Left Hand Oak Aged Imperial Stout

Brewed by Left Hand Brewing Co.
Style: Imperial Stout
Longmont, Colorado USA

This is a dark brown beer with a foamy tan head. At room temperature, the nose is coffee, dry fruit and alcohol. Nice use of a barrel with well balanced oak, vanilla and red wine flavors that compliment the beer. Coffee, dark chocolate, alcohol, oak barrel, and caramel/toffee sweetness. Very nice sipping beer. Thanks to kms399, I think, for the secret santa bottle.

750ml corked bottle. finally get to try this. pours black but kind of thin for an imp. stout. thin tan-off white head. the smell comming off this is awsome. i can smell it from like 3 feet away. roasted malt, raisen, faint coffee mabye some dark chocolate, oak vannilla. here goes wow the taste is just as good as the smell. coffee, black licorice, roasted malt. there is a lot going on in this and the flavours work with each other to give you a very satisfying experience. the mouth feel is smooth and creamy at first then gives way to a bitter dryness. the taste lingers on then there is a slight warming from the alcohol. this is a really good beer.

The aroma is rich, with creamy lactose, cocoa and yeast, with a hint of caramel. The flavor is quite roasty and an interesting balance of dryness and creaminess is also present. Malts abound and this seems more to me like a good thick porter rather than a stout. A little too astringent in the finish.

Pours a deep charcoal brown with a light off white head. Aroma is very nice with chocolate, coffee, and malty caramel goodness. The flavor does not disappoint. Caramel, chocolate, and vanilla nuttiness. A slight bit of alcohol also. The body is creamy and really holds everything together. A nice Imp!

Light penetrates this black ale a little too easily for my taste - slightly alcoholic aroma, with bourbon, vanilla and cocoa - gentle carbonation, background hops, sticky, almost syrupy as well, though - some alcohol, oak, maple syrup - not nearly as good as I was hoping.

750 ml bottle into tulip glass, The Friday imperial stout tasting (beer #29). Up to this point in the tasting, this was my favorite (besides Oak Aged Yeti). Funky aroma with caramel and chocolate seemed "sugary," if that can be a smell. Sticky lace coated the glass and stayed; semi-opaque brown with ruby tinges in the glass. Acidic in front, but settled into roast and dry oak alcohol with earthy tobacco. Not as chocolatey as expected, the maltiness took on a character half way between dark chocolate and coffee roast, but not identifiably either one of them. Everything was incredibly integrated and balanced; for how not over-the-top the flavor was, it didn’t fall into the barrel-aged trap of being dominated by the character of the barrel. Having recently had the un-aged version of this beer on cask at the brew pub, I was blown away by how much better this was.

This is my label. Poured a dark opage brown, with a big tan head that diminished but clung to the side of the glass. The nose was full of stouts standards, like roasted malts, chocolate and then some oak-vanilla. The taste was good, but there were a few off points on bosy and taste. Lots of alcohol. More subtle oak flavors. Try this one.

(750 ml corked and caged bottle: Obtained in trade with footbalm, thanks Eric!) With the green and red, this could be a great Christmas present, but then again, after tasting the beer, maybe not. I was expecting a pretty decent beer, but this one falls short and end up being just average. The nose is malty and lightly alcoholic, and is fairly inviting, but with this supposedly being an oak-aged Imperial Stout, the nose really lacks the expected roast. And after tasting the beer, I have to protest whether this is an Imperial Stout. But since their regular Imperial Stout was pretty light, there’s no reason to expect that aging the same beer in oak will yield a darker, more potent beer. On this night, the principle difference I’m getting between this oak-aged version and the regular version is that this is much more earthy, with no signs of Belgian character I picked up on in the regular version. It’s malty, sweet, earthy and moderately bitter, but not all that roasty. In the nose, it’s mostly malt with a bit of alcohol. Medium-to-full bodied, but relative to most in this class, it seems a bit thin. Dark brown in color, but again, pretty light for the style. Light brown head is lively on the first pour, but it fades fairly quickly, and then subsequent pours do no yield much head at all. All in all, for the style, this is a pretty disappointing beer, though everything is relative because on it’s own, it’s certainly drinkable and enjoyable. It just falls short of the excellence attained by the best Imperial Stouts.