Grimalkin Amorphotron
Gigantic Brewing Company

Black with low, dense foam.

The smell is busy, the main tones are smoked meat and cinnamon, with a healthy helping of chocolate and a bit of soy.

More chocolate and soy on the tongue, also hints of burnt toast and coffee grounds.

Full bodied, pretty viscous. Very smooth.

I really liked this beer. It could have gone either way, but the flavors play nicely together, and I enjoy this kind of silky liquid.

 

This beer was a collaboration with Half Acre Brewing from Chicago. A black colored ale with a tan, bubbly head. Streaked lacing. The aroma is cocoa, espresso, molasses, and toasted malt. Deep, rich flavor. Vanilla bean, espresso, chocolate, malt, spice, and a hint of hops bitterness at the end. This beer is amazing. It's the richest dark ale I've had in awhile. Like a stout, but the hops gives it an IIPA quality as well. Delicious!

Appearance: Poured in to a Spiegelau Stout Glass. Galactic Black Hole black, with an incredible medium tan head that is frothy and creamy but has plenty of blocky big bubbles and a decent retention with a wonderful burlesque lace.

Aromatics: First scents are sweet toasted bread dough that hasn’t baked into bread yet. The yeasts take the stage followed by some plums/dates and some toasted caramel play back up vocals there is a touch of floral bitter grass at the bottom, but I was so enthralled with the breads I really paid it no mind.

Taste: So I’m on my 4th swig, take a few notes - the great combo of earthy bitter that is not quite IPA level, some dark cacao and burnt vanilla bean, maybe roasted barley - or similar grains. And this is usually where I start to read the labels and forum (I don’t want to have any outside influences before applying my first impressions). Hmmm.. so 10.5% ABV heh? Damn, don’t stand up just yet and finish writing my review. The ABV is well masked, there is a touch of boozy whisper at the end but nothing to write home about.

Feel: Starts out smooth and creamy, the carbonation is pretty subdued but enough to keep a thin layer of froth on top for each sip. It is in the middleweight division that sometimes jumps the scale in to the heavy’s on occasion. There is a juicy texture reminds me of a wheatgrass shot I had not too long ago - just without the nasty flavour. Mostly smooth a bit of a mealy-ness and the roasted malts stay around a bit to make sure you don’t forget about them.

Overall: The “Imperial Ale” on the bottle it through me off a bit - I was expecting IPA but this is more stoutish for sure. Or maybe if IPA and Stout hooked up and had a mutant baby that was bent on destroying the universe for some perverse reason. Or as biboergosum says “hard to really understand what this brewery calls this thing - it is a rather decent American Black Ale”. It has a lot of stoutness but a lot of decent ale qualities as well. And now… I will admit the label art is what sucked me in on this one - this and Gigantic’s Ginormous IPA (with the awesome Mazinger style bot) - both of these yell 70’s-80’s saturday morning cartoons, their aesthetic is bang on and so I shall pair them accordingly:

Pairing: For me, this was a no brainer - there is an aesthetic quality that the label invokes that had me pair an atmosphere; so Saturday morning I pulled out the ‘ol VCR and started with a couple episodes of Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light (1987) to get me ready, on episode 3 I pop the top and pour. After that, it’s breakfast time (this is how we rolled in the 80’s - cartoons for an hour minimum before you looked for food). With toons on the go, a few sips of ale - There is enough sweet bitter and creaminess here that won’t be too bad with a small bowl of Froot Loops, (Lucky Charms was a close second, but the marshmallows probably would have been too much). And then as I recall from the classic 80’s commercials that vaunted “a complete breakfast” - “add juice, toast, and milk to make it complete!” Ok, so I skipped the juice and there was milk in my Loops already. But I did enjoy a piece of toast with REAL butter (not margarine). Sigh… what the 12 year old missed out on for beverages is a darn shame. But with breakfast in hand back to the TV to eat and watch the first 4 episodes of Transformers (1984) while I polish off the bottle and write this review. I tell ya - classic 80’s cartoons is a must pairing. If I were to enjoy this in the evening, I think it would be after dinner, I’m thinking some Inspector Gadget or TMNT (those were usually later afternoon shows where I grew up) and the beer would be as a digestive with a pecan pie and whipped cream, or even a key lime pie would be great as well. But Froot Loops was an amazing choice IMHO.

OOOOHHHH... don't forget to peel the label!

 

 

 

22oz bottle, dubbed merely an 'Imperial Ale', and an apparent collaboration with Chi-Town's Half Acre.

This beer pours a solid, light-destroying black, with the barest of red-cola basal edges, and two fat-ass fingers of puffy, rocky, and chunky brown head, which leaves some splotchy snow rime lace in places around the glass as it quickly dissolves into the ether.

It smells of lightly roasted, bready and doughy caramel malt, distraught yeast, generic overripe black orchard fruit, some testy, indistinct earthy spiciness, cheap cocoa powder, some plain leafy and dead grassy hoppiness, and a looming sense of alcohol doom. The taste is more bready and grainy caramel malt, free-range wet ash, some orange, red grapefruit, and lime citrus rind, a still middling yeastiness, separate dark berry notes, weakening bittersweet chocolate, and a consistently underperforming piney, leafy, and grassy green hoppiness.

The bubbles are fairly laid-back in their gentle and sometimes coddling frothiness, the body a decent medium weight, and mostly smooth, neither of yer typical West Coast hop interlopers choosing to pick a fight in the here and now. It finishes well off-dry, the roasted malt still going toe-to-toe with the lingering citrusy and green hoppy esters.

Gee, you'd think I was reviewing a CDA, or something, eh? Yeah, there's not really a whole lot about this offering that screams out 'stout', but hey, that's what you get when the masses are allowed to speak. At any rate, despite what this sassy and often hard to really understand brewery calls this thing - it is a rather decent American Black Ale, to get myself back on the straight and narrow, eh?

Solid sepia froth over stouty black. 4.25
Roast, mint, tropical fruit - muted by cold; hopsack comes out later on. 4
Raisin and brown sugar, cappuccino, Flake, quiet centre that turns into blueberry and passion fruit as it opens, sticky toffee/Snickers as it warms, with some fruit puree. 4
Medium, creamy, round. 4.25

Feathery body, almost lactose-ish, but without no significant sweetness - no crystal in the ingredients explains a lot. Get the Simcoe far more than the Mosaic, though it sure gets fruity as it opens. A crazy little snowflake that I can’t get a read on, but I somehow think that was the point. 4.25

A: deep brown to licorice. Caramel thick head. 2 finger.

S: smells like a barley wine. Malty. Subtle roast. Sweet fruits.

T: more dark berries. Roasted malt. Sweet candied citrus peel. Hops. Stone fruit.

F: smooth and creamy. Crisp finish

O: very different but I quite like it. Almost reminds me of luscious from The Alchemist.

Poured into a Fremont small snifter. Pours a very dark mahogany brown, nearly opaque in the glass, with a fine, half finger light brown head with great retention and lots of lacing. Aroma of dark toasted malt, citrus hops, chocolate and a hint of molasses. Flavor starts with chocolatey dark toasted malt and licorice with citrus, mildly resinous piney hops developing that gradually dominate the flavor into a hoppy black ale finish with lingering citrus and piney hops. Medium bodied with nice light creaminess and good carbonation. As the name suggests, this is a near perfect integration of two styles that seem to change character during the taste. A hybrid between hoppy American imperial ale and a Cascadian dark ale. The finish is mostly CDA, but there is a rich, deep malt body throughout most of the taste. I really like both styles and also really enjoyed this. I hope to see more like this. Recommended if you like hoppy dark ales. Brilliant.

 

BeerAdvocate lists this an an imperial stout, but be warned- this is nothing of the sort; Gigantic, to their credit, only refers to this as an "imperial ale". It's closest to a black IPA, but that doesn't quite do it justice. Instead of combining piney hops with roasty malt flavor, this simply tastes and smells like a distinctly modern, and distinctly non-black, IPA. The nose is unabashedly hop-forward and the taste is all tropical, fruity hops with the slight rumor of dark malt hidden deep within. In this sense, the name- as nonsensical as it sounds- makes some sense, as this is a very deceptive beer; it tastes nothing like it looks, and it certainly doesn't taste like it's 10.5% ABV. Once I got past my expectation, thinking I'd bought a stout, I ended up really loving this beer. Recommended, but don't let BeerAdvocate's mislabeling fool you.