BrewDog Riptide

Bottle: Dark brown with a thin tan head. Aroma of roast and espresso. Maybe a little cocoa. Flavor is a rich blend of espresso, dark fruits, roast, molasses, and a little smokey. A feeling of the abv before the bittersweet tail. Nice.

Bottle. Sweet roasty aroma. Deep brown-black body, small tan head. Flavor is medium sweet, with plenty of chocolate and a bit of roast. Finish carries the sweetness, but adds some enjoyable bitter notes. A very well done strong stout, although different, to my way of thinking, from a true impy.

In short: A peaty and very dirty stout.
How: Bottle 330ml. Consumed relatively fresh, almost 1 year before best-before date.
The look: Black body topped by a few beige bubbles acting as a head
In long: Unusual nose of peat, leather bag, old shoes and such. No kidding. Really dirty nose, I didn’t mind it at all and found it intriguing. Taste is again intriguing but just not that good. Body is rather viscous and lifeless, like a watery tar or something. Carbonation is minimal. Some old black coffee approaching old coffee filter flavour. Chocolaty too but again the chocolate doesn’t come out as standard bitter black chocolate. More like earthy/peaty buttery chocolate without much bitterness. Pretty fucked up and far from clean but surely not uninteresting. Just as long as you don’t mind an imperial stout that is as clean as a Pilipino prostitute after a fleet American battleships left town.

Pours a pitch black with nothing much in the way of a head. Aroma is heaven itself: toasty and a touch of booze, dark fruit (raisins) and salted caramel. Yum! Taste is surprising: It has a nice roasty bite, present but subdued and well-balanced hops (which linger nicely intermingled with the roastiness in the aftertaste) and until it’s really, really warmed up, not a lot in the middle (sweetness or body). Once it warms, though, it kicks in with toasted oat/coconut cookie, graham cracker, touch of caramel. Complex and delicious! Body is lightly carbonated and while creamy, not entirely thick or chewy. I really, really like this, and aside from the astringent lightly peppery finish, I wouldn’t have pegged it for an impy, so it wears itself well, though at 8% I shouldn’t expect too much burn. Very, very nice.

Bottle. Pours black with a light tan head. Smells of rosted malts and some vinous alcohol. Tastes of malts, chocolate and soy.

Nose is chocolate with a hint of coffee, ebony, red at the sides, small toffee head. Taste is bitter chocolate, some fine malt, reminds me of chocolate chip cookies. Very nicely balanced, medium bodied, pleasantly sweet. Great!

Lots of licorice in both the aroma and flavor here but there’s a slight funk in the aroma that I can’t quite place.

33cl Bottle from Cracked Kettle. Dark brown to black colour, almost no head, only after a vigorous pour. Aroma of roasted malts, coffee and liquorice. Flavour is roasted malts, coffee, chocolate and massive amounts of liquorice root, giving it an earthy and dusty dry finish, but also a nice sweetness. Medium to fullbodied, syrupy mouthfeel.