Magic Rock Brewing’s Rapture and Dark Arts

Food & drink
Magic Rock Brewing’s Rapture and Dark Arts beers

Magic Rock Brewing Co. is a fairly new brewery based in Huddersfield.  Their aim is to brew big, modern beers and they do that very well indeed.

First up is Rapture, a huge red beer with the capacity to scare the living daylights out of mere mortals.

It’s a monster of a beer that grabs and shakes you around, toying with you in the same way that a cat would with a dazed mouse.

There’s a beguiling sweetness to it, a citrus flavour that veers towards rich and dessert-like.  Think eating a slice of incredible cake in the middle of a forest after a downpour, sweet pine in the nose.

There are five types of malt and six different hops crammed into this bottle, which explains the complexity and the sheer excitement of it all.

Lovely stuff.

The bottle claims to be the ‘same, but different’ which is clearly a lie.

There’s nothing else like this.

Magic Rock BrewingNext, Dark Arts.

It’s a different beast entirely.

More of a ruthless assassin against Rapture’s seductive killer.

Smooth and velvet, with all the taste of toasted nuts and licorice you’d expect from a stout,  Dark Arts has a long and complex taste that leaves the drinker feeling as if they’ve been punched in the face, the bittersweet aftertaste lingering long after the drink itself has left.

If this beer were to be personified, it’d be dressed in black, silently melting into the night, unscrewing the silencer from its gun muzzle, a trail of expertly executed mayhem left exploding in its wake.

The Devil in a glass.

Superb beer.

www.magicrockbrewing.com

Both of these, and a couple more from Magic Rock Brewing are available at the excellent Saltaire Wines.