Mikkeller In May
7. Mikkeller Sorachi Ace Single Hop IPA 6.9%

I've read quite a bit about the Sorachi Ace hop, and most of what I've read has included the words 'buttery' and 'lemon', so I was anticipating this when I opened this beer but my experience was a little different, well different-ish.
Sorachi Ace was developed in 1988 by Dr Yoshitada Mori for Sapporo Breweries Co. Ltd. in Japan and is a cross between the Brewers Gold and Saaz varieties. It is high in alpha acids and has a high yield potential although it is apparently no longer grown commercially.
It pours a dark amber / burnt orange with a creamy tan head. The aroma is something else. I have never had a beer that smells like this, or even close to this. A big, no huge, just-peeled mandarin orange aroma with lots of floral lemon and a little grapefruit means that this is one of those beers that I'd be happy just to sit and smell it for ages. In fact I did just that, finding jasmine, orange blossom and that butteriness in there too. I don't think I've ever written so much about the smell of a beer. It's incredibly smooth and light over the tongue with a little astringency and tartness. The flavour is mind-blowing. Mandarin orange, tangerine, lemon, grapefruit, touch of caramel, then, and only then a light butteriness emerges. It may be subtle but it's definitely there and it came in when I was least expecting it. Aftertastes are usually drying, malty, fruity, or finish abruptly. Buttery smooth with tropical fruit and zesty orange and lemon was new for me, but so so good. And what an aftertaste it is lasting a long, long time. The flavours just don't go, but a mild soapiness does creep in.
This is another incredible beer from Mikkeller, and I'd love to see this hop used a whole lot more but it's apparent unpredictability and scarcity could make this unlikely. Get this while you can.

Mikkeller In May
6. Mikkeller Green Gold 7.0%

Pow! Welcome to Mikkeller Green Gold.
It's an India Pale Ale with definite leanings towards the USA, but this is a much more cultured rounded beer. Sure it's a hop bomb, but the flavour is superb.
This beer uses a wonderful combination of Simcoe, Cascade and Amarillo hops to full effect.
It pours a wonderful red-amber with a tightly carbonated beige head. The initial and dominant aroma is toffee-apple caramel but with a real background buzz of mango and pineapple. It's initially smooth over the tongue then liquid caramel mixed with tropical fruit flavours explode in the mouth. It's roasted pineapple, peach, grapefruit, mango, kumquat and baked apple with a touch of cinnamon, all with a deliciously rich and sweet toffee coating. These flavours then contract suddenly, like a hop implosion, sucking and biting at the tastebuds, leaving behind a honeyed tropical sweet caramel aftertaste. If Willy Wonka created an American style IPA then this would be pretty close to it.
It really is an incredible sensation, delivering wonderfully intense and deliciously beautiful flavours. I know I'm saying this a lot about Mikkeller beers, I chose them for May for good reason, but this really is stunning.

Mikkeller In May
5. Mikkeller Koppi Tomahawk & Guji Natural Coffee IPA 6.9%

Another coffee IPAbut this one has a long title,so with a little background preamble, I'll break it down before the main event - the beer itself.
Koppi, the name you can see under Mikkeller on the label are a Swedish coffee roasters of some pedigree, sourcing the best and unique coffee. You can find a link to their page and more about them here.
Tomahawk is the trade name for the Columbus hop. They impart a slightly woody, citrus and pine qualities, and are high in resiny oils making them good for bittering.
Guji is region of Sidoma in southern Ethiopa, along the Mora Mora River and this produces coffee trees that grow wild, often called 'forest coffee'. The coffee is renowned for it's floral, spice and chocolate tones.
If you can imagine all that together in a glass then you're pretty close to the beer itself.
It pours a darker amber with a small amount of cloudiness and a light but highly carbonated beige head. Orange, lemon, grapefruit and soapy pine are very much in evidence in the aroma but there's no hint of chocolate or coffee. Over the tongue it's both astringent and smooth then the milk chocolate roast coffee flavour kicks in hard. This quickly melts away, via a liquid chocolate orange, into a citrussy caramel. The finish has a dry citrus pine bitterness you would associate with a hop heavy IPA.
The coffee in this beer is not an aromatic espresso or other strong coffee that you would normally expect to find in a coffee IPA keen to emphasise the coffee element, but rather milder, more subtle variety and I think this makes it much more balanced than others I have tried. The way it segues effortlessly into the IPA is also worthy of note. A very accomplished beer.

Mikkeller In May
4.Brewdog/Mikkeller I Hardcore You 9.5%

Friday night, bank holiday weekend and time for something a bit special (as if the other's weren't (!) but go with me on this), and this most certainly is something special. Two very respected and unconventional brewers take their signature beers (Brewdogs Hardcore IPA and Mikkellers I Beat You) and blend them together superbly. Of course, given the reputation of these two brewers it won't surprise you to note that that they don't stop there. Oh no. They dry hop it twice, four, or maybe six times, apparently they lost count. However many times, it doesn't matter, it's absolutely stunning.
It pours a ruby red amber with a creamy tan head that quickly dissipates but doesn't completely disappear. The aroma is fantastic melange of spicy herbal malty grassy chocolate citrus piney orange. That's probably quite hard to believe, but all those olfactory triggers are there and completely distinct yet combined. There's an oily creamy smoothness over the tongue with incredibly delicious and sweet chocolate toffee orange marmalade flavours. Honeyed apricot bursts through with a marvellous smoothness and everything fits together perfectly. The aftertaste has creamy maple tinged roasted pineapple slowly fading, but actually not quite lasting quite long enough. I'm completely blown away by how integrated all the flavours, tastes and sensations are. It all works together magnificently to form a liltingly mellifluous Imperial IPA melody, and if you think I've over-used the hyperbole then you need to get this beer and you'll see for yourself. It sings.

Mikkeller In May
3. Mikkeller Not Just Another Wit 7.6%

It's late in the evening. After two days of big IPAs I needed something a little different, and this witbier, unfiltered and spicy, certainly fits the bill. It pours a cloudy straw colour with a high rocky white head. A dry lemony chamomile banana and clove aroma has real depth, with spicy vanilla toffee notes also making their presence felt. Sweet honey flavours ease themselves gently, almost lazily across the palate with little stabs of creamy zesty lemon bitterness. Wheaty coriander spiciness comes to the fore before melting into a dry vanilla grassy aftertaste.
 There's an interesting mix of American hops used, Goldings, Saaz, Amarillo and Cascade, and the fusion of these with a traditional Belgian wheat beer really works here. Justifiably claiming to be an Imperial Witbier, Not Just Another Wit is a complex and beautifully crafted white ale with all the flavours and textures working together very naturally to create something very special.

Mikkeller In May
2: To Ol/Mikkeller Sleep Over Coffee IIPA 10.5%

Second day of May, second Mikkeller beer. This was an easy choice for today as it's the sequel to the Overall IIPA, same beer but with a great load of espresso coffee thrown in for good measure before being matured in fermentation tanks in Belgium.
While the Overall was a palate ripping bitter hop bomb this is a more tempered affair, not a full-frontal assault more of a measured bombardment, but still with masses of flavour and complexity. It pours a muddy orange amber with a rocky tan-coloured head. The aroma is like smelling a sharp, tart and bitter orange coffee marmalde with a wet ashiness giving you a big hint of what's in store. It's slightly oily but also drying on the palate, with citric coffee and orange peel and honeyed nougat flavours washing through before seemingly pooling on the centre of the tongue, pushing a big pine lemony nutty grapefruit aroma up into and completely filling the nose. A citrussy hoppy maltiness in the aftertaste leaves a wispy smokey roast bitter coffeeness playing in the mouth and nose, and an intense dry bitterness drying slowly on the back of the throat.
A stunning and intricate beer, combining and contrasting the hoppiness of a Double IPA with the nutty aromatic caffeine hit of strong coffee. Stimulating.

Mikkeller In May
1: To Ol/Mikkeller Overall IIPA 10.5%

May. I wanted to do something different this year. Traditionally it's when the Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA) champions Mild - predominantly low-gravity dark and malty, in fact quite unlike the beer you see in the picture above. The reason for this change of tack is that last year I had a revelation. I discovered Mikkeller beers. These wonderfully different and flavoursome beers created, no, crafted by itinerant maths and physics teacher turned brewer Mikkel Bjorg Bergso, were a bit of an epiphany for me. I couldn't get enough and none disappointed. It is for this reason that I decided to devote some of May to revisting some old favourites and trying new Mikkeller beers.
This is one of the new ones for me,  Overall, an Imperial/Double IPA brewed in collaboration with Emil Jensen and Tore Gynther, former pupils of Mikkel Bjorg Bergso, who formed the To Ol brewery after a shared conversation lamenting nauseous Danish lager. Lots of Simcoe, Amarillo and Centennial hops, big on bitterness and citrus character were used in this beer, and this is immediately noticable as you open the bottle with a big whiff of grapefruit and orange marmalade hitting you right between the eyes. It pours a cloudy golden orange with a highly carbonated, rocky off-white head. As the head dissipates the aroma is a more settled lemony-orange with some white pepper hovering in the background. On drinking, a big and I mean BIG herbal bite attacks your palate with intense orange and lemon peel flavours. In sweeps a silky smooth orange marmalade before a really rough dry citrus tartness engulfs everything. This is incredibly intense and lingers a while.
This beer feels like it's tearing the skin from your tastebuds, painting them with an orange varnish before using an industrial sander on them. It's a bitter-sweet assault that brings out a little masochism in me by keeping me coming back for sip after sip to experience the pain and the pleasure.
It's so good it hurts.