Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout
Northgate Brewing

L: pours dark brown to black with moderately fast streams of rising bubbles under a 1" moderately persistent tan foam cap.

S: Coffee, chocolate and vanilla lightly seasoned with dark fruit dominate the aromas with bourbon aromas pretty faint.

T: creamy, smooth palate with mildly sweet chocolate and coffee flavors leading the attack. by mid-palate it gets bourbony with vanilla and fruit notes along with a shot of drying tannin near the finish. The beer is mildly sweet throughout and is warming growing to slightly hot near the end. A mild hop bitterness keeps the beer from being cloying.

F: medium full body and medium to medium low carbonation.

 

Look: pours a medium to dark brown with a bubbly thin head that quickly dissipates

Smell: Bourbon, fudge, coconut.

Taste: the coconut pops out to me, with that bourbon and slight chocolate flavors coming in as well in the finish.

Feel: The most disappointing part: the body is medium to medium thin. There's some heat on this, but nothing one couldn't handle.

Overall: If Northgate could up the body a bit, this is a spectacular beer. My palate is slightly off, as I have a cold, but the flavors are all there, and the price point is decent.

I’ve heard good things about the contents of this 750ML bottle, so I reluctantly picked it up. Burned once too many times by early bottlings of local breweries have I. Split with my wife.

Barely any hiss when the cap comes off; oh, shit. The pour is blacker than my cellar at midnight, with hardly enough bubbles to cover up the tip of my pointer finger. Smells really good. Bourbon, oak, chocolate, sweet malts, squeezed nipples. Very nice.

North Gate’s Imperial Stout - Bourbon Barrel Aged doesn’t suck! Alert the press! Lovely chop of bourbon & oak right up front, but underneath there is what tastes like a nicely stacked stout. Great chocolate, mild char, syrupy sweetness, true-line vanilla. Finishes with black licorice & a touch of booziness. Flat, but not distractingly so, & that makes it easier to sip.

Well call me Willie & spank me red. Coming in with low expectations, this beer cleared them in street shoes. Excellent beer.

Deepest, darkest blackest coloring, utterly impenetrable, slim ring of foam around the glass.

In the nose: big bad bourbon all the way, char, molasses, cocoa, caramel, every mark of rich and dark. Vanilla notes sneak through. Slightly hot. Somewhat fierce. Defiantly big.

In the mouth: Rich and thick, big and bold with flavor, hot with alcohol (12.1% ABV!), and the feeling is only growing stronger. This is a beer for tonight, our biggest snowfall yet this winter, and the world is white, but the chill in the air is so bitter that we have to crawl into our safe spaces and cry out for comfort. This is doing the trick. This emboldens our every timid corner and allows us to be brave again. I want to live in this bottle, in this glass, stay where it's safe, with the chocolate and molasses, and marshmallow, vanilla and cherry, and just damned deliciousness.

I got this big old bottle for nearly $15, and wish I'd saved it for sharing. But, I've got to taste it for myself, that's what I do. Maybe get another for a tasting party.

 

 

 

 

Big and black... plenty of pale, loose head. Looks sticky.

Smells hot. The barrel and base both offer some serious alcohol presence. But underneath all of that there is some chocolate liqueur, marshmallow, and sweet syrup.

Taste is surprisingly tame. The ABV is present without being sticky or intimidating. I get a lot of brownie/bourbon... great combo. But it's hard to dissect that from a terrible feel.

It's really thin. Almost watery... I'm not sure what happened here.