Ottos Bourbon-Barrel Aged Jolly Roger Imperial Stout

An extravagant thanks goes out to Nate for this special brew! Had the pleasure of sampling this at the 7/9/2009 Pittsburgh RB tasting extravaganza (PGHRBEXT) at the Sharp Edge Creekhouse. It will be a long time, if ever I see a spread of bottles like I did there. I am not good enough for the beers that were that we served! For example, how about this beer: a hand bottled ottos B A jolly roger! Dark black glass staining oily appearance. Dark roasty aromas. Surprisingly there is some carbonation in this brew. Sweet initially then goes impy strong. Typical strong impy stout on style characters thru the rest of the session. Way too much personality for this lager lover. Almost rude tripel or barleywine in its nature. What else can be said about this brew but ON STYLE!

Had this one at the RB Pittsburgh tasting. This one was hand bottled from a hand pumped growler, so I curved quite a bit on the final impression. This one is a lot better than it’s individual character scores would show. The mouth is where I want every stout to be. Lots of roasty bitterness here in scent and taste. Bourbon is at a good level. Let me clarify since re reading the above could be misconstrued; I only mention the less than ideal bottling situation to illustrate how well it held up. That was also taken into account when giving numerical scores. It should be noted and quite obvious that what I had was not what was intended, but it works.

This poured a very dark brown pretty much black with a small tan head. Aroma was licorice, smokey, and roasted grains. Flavor was very very roasted, some smoke notes, and a long lingering bitterness. Bourbon notes were there, but not overwhelming at all and fit very well. Damn good beer.

[On cask at Ottos] Appears black with a small brown head. Aroma is pretty nice--chocolate and anise mainly, with a touch of coconut, and a little roasted malt that came out as it warmed. The taste has a lot of anise again, some acrid roasted malt, cookie dough, and some chocolate, but not as much as in the aroma. Wow, this is only 10%? I love high alcohol beer, but this thing did the worst job of hiding it that I have ever seen. Palate is tough for me to judge, as I don’t really know how being on cask is supposed to change them. It had extremely low carbonation, bordering on being completely flat, medium-thin mouthfeel, and a long finish. It was very smooth. Perhaps it is because of my lack of experience with cask ales, but from a purely hedonistic perspective I was quite underwhelmed by this beer. The taste did sort of grow on me a little the longer I drank it, but it was hard to get past the over-the-top alcohol burn that came with it.

Pours a dark cola colour with frothy light brown head which leaves a nice lacing on the glass. Aroma of chocolate, vanilla, malts, coffee and bourbon. Tastes of chocolate, malts, coffee and bourbon. Has a slightly bitter taste that improves as it sits.

Pre-DLD tasting: Opaque and oily in appearance. The aroma has notes of bourbon (vanilla, oak, booze), chocolate, ashy smoke, green tea, molasses, and a hint of lactic sourness. The taste starts with the expected sweet malt character of chocolate and roasted malt, hints of vanilla bean, dark fruity (fig and prune),herbal hop, pepper, and a hint of peat smoke. The mouth feel is oily, heavy and lush. A solid brew all told but not quite the level of the top level BA Impy’s IMO.

Small handbottle courtesy of treyrab, huge thanks Trey. Pith black pour, very little carbonation. The aroma is wonderful, woody, bourbon and vanilla, I could sit here all day and just smell, mmmmm. Flavor is much the same, but with a slight dark chocolate bitterness in the finish and a nice bit of warmth down the back of the throat, quite exquisite, I can’t imagine this being any better fresh from the tap, but I’m sure it is, damn!

On cask at Otto’s
Still excellent, even though it’s been on since late-February. Nice bourbon, dark chocolate, roasted malts tastes. Smells of oak, vanilla, dark chocolate. Smooth and viscous. Dark chocolate and bourbon aftertaste.
Yummy!