Dogwood Youngbloods Imperial Porter

Formerly brewed at Dogwood Brewing Company
Style: Baltic Porter
Atlanta, Georgia USA

Bomber, with a HUGE THANKS to kp for this rare beauty as a BONUS, and a nod to boboski for kicking me in the tail to get this thing opened! Pours thick and black like chocolate syrup, a moderate dark brown head slowly forms and then drifts away, settling out to a pitch black snifter of headless beauty. Aroma is quite welcoming, begging for a lot of repeated drags to sort out the vinous dark fruits, milk chocolate, vanilla, and some background espresso roast. Very aromatically pleasing! Surprisingly, flavor and palate falls a bit short of delivering on what the aroma sets up. A touch thin and watery, albiet warming, roasty and pleasing. Thinner, but oily mouthfeel, medium bodied, gentle carbonation, with a slightly dry finish. Don’t get me wrong, this is a good one, the aroma just exceeds the flavor by quite a stretch!

Thanks to andrew for opening this up. I can’t hold on to beers for more than a week and this dude had this one for over 3 years. Yikes! Anyways, slight sourness in the nose and flavor. Big roasted malts with some bittersweet chocolate flavors. Dark color with almost no head.

What a black brew, even the stream of beer from glass to bottle is opaque and black. The beer is lightly carbonated, but still produces a frothy, initially one-finger thick, light chocolate colored head. Interesting aromatic notes of kahlua, rum, chocolate essence, a hint of spicy woodiness, candied malt balls and dusty-freshly-toasted-ground malt. Towards the end it starts to pick up some sharper coffee aromatics, a hint of wood-smoke and something like burnt cherries.

This has a medium heft to it, it coats the mouth but is not heavy. It actually feels more carbonated than I expected from the pour, what I realized is that this beer has lost quite a bit of the heading proteins over the course of its time in the bottle, so it does not retain its head nearly like a younger beer would. Quite a bit of fruit character is here; it is of course all burnt fruit notes, but I get flavors of cherries, sweet cranberries, and blackened raisins. The beer finishes with a light, burnt derived bitterness and a dusty, barley malt husk-like note or perhaps it is a chalky-cocoa powder note. Like a lightly sweetened and definitely thickened, strong, black cup of smoothly roasted coffee. Some Maytag blue accentuates the fruity notes (even making them taste less burnt) and considerably smoothes this beer out.

This has most likely thinned out a bit since it was fresh; the flavors are still rich and interesting and evidence of oxidation is surprisingly non-existent. And even though it is light bodied, it still coats the mouth like it was a much richer beer than it currently is.

Sampled at the RBSG ’07 Grand Tasting room. From a 22-oz bottle, pours a clear dark brown brew with a thin off-white (beige) head that dissolves quickly. Aroma of dried pitted dark fruit, caramel, and some milok chocolate. Taste is sweet, full bodied, smooth with a syrupy finish. Aftertaste has a slight orange/citrus flavor with a dry secondary finish. Tasty!

22oz bottle, courtesy of SpringsLicker. Thanks, Jay! Pours a very dark brown color; dark tan head with fine-bubbled lacing; slightly oily. Dense, milk chocolate and toasted malts in the aroma; nougat-y sweetness. Full, chewy mouthfeel: dense, velvety milk chocolate and nougat, coupled with light carbonation and a toasty, roasted malt backdrop; dense and flavorful, slightly oily; very good. Lengthy, syrupy chocolate and dark nougat finish, with a pleasant show of citrus hops.

RBSG07. From 22 oz bottle. Pours dark brown with light brown head. Aroma of dried fruit and raisins. Flavour is very caramel malty, dry t the finish. Finish has a rather roasted malt porfile.

Sampled at the RBSG 07 Grand Tasting. Very nice nose on this dark brown pour with a well done coffee character. Roasted malt flavor with coffee and chocolate flavors.

Sorry to see these guys are out of business, this was a tasty beer. But I thought I was drinking a stout rather than a Baltic porter. Thick, roasted grain flavor with mild coffee and just a bit of chocolate. Way too much coffee for the style. It is a good beer but it really shouldn’t be at the very top of its style.