Surly Darkness

Brewed by Surly Brewing Company
Style: Imperial Stout
Brooklyn Center, Minnesota USA

3 year vertical tasting thanks to Hophead22. Favorite was 07, so I’ll rate that. Pours black with a creamy, cascading beige head. Aroma is sweet and roasty with caramel, chocolate, and some dusty hops. Flavor is more chocolate and roast, still very bitter but also sweet, slight alcohol, big and bold. Palate is thick and creamy with moderate carbonation. The 09 was very similar, only a little more hoppy and the 08 tasted like a completely different beer...syrupy sweet, almost like wort, and much less bitterness.

2009 traded bottle relatively fresh with Moose and Terri. Maybe a little too hoppy for my taste in imperial stouts. Just seemed to overpower all the other flavours including the coffee. Lots of resin and hop oils that dominated the aroma too. Still great with tons happening but I’ll re-rate with 2008.

Im sorry, I had the 2009 version and my experience doesnt seem to be anything like anyone elses. But, whatever. This beer pours almost black, with a frothy tan head. Smells like a satchel of hops drizzled with grapefruit juice with maybe a smidgen of roasted malts if you trick your brain..but seriously, i tried and tried and tried to smell an imperial stout, and I was smelled was ruby red grapefruit juice. This would start the endless confusion of my darkness experience. I mean, i liked the nose, but i dont think i liked that nose coming from an imperial stout. An IPA, maybe...but an imperial stout? Unfortunately, the flavors did nothing to solve my issues. This tastes like a black IPA to me. There’s a touch of a dark malty edge behind the hop flavors, but all those deep, sensual, imperial stout-like malty flavors everyone else is getting, they were nowhere to be found in this bottle.

#900 2008 bottle, pours thick black with a tall dark tan head. Strong mollassis and coffee with roasted malt nose. Sweet burnt sugar and maple syrup flavors with faint coffee notes. Amazing how sweet this is, it’s almost too much sweetness for me.

750 ml bottle sampled@RBNAG 2009, Vatlandsvåg. Black body with a thin brown head. Strong aroma of roasted malt, molasses, soy and hops. Flavor is sweet, dark malt, roasted coffee, chocolate, molasses, honey, alcohol and bitterhops. Very complex, heavy and pleasant, but in moderate volume.

09 bottle at Hophead22 tasting. Aroma was soy sauce, chocolate, alcohol and prunes. Poured a dark black color with tan head. Taste was very toasty with some cherries, toffee, and alcohol. Pallet was low to medium. Overall very good. 2008 vintage was much sweeter aroma and taste of wort. Seemed like an entire different recipe. 2007 vintage was more roasty and toasty than all.

2008 bottle. Lots of rich sweet yet bitter black strap molasses character with a shot of espresso. There’s some milk chcoclate that comes out in the middle and it finishes with a long bitter black coffee finish. There was a hint of soy I didn’t care much for though. The body is sticky and full with moderate carbonation.

Bottle, 2009, thanks to tytoanderso. Aroma of pine, resin, chocolate, caramel, sweets. Flavor very chocolatey, not too roasty, with lots of resin to battle with a chewy sweetness. Decadent, dessert-like, despite the also-strong hop character. The resinous quality in fact seems to blend rather than battle with all the sweet character. A unique impy, and quite tasty.