Stone 12th Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

Formerly brewed at Stone Brewing Co.
Style: Imperial Stout
Escondido, California USA

A gift from POP!!! Nice black pour with thick tanhead and a balanced chocolate aroma. A bitter sweet oatmel chocolate taste with a dry hop finish. I loved it !!!

Bomber, pours black with tan head. Aroma of dark chocolate, vanilla, bitterness, and coffee. Taste was nice, with coffee, chocolate, and sweet oats. Creamy thick mouthfeel. Nice effort by Stone, not spectacular, but pretty good.

Cask, BSF at the GBBF. Shiny black, red/tan head. Fresh sawn oak boards, raw chocolate, tawny port, cardamom. Some interesting charcoal background noise. Vanilla, salty, smokey dark chocolate, raisins, plum skin finish. Like a dessert: a 1/3 pint was plenty. But I did very much enjoy that much of it.

Pours black with a good sized mocha head. Big aroma of chocolate and more chocolate. Taste is chocolate with maybe a touch of grain. Mouthfeel is thick. Very one sided on the taste but I like it. Nice a smooth.

Opaque brown-black with a fine, medium-dense dark tan head that quickly settles down to a thin skim of fine bubbles. Huge, sweet alcoholic aroma--vaguely suggestive of bourbon--with dark roasted grain, some coffee, and dark cocoa elements following after. Dark roasted bitterness with some earthy hops notes alongside overt chocolate flavors, some grain astringency, a hint of a notion of oatmeal, and quite a bit of alcohol. The body comes up a little bit short here. It’s big with lots of palate-filling flavors that just wash by and leave only alcohol heat in the finish. There’s not much of a crescendo of flavor experiences here despite everything that seeminly present. This is a good beer, but not as complex or well put-together as it could be. Coincidentally, I’m enjoying a freshly-baked oatmeal-raisin-chocolate chip cookie as well and it’s really working out.

Thanks to Skyview for sharing this one. A simple but very tasty beer. The aroma has malt, lightly roasted, as well as earth and some coffee. Flavor is of sweet malt and bitter bakers chocolate. Some grain. Good stuff, not too sweet.

Bomber. Pours much darker black than I expected with a small, but thick brown head. The head on my beer is much darker than the picture on this page. Aroma is baker’s chocolate, coffee, and burnt oats. The flavor is really more potent than the aroma lets on. Lots of heart oats, rich chocolate, and very roasty malts come through. The flavor stays really sharp throughout, and has some qualities that make me think dry stout, only bigger. The alcohol becomes more apparent as the glass warms.

Poured from the bottle a pitch black into a snifter with a nice dark brown head. Had a bready aroma, along with coffee, chocolate and smoke. Bitterness really stood out with this beer. Also in the taste was cofee, chocolate and some smokey oak flavor.