U-889
Boxing Rock Brewing Co.

 

Bottle: Poured a pitch-black color stout with a huge bright brown foamy head with good retention and some lacing. Aroma of floral coffee notes with some black chocolate and light vanilla notes is quite pleasant. Taste is a good mix of black chocolate notes with some roasted flavours with some floral coffee notes, lactose and nice vanilla beans notes. Body is about average with probably too much carbonation for the style but no apparent alcohol. I loved the fact that this beer almost tasted like a latte.

 

 

Appearance: solid black, brown butter head is fine but weak retention, leaving only a ring within a minute

Aroma: black roasted olives are a surprise, black licorice, oysters; a fruity, very dark, slightly burnt roast

Taste & Mouthfeel: pure, dark chocolate (like 90%) and bitter roast coffee, with bright fruitiness, but different from the aroma, this is more orange rind; over time the bracing bitterness gives in to the malt flavours and a great balance is achieved with chocolate and fruit notes really coming alive; medium body, slick but not greasy, very easy drinking, medium-light carbonation

Overall: one of my favourite examples of this style in recent memory, being not overly aggressive in bitterness (although by no means tame) which gives opportunity for a great depth of flavours to come to the fore; a bit more backbone to the body and it'd be near perfect

 

Poured from a 650 ml bottle, split with my Dad, from the liquor store in the Baker Drive Sobeys.

A: Black with three fingers of head the colour of milk chocolate.
S: Roasted malts. Coffee, vanilla.
T: Daaark.
F: Certainly on the thicker side, but not the heaviest stout I've tried.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One year old version on cask at Stillwell in Halifax about a month ago. My main complaint about this beer a year ago was that the vanilla was kind of overpowering. After a year though, the chocolate and coffee flavours have melded together with the vanilla incredibly well. Nice velvety mouthfeel from the cask conditioning. I have already set aside a bottle from this year's release to drink next winter.