After a long twelve hour drive in a small minivan with 5 kids and a dog from Kansas City, MO to Toledo, OH seeing a package on my doorstep from Buckbean Brewery was a welcome sight, as it distracted me from the week’s worth of unopened bills lying inside the door.
I am just now getting around to reviewing the beer because since Buckbean was so kind as to send me a free sample for review, I wanted to make sure to put some pics of their product up, and my camera was broke.
It takes guts for a brewery to send out a free sample for review to sites such as ours. You see, we will be honest…brutally honest. Not only could it be a waste of their money, but the internet has an eternal memory and a bad review is one evil spirit to get rid of. When I opened the box, I picked up a can (Buckbean is one of those craft breweries that chooses can over bottle). Ironically, Buckbean included a little key chain bottle opener.
At first glance, I saw “Doug’s Very Noddy Birthday Lager,” and put it in my refrigerator. Without knowing anything about this brewery I assumed it was a pilsner. However, when I went to sample it and surveyed the very minimalistic packaging (which was cool) closer, I was delighted to see that this was actually a schwarzbier (a black lager, some might say bock) and imperial one at that. Very cool. It was nice to see something besides the overdone imperial stout as a special release, and also, schwarzbiers are somewhat of an endangered species in the American craft scene.
The Pour:
This beer pours a creamy dark brownish black. It is visibly a smooth beer. The head was impressive. Admittedly, I’ve not had much in the way of American canned craft beer, but this can boasted the thickest head to date. I had to wait a good 3 minutes for the brown billowy cloud to dissipate!
The Aroma:
I haven’t read a single review on this beer, but I found the aroma to be very smokey. I picked up scent of smoked hickory and campfire. There was a pronounced coffee aroma, as well as fresh cocoa and vanilla bean. Not much in the way of hops, but that is to be expected for the style.
The Taste:
The more I sipped on this beer, the more I liked it. I served it too cold, so after the first couple of sips I let it sit and warm up. The flavors really came out at this point. The beer was sweet and candy like (but no sickening sweet). It tasted a lot like bittersweet dark cocoa, mocha, espresso, vanilla, smoke, and mild flavors of raw grain. The beer is exceptionally smooth. The cool thing about this beer, unlike stouts/porters, is the lack of fruity notes. Just go look at any review of a porter and you’ll find descriptives like “figs” “plums” “cherries.” You don’t get that in this beer (in my opinion) and that’s the point. It really lets the grain qualities shine.
Overall Thoughts:
This is an unbiased review. To be honest, at first glance I wasn’t expecting much. I haven’t had anything else from this brewery, but I can tell you, Doug’s Noddy is fantastic, and a nice break from the trend. Usually American black lagers let me down.
Nate’s Rating:
Overall Satisfaction: 
Among Other American Schwarsbiers: 
Among Other Schwarzbiers:
Sounds like a really interesting brew, and yeah that is some head on that beer! This is a very interesting beer style to read about, I’ve never tried anything like it actually.
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Nate mentioned to them about getting some out to me…doesn’t seem like it’s heading my way.
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Good Job Nate! Way to make it in with the big boys getting free beer direct from the brewery! This looks like a great brew. To be honest the only black lager I’ve had is from Full Sail and it was their session brew, and it was like black Budweiser. Very forgettable. This however looks very interesting. I’ll watch for it.
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