Dogfish Head World Wide Stout 2002 (23%)

Formerly brewed at Dogfish Head Brewery
Style: Imperial Stout
Milton, Delaware USA

Black. Aroma of Vietnamese coffee & phenols. Vague nuts. Mellow malt, vanilla, nuts, coffee. Stiff alcohol in the sweet finish. Good, but not great, like its predecessor.

intense roasted alcohol aroma, looks like syrup, so sweet and intense, this one is definitely max power, winey as hell, earned instant cult status on campus because of the outrageous alcohol, "one sip gave me a buzz", "that’s disgusting", and "that’s amazing" are all comments I heard throughout the room

This is a very strong beer. Gulping is not allowed. After drinking this I forgot where I lived, and I was sitting on my living room couch at the time.

Thanks to Trappist for sending me a couple bottles of this. First of all, do NOT gulp this beer. It is definitely a sipping beer. I literally coughed after taking a normal drink. Pours pitch black with a very thin beige head and thin lacing. Aroma is sweet with sherry or port wine qualities, along with some malt and alcohol. Flavor really packs a wallop. Sugary sweetness eventually matches stride with the strong malt, dark fruit (raisins), and alcohol flavors with which you start out. With all this, it still manages a somewhat dry and bitter finish. While this beer is complex it is still a little unbalanced, but what can you expect from a 23%ABV beer. It is probably impossible to mask such a high level. A strange but good brew. I look forward to trying the 18% version.

Dark brown leather color - translucent at the edges, bit of fizz on top, almost clear lacing. Big sweet maple aroma with very little alcohol. This is very malty sweet - plums/Mrs. Butterworth's maple syrup/a littl bit of Brach's butterscotch disks. The palate, though, wasn't as thick and syrupy as I expected it to be and that's a good thing - this could easilly get cloying over the course of 2 hours (how long it took me to drink it). The only time the alcohol was noticeable was at the finish it left a rough patch down the middle of my tongue. The 18% seemed a lot smoother and stout-like. This was more of a liquer. I'll try to hold on to my other bottle for a while and see how it changes.

Chocolatey malty hints among ripe fruits and of course, ALCOHOL. Vinuous and spiced, with hints of plums, dates and guess what, alcohol! I can understand the phenomenal status of this beer as it still is a beer, and very much one at that. I know that if I can drink a brew that is 23% alcohol by volume and still taste BEER that in itself is amazing. There's not much else to put this up against as far as by style alone. Sure you've got that whiskey like quality, but who doesn't see an appropriate situation for a glass on the rocks at the right time either. A great, sweet, raisiny finish.

Deep black with almost no head. Warm sweet malt and alcohol aromas. Full bodied, feels more like a port than a beer. Sweet malt with raisins. A bit like Raison D'Etre but with a lot more oomph.

This is undoubtedly the closest beer to port wine that I've ever had. Poured like molasses and smelled kind of like fermented molasses with some roastiness thrown in. A very dark and powerful brew, but still very complex and tasty. Alcohol shines through more at the end. Take a good hour to enjoy this one.