Beer Of The Week: How Could This Be Beer? What Sorcery Is This?

In case you haven't heard already, there's a brand new craft beer place down in KL called TAPS BEER BAR, and it's got one hell of a crazy range of beers. There's currently about 14 different taps now, with another 20 different bottles of beers. And these aren't even the normal Carlsberg, Hoegaarden, or Guinness beers - these are genuine CRAFT BEERS brought all the way from UK, Australia and Europe. If you think that's impressive, think again... Taps plans to have at least SIXTY FIVE different beers by the end of March. Holy shit that's a lot of beers!

One of the best brands they currently serve is BrewDog, from Scotland, a craft brewery that prides itself on its punk philosophy and awesome beer names:

But more about those other beers for now. Today, the beer of the week is this one, arguably one of the most expensive beers available in Malaysia currently... Behold, the BLACK TOKYO* HORIZON:

Is this even a beer? When me, Shaolintiger and Fireangel tried this the other day, we were wondering the same thing.

The beer itself costs a whopping RM107++, which seems like MADNESS when you consider that it comes in the usual 330ml bottle. Then, when Alvin of Taps poured us the beer, we found out why.

First of all, it was poured into a wine-glass like goblet. The texture was velvety, thick and rich, and the color is almost impenetrable BLACK (we actually tried shining a torchlight through it and it really WAS impenetrable).

On the nose, it smelled of a combination of dark chocolate and er... light soya sauce (it smells better than it sounds, trust me!). At 17.2% and with such a full body, this is definitely a beer you SIP and SAVOUR, not GULP and GUZZLE. Heck at that price you BETTER BLOODY NOT GUZZLE IT!

This beer will literally FUCK WITH YOUR MIND. As I was drinking it, I kept thinking: "THIS IS A BEER, THIS IS A BEER" but it tasted so UNLIKE beer that I swear my taste buds got confused. This is a very, very complex beer (in fact, it was more like wine than beer) - velvety smooth and rich, with layer upon layer of flavors including malt stout, dark chocolate, all accompanied by the syrupy sweetness of port wine. 

Let the beer warm up a little (yes you can drink it at room temperature too), and you get more layers of flavour - bisuits, rich malt - and it all comes together in a long. lingering finish of chocolate, port wine and er... soy sauce (again, it tastes better than it sounds).

The Black Tokyo* Horizon is a special collaboration between three independent European breweries – BrewDog (Scotland), Nøgne ø (Norway) and Mikkeller (Denmark), and is a fusion of the respective breweries’ big stouts, namely the Mikkeller Black, the BrewDog Tokyo*, and the Nøgne Ø Dark Horizon.

The beer is a small-run, limited edition brew; and at the time of writing, there are only 10 bottles of the beer left at Taps. So if you want to try it, you better hurry up!

Taps Beer Bar is located at One Residency, 1 Jalan Nagasari, Off Jalan Raja Chulan, Kuala Lumpur (Tel: 03-21101560)