Samuel Smiths Imperial Stout

Brewed by Samuel Smith
Style: Imperial Stout
Tadcaster, England

Beautiful full body flavor with out the harshness of 10% alcohol beers. Super roast complex, very very chocolately. More like a strong stout, as it’s not an imperial at 7% but significantly more flavor than most single stouts. Fantastic.

Yes! This is what I am looking for. Solid, black look with an interesting smell and taste. Roasty, malt, lighter fruit, fantastic.

Bottled. Dark and very black, lots of head, really really good. taste is sweet but not overpoweringly so.

Bottled 355ml. An extremely dark beer with a beautiful beige head. The aroma is of roasted malt with a surprising touch of apples. Seaweed, hazelnuts, figs, heather, banana and licorice. A slight peppery nose. Full bodied. Ginger, dark chocolate, figs, mocha, licorice and plums in the taste. A slight salty touch. Wonderful mouthfeel. An extemely complex beer with a hint of tar? .... Sweet finish with hints of molasses, licorice, dark chocolate and heather. Samuel Smith’s epitome beer. Wonderful!

Poured almost black, though I can see dark ruby around the edges of the glass. The tan head wasn’t very thick and disappiated quickly. Immediately I was smelling coffee and molasses, though more of the sorghum smell than just molasses. This smell followed through to my tongue, being overwhelmed by coffee, then molasses finishing very lightly. I enjoy the flavors on my palate, don’t find it to be extremely complex, but it is a staple of my winter bier drinking.

Much better than the common Guiness, but it should be as an imperial stout. That said, I don’t really get much more out of this than a regular stout. It is extremely dark and pours with an extremely small brown head that soon disappears. There is a bit of dried fruit in the aroma and taste. Some chocolate and coffee too. The aroma almost has a Apple/cider hint to it. The taste is good and full with a slightly sweet finish.

Enjoyed at home, celebrating Håvard Bøkkos 10 000m victory at Kolomna world cup race. Quite ether/medicine-like flavour; not sure I like it all too much. Some alcohol flavour as well. But there is also lots of dark, dried fruit flavour which is appealing. Nice malty and moderately roasted aftertaste.

(Bottle.) A slight foamy head that quickly dies down. Not particularly strongly aromatic...but upon drinking it a lot of different tones emerge. There’s a sort of pleasant fruity character, almost like dates or other dried fruit. There are a lot of flavors, but it’s subtle at the same time. There’s only a hint of roast, and it’s not too sweet. More yeasty than sweet, which I like. There’s a hint of alcohol flavor but it is well-masked. There’s a little bitterness, not really a bite but more of a pleasantly bitter aftertaste. A tiny bit creamy too. I think this was a very good beer but I’m not sure I’d rate it in the 98-th percentile the way the other reviewers seem to have placed it. The other reviewer’s comments make me wonder about consistency, however...people talk of high carbonation; my bottle had little.