Imperial Stout
Broadway Brewery & Restaurant

2018 Imperial Stout. Knob Creek Bourbon barrels.

Pours black with a finger of khaki foam. Head retention is decent. Aroma is roasty, toasty, caramely, nutty malts and very light bourbon and smooth oak. Flavor profile is roasty, toasty, nutty, caramely malts. Oak and bourbon add a little smoothness and heat respectively. Toffee and caramel add some sweetness. Mouth feel is medium-thick with a creamy texture. Overall, big stout with a kiss of bourbon and fairly hearty.

Draft. Reviewed on phone.

Broadway Brewery had both the 2018 and 2017 brew on tap so I was lucky to try both. Both had similar overall pours very dark with a bit of brown foam. Both had a nice roasted and boozy scent. The 2017 tasted like a standard imperial stout: a bit chocolatey, lightly hoppy, good but nothing to go on about. But the 2018 was quite good. Chocolatey with notes of fruit, boozy but not too much. If you get a chance try the 2018!

 

 

 

This has gotten much better. The 2016 and 2017 versions were very good. Score amended.

A - Pour an opaque, jet black color with a small, light brown head of foam. It left thin tings of lace on the glass.

S - It smelled grassy and of some roasty notes. Not like a big imperial stout should.

T - Again it was grassy and somewhat sweet. Not roasty, no chocolate, toffee or molasses.

M - It was crisp, sharp and smooth. A medium bodied ale.

D - Avoid this. It didn't work out either.

served on-tap @ Broadway Brewery into a snifter

A gorgeous example of an Imperial Stout. The body is so opaque that you can see your reflection on the glass. Nearly two fingers worth of camel colored head on the pour, with head retention for days. This isn't a nitro-tap stout, but comes close to looking like one. You'd expect the lacing to be great coming from a head like that, and this beer doesn't defy expectations. Wonderful. You can't ask for a better looking example of the style.

Something is amiss with the nose. It's quite boozy up front. Underneath is a heavy dose of berries. Some roasted malts are present, but they don't give off a particularly chocolate or coffee aroma. They're just charred, and not smoky even. The aroma of this beer has some things going for it, it just seems a bit raw, conceptually speaking.

The taste is all blue fruits plus plums on the tongue. The finish has a nice, aggressive roast that makes for a lingering, charred fruitwood flavor. That sounds lovely, right? So why the score of 2.0? Because one critical component was utterly missing from this beer: the rich malt flavor that the Imperial Stout style is designed to deliver. Seriously, there is not much malted barely flavor in this beer at all. Broadway Brewery nailed a lot of the ancillary flavors that the style can have, but they somehow obscured the core of the beer. It is as if this beer had it's malt base hollowed out, leaving the ancillary flavors to collapse haphazardly into the cavity that the malt flavors left behind. I did like drinking this beer, but it makes for a bad Imperial Stout because it is missing the point of the style entirely.

The body seems appropriate in thickness, though the carbonation is too prickly for the style. Even though I kinda' liked it, I can't score the drinkability higher than average for the style. The beer goes down, but if you're expecting a malty beer than this will probably be a chore to consume.

This is one of the stranger Imperial Stouts I've ever had. If I didn't rate to style I might give the smell and taste average scores. But I do rate to style, and an Imperial Stout that does not do what the style is meant to do, no matter how alright-tasting it is, can't score highly. If you're at Broadway Brewery (which you absolutely should be if you are going through Columbia, MO; their APA and Porter are legitimately excellent) and you want to sample something curious and strange, order this.