Bands, festivals and the lot are releasing branded booze by the dozens these days. GRIMM makes it its mission to get to the bottom (of the bottle) of this trend with insightful reviews and extra backgrounds. So sit back, PICK YOUR POISON, and discover all you need to know about your favorite band’s alcoholic brands! This time pay even more attention because GRIMM and PICK YOUR POISON ventured into brewing their own concoction…
Poison Fact Sheet
- Festival: Metaldays
- Poison name: Black Blood
- Poison style: beer – black IPA
- ABV: 7,77 %
- IBU: /
- Brewery: Brauhaus Bevog (Austria)
(ABV = Alcohol By Volume; IBU = International Bittering Units)
After Metaldays 2017 our GRIMM crew brought us a very special treat all the way from Tolmin, Slovenia. We were familiar with beers from the Austrian Brauhaus Bevog as some of their beers could always be found around the festival site. We remember them as sometimes awkward in flavour (in a good way!), but always with great character. So we were more than intrigued when we learned Bevog and Metaldays had joined forces to create a beetroot based black IPA! Yes, you read that right. A beetroot beer!
Tasting
Appearance: The can pours blood red to black. Exactly what you hoped for with a beer with this name. The head is firm and lasts while reddish-purple pink in colour. The colour of both beer and foam make it an interesting and impressive sight to behold.
Aroma: The nose reminds of marmelade, pine, citric hops, blackcurrant and – not surprisingly – beetroots.
Mouthfeel: While carbonation feels low the body is medium to thick for a black IPA. In fact, this is another reasons why Black Blood is a fitting name for this brew. Not that we would drink your blood, of course. Only when the midnight sky is red and we call the sanguine saints, we open your veins… The texture is oily, by the way.
Flavour: Beetroot alert!! This actually tastes like a healthy juice. We can imagine this dark liquid might not be for everyone’s palate. However, it’s not the straightforward beetroot flavour that makes this beer so like-able. The extra layers of complexity add towards its quality. Besides the beetroot we find strong notes of grapefruit, a light coffee roast and liquid chocolate with great balance between flavours. The emphasis is not on the bitterness despite the strong hop presence. Despite its special flavour and complex character Black Blood drinks away quite easily, as should be expected from a festival beer. While it is not what you would expect to drink on the rocky beaches of Tolmin, Bevog sure delivered another unique experience to the already amazing Metaldays festival!
Fun fact: While a lot of metal beers aim for the specific 6,66% abv, Black Blood clocks off at one notch higher with 7,77%. If the devil is six than God is 7?
Packaging
Expectations were high on this criteria as Bevog is known for the beautiful artworks on its label. While usually portraying skittish monsters, Metaldays’ Black Blood is less colourful and more straightforward. The can is left naked and blank for the larger part, but the silver metallic contrasts perfectly with the black red label. A can that jumps out among others. On a field of black there is the Metaldays logo in red with Bevog’s name underneath. The corners of the label are ornamented with pentagrams. The only artistic aspect that is typical for Bevog’s beer is the letter ‘B’ that returns at the product description section. The actual name of Metaldays appears a little to the right underneath the spray painted ‘Black Blood’ in white letters and the mention of ‘Metaldays Fifth Anniversary limited edition’. We cannot say for sure how limited the release was as we still see people checking in the Black Blood on Untappd even long after the festival. So our guess is that either a lot of visitors stocked up on this unique beer or the Black Blood was not so popular and Bevog distributed leftovers across Europe. We wouldn’t mind tasting another one, though!
