10,000 Steps
Faction Brewing

With the first sip of Faction's highly complex beer, you'd think that there's a thousand different things that went into the making of this beer, and you'd be right. A blend of imperial stout and barleywine, laced with vanilla and maple are just a few of the flavors that beg to be explored.

10,000 Steps pours generally coffee black with garnet lowlights about its margins. Scant with foam, the ale settles in the glass like an oily barleywine shedding sugar laced alcohol legging on the glass. A sultry scent of coffee, caramel, whisky spice, port-like savory scents and cream align on the nose ahead of a sweet and savory sip of maple, dark chocolate, molasses, honey and sweet cream.

Sultry, savory and sweet, the decadent ale slathers the middle palate with malt, ensuring a long cling of alcohol laced sugars on blanketed on the tastebuds. All the while, nuanced flavors of date, raisin, grape, blackberry, plum and currant add a aged and macerated fruitiness that wraps around remnants of coffee, cocoa, toast and sweet smokiness. Trending sweet and sherry-like, the late taste balances with peppery alcohol and nutty oak.

Full bodied and pleasantly cloying, the ale is a slow and sipping beer that's perfect as an after dinner digestif with a long extension of coffee and syrup in truly savory and spicy fashion.