘brittanic stouts’, with very little burnt character. That said, i like it alot, but i can see why you would be disappointed if you were expecting an imperial stout.”
JpKoff, if you’re reading, thank you for the context!
I haven’t yet posted my thoughts on another Belgian Stout called Stouterik — as even the casual reader can see, I took a break from writing much of last month — but I found that Belgian Stout to be aromatic and creamy but still rich with bitter roasted malt and medicinal hops.
July 18th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Hi, I had this last night and enjoyed it very much. I think my enjoyment was helped because I had read Ellezelloise refer to this as a Belgian stout and my expectations were set.
Also, I’d like to recommend Dark Star’s Imperial. It’s one of the couple of beers they bottle, so it might just make it across the Atlantic.