The Oligarch - Bocconotto
Breakside Brewery - SE Taproom

Bottle Date: 2019
Palate Contaminants: none

Dark brown color and completely opaque. Not much head, let alone lacing.

Lots of fried fruit on the nose, especially medjool dates. It's pretty rich, to boot, as there's some real depth to that scent. I also get a little malt in the form of biscotti, as well as some honey. Raisins and anise complement things pleasantly, and there's also a really nice hazelnut thing going on. Overall great, and there are only a couple better.

The initial taste has a lot of raisins and smoke, even coffee. There are only a couple scotches I've run across that have so much dark wood flavor. The depth (and breadth) in the flavor is not there in the taste, although it's still plenty tasty. Maybe I should've lit up a cigar with this one, it's just about perfect.

The wood and hazelnut just hang around and around and around, and they're really nice. Weight is among the heaviest I've had for a fiver. Carbonation is hard to draw out, even though it's clearly there.

Taster at brewery, from bottle. Black, slick, flat. Aroma is roasty with hint of dark chocolate. Taste brings in more of the savory notes, nutty elements too. Vanilla tis hard to find. All together though it does recall an Italian biscotti.

This was an amazing gift from Phil! Poured from fridge temp. Nice deep head. Nose is full of chocolate, vanilla, nuts, cinnamon spice, lactose, and some dark fruit. Taste is spectacular. Super creamy - dark chocolate, almonds, milk, vanilla, figs, blackberries, and some maple. Insanely good. Mouthfeel is creamy and mouth-coating. This is overall a fantastic beer. One of the best I have had in a long time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

A solid looking beer, but nothing too special looking. Pitch black with nut brown highlights, and no head to speak of.

The aroma is chalked full of barrel influence. Boozy, oaky, with cinnamon being a clear front running ingredient. Hints of chocolate and roasted nuts, and grainy crackers and cookies.

Crazy how something can smell one way, taste another, but actually be one in the same. This is all decadent Italian cookie dessert. Almond, chocolate, powdered sugar, hell... even a touch of boozy flambéed figs. And of course, plenty of cinnamon.

In no way is this as sweet as I am making it sound. It's actually wonderfully balanced and if anything, just barely leaning on that sweet side. Warming, rich, smooth. Little carbonation and an inky feel demand this to be savored sip, long after sip. All that's missing is the cookie crunch.

Another winner from the Breakside barrel aged program. Not quite as good as that rediculous Piedmontese, but damn good nonetheless.

Cheers.

 

Serving: on tap.

Bocconotto is dark, with an appealing tan head, and lots of patchy lacing. There's some bourbon in the aroma, but it doesn't dominate the mix of other smells. Overall, this is obviously a mix of flavors, chocolate, nuts, bourbon, and so forth. My problem is that it's just a little too much. It's too sweet, and has a few too many flavors. I liked it quite a bit, but I wasn't tempted to order another. Compared to most imperial stouts, is this excellent? Of course. But compared to other top tier barrel aged imperial stouts, this doesn't compete with the best.

Poured into a Fremont small snifter. Pours a very dark mahogany brown, appearing opaque black in the glass with a thin, dark khaki head that dissipates to patches with light lacing. Aroma of dark toasted malt with light char, cocoa, light molasses, nuts and bourbon. Flavor is dark toasted malt with slight char, nuts, bourbon, milk chocolate and a slight citrus note in the finish. Medium bodied with light creaminess. This is quite nice. When I saw all these variants were going fast, I picked up one of each (of at least the 5 I saw) and afterwards realized that if I didn't like the base stout, this might have been an expensive error. This one left me with the opposite opinion; really glad I picked up all of them. The number of adjuncts seemed like it could be too busy, but the integration is great. I'm not getting any cinnamon, but the chocolate and almonds are well balanced, although the latter taste more like roasted almonds rather than fresh. The lemon zest is a slight hint in the finish. The base Oligarch is apparently more robust than the version I tried several years ago, which I thought was good, but not quite deep enough for the RIS style. This one is not an extremely malty RIS, but the malt is substantial and supports the other flavors nicely. This was an ambitious release and so far I'm impressed. I look forward to the other variants.