[4/8 Update: This beer will be shipped to USA next month.]

(Grimstad, NORWAY) – The second installment for the new Dark Horizon trio covers Dark Horizon Third Edition (or Dark Horizon 3.e).

I wrote last year that there would be some differences between the three versions: “1st had a lot of chocolate and black malt. 2nd had huge amounts of roast barley, while the 3rd has generous amounts of brown malt and even some smoke malt.”

On the question of why the brewery is changing up each edition purposely, Co-Founder and Brewer, Kjetil Jikiun, says, “To some extent it was motivated by simply the urge to create a new Dark Horizon beer, without copying any of the two predecessors. We have, after all, promised ourselves that the Dark Horizon beers should not be copied or reproduced. When we make a new beer, we often have discussions which last weeks or even months where the people involved in Nøgne Ø participate and contribute.”

The third edition in the series was supposed to originally be bottled in December 2008 though there has been a significant delay in the process: “It should have been finished by now, but for numerous reasons we have not had the tank capacity to continue the fermentation. I think it must have been sitting in a conditioning tank for almost a year now; in the middle of two fermentation cycles. The intention was to go ahead and finish it, but we are very busy, and I guess this project has been sacrificed to get other projects going. Realistically, I believe it will happen within the next six months.”

DH1 was a revelation for many beer drinkers; it scored in the high end of the top 50 on RateBeer before being retired. DH2 was not as highly acclaimed though it still scored in the 98th percentile placing it in the top 400. An important difference in this new edition besides the use of brown and smoke malts is the addition of more hops. DH1 had a IBU count of 75, DH2 had an IBU count of 65, but this one packs some serious hops at 100 IBUs. The ABV is pretty consistent with the prior year at 18%.