8 Sail Imperial Porter
8 Sail Brewery

L- Deep ruby-black, poured (carefully) clear, it's bottle-conditioned. Thin 2mm pale tan cap - beers up as high as 10%ABV do not have the physical surface-tension to form or hold much head, so don't hold it's modest visible carbonation against it or other beers up around this %.
S- Pretty pungent, something of a cocoa/coffee blended note plus some rich dark mollasses.
T- Woah... ok a surprisingly sharp note on the front, then into some rather bitter/sour deeper notes, the latter 'deeper' more of a 10%/black-beer style.
F- It's not going to overwhelm you through richness, but the deep+pungent, yet rather sour sides might give mixed signals re: what you're drinking here. I really wonder what a knowlegable beer drinker would say blind-tasting this one... 'Aged for a long time in dry red wine barrels?' ...
O- I'm not sure what to make of it. I've never had a 10% black beer that tastes anything like this. I was expecting more depth, intricate flavour to be considered sip by sip, and a fulfilling Autumn/Winter beer. I don't know if this bottle is simply off, which makes it very hard to rate at all, but I'm really struggling through this one...
500ml bottle BB: July/2021 Bought from BeersOfEurope/UK for home delivery.

Jet black body with next to no head, a slight tan froth that gradually fades in to nothing, quite common for high abv brews in my experience.
Smell is a wonderful black coffee, dark chocolate, yeasty aroma, very inviting. Taste is firstly heavy liquorice flavours and alcohol that is not well concealed. However after the initial shock, things calm down a bit and some coffee and chocolate notes come through as you drink more as the liquorice subsides. Pleasant sipper but doesn't quite live up to the wonderful aroma.