Thunder Canyon Warhead Stout

Brewed by Thunder Canyon Brewery
Style: Imperial Stout
Tucson, Arizona USA

on tap @ TCB. pours black with a thin tan ring of foam. aroma of malted whoppers...chocolate, richly roasted grains, root beer and some ashiness/bitterness. flavor has everything in the aroma with the addition of black cherry, earth, wood and a nice ashy dry balance. finishes with a nice bitterness and leaves behind a nice chocolate and coffee aftertaste which lingers for quite a while. alcohol creeps in as it warms. medium to full bodied with a creamy rich mouth feel. it leaves a sticky chocolate film on my lips. not overly sweet as imperial stouts tend to be.

it’s confirmed... this is better than dark lord AND darkness. so, neener!

Growler courtesy of kmweaver. Dark brown, almost black with a beige head. Pleasant chocolate roastiness with a hint of cereal in the nose. Flavor is very roasty/chocolatey with caramel, cherries, plum/raisin and a level of soil/earthiness. Pretty sweet. Full, round and creamy with moderate carbonation. Good stuff overall.

[Growler, big thanks go to Skyview for sharing] Pours dark with a nice tan head. Aroma is roasted malt, coffee, and maybe molasses? Taste is mainly roasted malt and some chocolate, but also has some unusual almost peppery notes in it too. Medium-thin mouthfeel. Good long finish of coffee and something else that I can’t quite make out. An unusual imperial, pretty good beer though.

Handbottled bomber, courtesy of cbkschubert, thanks Craig! Pours a dark brown/black with a creamy one finger dark tan head, slight lacing. Aroma is fresh roast coffee, milk chocolate, cocoa, and slight citrus hops. Flavor starts with a pleasant hops bitterness, followed quickly by milk chocolate and espresso. Palate is full, smooth and silky, with a slight amount of the hops lingering. A well done IS, and glad for the chance to try!

(growler, thanks kmweaver) Brown head atop brown-black body. Aroma is medium sweet, rich, milk chocolate, roast. Taste is sweet, milk chocolate, roast, light burnt. Smooth medium-full body, light alcohol burn.

Brown-hued ebony. Clingy wisps of lace are left in the wake of the creamy and semi-rocky beige head. Decent nose is lined with cocoa-dusted pine needles, chocolate liqueur, and lightly seared malt hulls. Very light suggestion of citrus, honey-glazed prunes, and smoke. Soft and tight carbonation. Opens with a delicate tingle of acidity induced by the tightly integrated fusion of citric hops and deep roast. Fairly dense in body, but notions of pine needles impart a minty dryness which lifts some of the weight of the gooey residual molasses-sweetness and resinous hops. Quiet deceptively hoppy due to the clean bitterness and multilayered malt composition. High concentration of hop-derived oils possess plenty of force to produce a tongue-numbing effect. Rich espresso malts lend a velvety bitterness which soothes the palate and are deepened by chocolate truffles and cocoa. Complex malts are fairly crisp, lush and vividly defined up until the latter half, which is when the body becomes fairly limp resulting in an overt sweetness created by a combination of molasses and grapefruit hints. Earthy smoke and beefy java bolster the body’s core. Finishes with an appealingly brash, yet composed and refined roastiness, which negates some of the tacky residuals. Alcohol is artfully concealed, though the abundance of cooling sprucelike-hop whispers unite to impart a cleansing dryness. Oily resins deposit an ample amount of soft bitterness on the tongue, but their chewy citrus accents are buried beneath the massive malt frame. I don’t find this to be all that interesting, but I can’t find any flaws in the beer either. Happens to be both clean and fully malty, which is always a plus. And I’m happy to see that, for such an aggressively hopped Imperial, the acids are well-managed and allow the flavorsome and beefy malts to strut their stuff. Thanks to cbkschubert for this expertly hand-bottled sample.

A growler from Skyview. Black color with a medium head. Roasty aroma with a hint of something almost minty. Lots of characteristics like a fine sweet/oatmeal stout: strong milk, coffee, toffee and oatmeal. A little roasted malt in the finish. Definitely more of an oatmeal stout, though maybe an Imperial Oatmeal Stout.

Found some notes form last year in an old notebook. I think I sampled this with the Pa crew. Handbottle? Pours a lighter than expected almost black but not quite - also some ruby highlights- and shiny tan lasting head. Roasted barley aroma with nice thick sweet caramel malts, dark chocolate some anise. Dry acrid black malts and sharp roast in the flavor- with more sweet malts in the middle, and dark bitter black malts and hints of chocolate in the end. Smooth adn sweet. Pretty good.