Deschutes The Abyss

2007 bottle. pours a deep, oily black color with a thick, mocha brown head. aroma is rich with dark chocolate and berries. full of complex flavors from coffee and caramel to smoke and molasses. a truly fabulous beer.

Bottle 2007. Pours with a very dark color and a brown head. Not much of an oak character but very interesting flavors of dark chocolate, caramel and coffee. It needs to warm up significantly before it can show its full compleixcty. Medium body, not too heavy but not watery. Quite good, but probably a tad overhyped.

2007 bottle. Rich and delicious. Dark plus, with brown and red hilights, coffee, cranberry, silk, very viscous, so much...there’s a choclatey aftertaste, very dark, wish I could say it’s Venezuelan or Honduran or some such but I’m not yet that much of a cocoa nerd...anyway, just great and surprisingly hype worthy, a dark stain inducing monster!

#1600: Multiple tap samples at brewery. Very black pour with a dark tan head that lasts. Aroma shows great complexity with notes of coffee, chocolate, roast, caramel, moderate to low hops and barrel characteristics. Barrel flavors are there, but by no means dominate. Not a world beater, but it’s got most of what I look for in an Impy Stout. Heavy bodied, nearly dry finish. Yum

Bottle at City Beer Store, with a framboise chaser. Dark brown color, looks thick from far away but sloshes around just like regular beer. Huge aroma of molasses, alcohol, raspberry, bourbon--taste also has caramel, chocolate, burnt wood. Soothing smooth mouthfeel with a kick at the finish of sour licorice and lemons. Wow beer.

Batch 1, @ Stevofest, courtesy of stevo. Man, what a great beer. I could give a laundry list of the aromas and flavors (its a nice mix of smoke, chocolate, blueberry and balck walnuts, along a bunch of other stuff, if you must know). But really it come together to a lot more than the sum of its parts. Immensely satifying beer.

First batch, sampled at stevo’s. Pours ultra-black with some mahogany edges and a big tan head. The aroma is ashy with plenty of chocolate, a touch of oatmeal, and a hint of cappuccino. The flavor is very ashy with some smoke, chocolate, a hint of alcohol, a touch of coffee, some meaty nuts, and some vanilla. This here is a great beer.

Black, with thin-medium brown head. Strong alcohol aroma, slight underlying sweetness. Medium bodied, tastes sweet with an underlying bitter chocolate and alcoho, tart finish.