While I was on my holiday, Mikey did a brew of Mangrove Jack’s Mildly Dark all on his own. This was a simple extract kit with a few other things thrown in to make it a dark. Judging from the recipe, Mikey threw a couple extra malts in here, and, if I remember correctly, Mikey mentioned he had trouble getting everything to ferment.
Because of this, the beer took a little longer than usual to condition in the bottle as well. We tried it a couple weeks ago and it wasn’t quite ready. We tried it again over the weekend and it was definitely ready.
On the colour, it was a good dark brown with a bit of red when held up to the light. Dark, but not murky. It was almost a brown ale in colour, but I’d consider it over the line to be a “dark” ale.
The smell was great and interesting, with quite a bit in there. The main things in there were toffee, citrus, and apple. The interaction of the apple and the citrus was great, and really complimented the toffee smells well. When I really stuck my nose in there, I also was able to find a little bit of chocolate in there too.
The taste was great and easy. The beer was quite obviously hopped, but mildly so, with the malt really taking the foreground. Gladly, the apple came through in the taste as well, which interacted with the malt quite well. Mixed in among this was a bit of a licorice taste with a tiny bit of molasses as well.
Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot at the end to really round out the flavour, which I would have really liked to see; just something to round everything out. I think if an additional taste hop had been added, a little bit of complexity could have been added in the finish. The kit that Mikey made didn’t call for any additional hopping, but had he added something mild, it would have been welcome.
I think this beer would go well with a nice hard cheese. It’s a fairly sweet beer, but not overly so. A hard, but fairly mild cheese would be a great way to accompany this beer.
– Chas
We make home brew 