This afternoon's beer: Boulevard (Smokestack Series) Imperial Stout X Coffee
Opens with a fusillade of roasty flavors: lots of coffee and dark chocolate. Burnt fruits—cherries and plums and grapes—supported by dark bread and toast and caramel, arising around the middle. Smoke and peat and ash in the distance, hints of earth and grass as the beer edges its way toward dry. Passing flickers of vanilla.
Thick, bready-chewy, densely carbonated. Some almost-syrupy stickiness, eventually shading toward drying. Remarkably little alcohol presence—roughly none—considering the 11% ABV. Subtly flinty around the finish. Astonishingly smooth.
Yum! This is a really excellent coffee stout, from one of my very favorite breweries. Staggeringly drinkable, with lots of intense and complex flavor; marvelously well-integrated, if more poised than balanced. Supple and subtle and graceful. A more-than-suitable replacement for a second cup of coffee, and a beer that would doubtless make marvelous (if a tad on the expensive side) floats.
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| Boulevard (Smokestack Series) Imperial Stout X Coffee |
Opens with a fusillade of roasty flavors: lots of coffee and dark chocolate. Burnt fruits—cherries and plums and grapes—supported by dark bread and toast and caramel, arising around the middle. Smoke and peat and ash in the distance, hints of earth and grass as the beer edges its way toward dry. Passing flickers of vanilla.
Thick, bready-chewy, densely carbonated. Some almost-syrupy stickiness, eventually shading toward drying. Remarkably little alcohol presence—roughly none—considering the 11% ABV. Subtly flinty around the finish. Astonishingly smooth.
Yum! This is a really excellent coffee stout, from one of my very favorite breweries. Staggeringly drinkable, with lots of intense and complex flavor; marvelously well-integrated, if more poised than balanced. Supple and subtle and graceful. A more-than-suitable replacement for a second cup of coffee, and a beer that would doubtless make marvelous (if a tad on the expensive side) floats.
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