North Coast Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout

Brewed by North Coast Brewing Company
Style: Imperial Stout
Fort Bragg, California USA

Nice and dark color with red highlights. Head retention wasn't the greatest; poor lacing... but the flavor made up for it. Strong, rich taste with a heavy mouthfeel. Chewy, sweet, and complex. Fruity aroma with a well-balanced, throat warming flavor. Interesting prune-like aftertaste lingers long after the last sip. Rerate, 2003: Sweeter than I remembered, with a heavy vanilla note and a soft, cream-laden coffee flavor.

12-oz. Always a huge favorite. Pours ultra black with a buckskin-colored head that disappears after seconds. This beer stops light in its tracks. Enormous nose of toast, roast, chocolate, burnage, and some unidentifiable blackness. Full bodied, rich and thick, with light carb pushing through. Smoke, dark chocolate, black licorice, coffee, roast nuts...so many deep rich flavors intertwine in this beer, and it’s still fairly cold as I write. Huge in every way. It’s consistent from batch to batch, and just unbelievably good.

Pours black with a khaki head of fine bubbles leaving delicate lace for the first third of the glass. Aroma of prunes chocolate liqueur with mineral and lactic notes. Heavy mouthfeel. Bitter chocolate and stewed fruits with notes of coffee bean and burnt malt and licorice. Soundly bitter finish of long length. Undertones of warming alcohol. Solid.

Deep deep amber color with brown head. Rich inviting roasty/chocolate/burnt malt aroma. Tastes just as it smells early on with little to no hint of alcohol influence. Chocolate and very dark (burnt) roasted malts that leave a dry feeling in your mouth. It is almost like chewing on half a hand full of chocolate malts. Right in the middle you get the sweet syrupy flavor. Full body and full flavor beer. Just delicious.

Ahh yes how sweet it is, black like coffee, dark and sweet like chocolate. Fills the palate nicely and sweet and theb has a slightly bitter burnt aftertaste. As you continue, the sweetness turn into an almost hazelnut like flavor, right until the end, that is nice and smooth, leaving you wanting.

Have you ever been drinking, say, a Guiness, and some one who doesn't know much about beer come up to and say "Man, that stuff sure looks potent! I bet one or two would put you on your butt!" , only to be dissapointed when you tell them that it is only a little more alcoholic than their MGD? Well, this is the stout that non-beer drinker think about when they think about stout. Big, dark robust flavor and a lot of alcohol. Good to the last drop.

Intense coffee aroma. Also a little bit of ethanol on the nose. Beer pours almost black with a white frothy head that leaves a nice lace as the beer disappears. The flavor is more roasty coffee, a little sweet chocolate, and lots of alcohol. Very full bodied. Very good. Not as good Stone Imperial Russian Stout, but still a fantastic beer.

Poured with an undistinguished head, mostly dissipating. Aroma actually off-putting--not so much complexity as confusion. Much much better in the tasting. Excellent flavors up front and superb palate (syrupy without burdening the palate, oily, dense). But then the flavors become too much in the finish. Having had this a day after the Samuel Smith Imperial Stout, I felt the hop flavors were a bit heavy. Definitely "warming"...like someone has lit a spaceheater in my gut.