Stone 12th Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

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

Dark color. Smell of dark chocolate, hops, pine, roasted coffee, malt, caramel, dark fruit, alcohol, sugar and cake batter. Taste of chocolate, hops, pine, roasted coffee, malt, caramel, dark fruit, alcohol and brown sugar. Fantastic!

Bomber->snifter: Pours a rocky, light brown head that exhibits spare lacing atop a muddy amber body. Aroma is of toasted and/or burnt toffee, light hops, and of course a wonderful chocolate aroma. The body is medium, the texture oily, and the finish bitter. Long duration on the flavor and moderately sweet and bitter as well. A great beer for sure!

Cask at GBBF 08. Pure black with not much head. Ashen aroma with lots of peat and cooked meat notes. Oak, wood smoke and peaty flavours are accentuated by a dry bitterness and the perfect mouthfeel - it is absolute velvet on the tongue. Very fine beer indeed - a worthy anniversary celebration.

Tap @ Stone Brewing Co, Escondido, CA. Pours a jet black with a quickly-dissipating tan head (in my case, it was already gone when the waitress got back to our table). Aroma is oats, roasted malt, and chocolate, with slightly-detectable coffee notes as well. Taste is dark (bitter) chocolate up front, dissolving into an oatmeal/malt sweetness at the end. Even with the high alcohol content, the beer seemed rather smooth and mellow throughout. This was a total home run and yet another wonderful offering from Stone.

Bomber. As it pours out black as midnight on a moonless night, a thin brown head forms which hangs for a while, and I can tell already this is something special. When a beer can be mistaken for motor oil.... good. The first taste, there is the bitterness. Clinging to the tongue like a parka in winter in buffalo. I’ve had some chocolates where the chocolate is overpowering the beer flavor, but not so here. It is there, to be sure, but in the background, hiding the ABV. The label on the back reads of a diary of a world without hops. Oh well... give me this, and I’ll be happy.

Bottle from Bevmo. Black with a brown fizzy head. Sweet roasty chocolate and grain aroma. Sweet mildly bitter dark chocolate taste, good roasty taste with a bitter malty finish. Pretty good.

Pours jet black with a mottled dark brown head. The head dissipates quickly leaving a silky smooth beer with a faint ring around the edge of the glass. Aroma is dominated by roasted malts, but the chocolate is pronounced. Mouthfeel is extremely smooth and well rounded, but not to the point of being thick. Dark chocolate and coffee flavors dominate, with alcohol and licorice. Bitterness seems to come more from the roasted malts than hops, as indicated by the salty hints on the back of the tongue. This one is good.

Pours a dark black with just an outstanding tan head. This beer looks great. It has a very strong chocolate and roasted malt aroma. It is hard to pick up anything else in the aroma because that is so overwhelming. It tastes of chocolate and cream. It certainly has some bittering hops in there as well. A friend pointed out that he picked up an espresso like taste and by the second bottle I was picking that up. This was a pretty thick and full-bodied beer but I wasn’t chewing on it. There was a moment when I picked up some of the alcohol but that faded quickly - the 9.2% is hidden well.