Admiral Gravitas
Blue Owl Brewing
- From:
- Blue Owl Brewing
- Texas, United States
- Style:
- American Imperial Stout
- ABV:
- 9%
- Score:
- +2 ratings needed
- Avg:
- 3.78 | pDev: 8.2%
- Ratings:
- | reviews: 1
- Status:
- Inactive
- Rated:
- Jul 29, 2020
- Added:
- Apr 02, 2017
- Wants:
- 0
- Gots:
- 1
NO SCORE
-
-
Noble, proud, and decorated, Admiral Gravitas is a mythically big beer with a ton of character. It’s thick, luscious, and warms the cockles.
81 SU
81 SU
Recent ratings and reviews.
Reviewed by Jugs_McGhee from Texas
3.08/5 rDev -18.5%
look: 4.25 | smell: 3 | taste: 3 | feel: 3 | overall: 3
3.08/5 rDev -18.5%
look: 4.25 | smell: 3 | taste: 3 | feel: 3 | overall: 3
CAN: 12 fl oz. Standard pull-tab. Blue and orange-brown label. No listed ABV or canned on date. Nabbed on-sale for $1.49 at a beer store in Austin, TX.
"Sour imperial oatmeal stout."
APPEARANCE: Pours an exquisite dark gilded tan head ~5cm in height with wonderful creaminess and thickness to it. Takes a good 5+ minutes to recede. Great colour for a head and very inviting.
Body colour is a predictable opaque black.
True to the style in every way, though I suppose it could be richer and more vibrant still; a darker head wouldn't hurt.
AROMA: I do get some lactobacillus sourness and twang from the aroma, which obfuscates the more stout-like aromatics I was expecting. I do pick up on some chocolate malt and dark malt when I really look for it, but it's tough to find. No roasted barley or charred/burnt notes surface.
Aromatic intensity is mild.
TASTE: More sour than stout-like, which is frustrating. I just get clean lactobacillus twang, mild acidity, and...very little beyond that. Some suppressed chocolate malt on the finish, I guess, but all the stout flavours you'd want are masked by that pesky sourness.
No microflora, barnyard notes, bacterial complexity (e.g. sour apple), oak, or wild yeast flavours are present, so it isn't much of a sour, and the lack of dark malts, roast, charred malts, et al. makes it not much of an imperial stout.
The result is a simplistic shallow beer that tastes like the worst of both worlds in terms of its style hybridity, but it's not bad tasting - just a bit insipid for what it is.
TEXTURE: Creamy, smooth, wet, a bit silky & chewy, unrefreshing, acidic, and medium-bodied.
OVERALL: It drinks easier than a beer of its ABV ought to given that the sour mash flavours drown out all the imperial stout flavours, but I don't know that that's a good thing. Compared to The Bruery's sour imperial stouts, this is pretty lackluster, and I don't know that it's fair to Blue Owl to compare it either to other sour ales or to other (rigid) imperial stouts, but it fails on both counts to match the quality even of widely distributed expressions thereof (e.g. Victory Storm King, North Coast Old Rasputin, Great Divide Yeti, or on the sour ale side Rodenbach, any Jolly Pumpkin sour, etc.).
Sour mashing to add complexity to an already complex style like imperial stout is an interesting idea, but this attempt at doing so has had the opposite effect - it's simple if not a bit insipid. Still a highly drinkable beer, but not one I'd reach for again.
C+ (3.08) / ABOVE AVERAGE
Mar 09, 2019"Sour imperial oatmeal stout."
APPEARANCE: Pours an exquisite dark gilded tan head ~5cm in height with wonderful creaminess and thickness to it. Takes a good 5+ minutes to recede. Great colour for a head and very inviting.
Body colour is a predictable opaque black.
True to the style in every way, though I suppose it could be richer and more vibrant still; a darker head wouldn't hurt.
AROMA: I do get some lactobacillus sourness and twang from the aroma, which obfuscates the more stout-like aromatics I was expecting. I do pick up on some chocolate malt and dark malt when I really look for it, but it's tough to find. No roasted barley or charred/burnt notes surface.
Aromatic intensity is mild.
TASTE: More sour than stout-like, which is frustrating. I just get clean lactobacillus twang, mild acidity, and...very little beyond that. Some suppressed chocolate malt on the finish, I guess, but all the stout flavours you'd want are masked by that pesky sourness.
No microflora, barnyard notes, bacterial complexity (e.g. sour apple), oak, or wild yeast flavours are present, so it isn't much of a sour, and the lack of dark malts, roast, charred malts, et al. makes it not much of an imperial stout.
The result is a simplistic shallow beer that tastes like the worst of both worlds in terms of its style hybridity, but it's not bad tasting - just a bit insipid for what it is.
TEXTURE: Creamy, smooth, wet, a bit silky & chewy, unrefreshing, acidic, and medium-bodied.
OVERALL: It drinks easier than a beer of its ABV ought to given that the sour mash flavours drown out all the imperial stout flavours, but I don't know that that's a good thing. Compared to The Bruery's sour imperial stouts, this is pretty lackluster, and I don't know that it's fair to Blue Owl to compare it either to other sour ales or to other (rigid) imperial stouts, but it fails on both counts to match the quality even of widely distributed expressions thereof (e.g. Victory Storm King, North Coast Old Rasputin, Great Divide Yeti, or on the sour ale side Rodenbach, any Jolly Pumpkin sour, etc.).
Sour mashing to add complexity to an already complex style like imperial stout is an interesting idea, but this attempt at doing so has had the opposite effect - it's simple if not a bit insipid. Still a highly drinkable beer, but not one I'd reach for again.
C+ (3.08) / ABOVE AVERAGE
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