Birch Bark
Big Rock Brewery

 

This is easily one of the best brews that Big Rock has created. It pours with a fairly aggressive head and plenty of carbonation. The requisite flavours and feel for this style are well represented. This is easily one of the best Big Rock beers I've tried lately.

Apearrance - perty damn dark

Smell - vanilla, alchohol, birch, coffee.

Taste - dark sweet, strong vanilla, roasted coffee malt, strong birch aftertaste, different than most.

Feel - light end of stout, carbonation still apparent, especially for alchohol, overly sweet, i like it.

Overall - solid special offering, she's a goer.

 

Appearance - Pours a dark chocolate brown with two fingers of creamy tan head.

Smell - roasted malts, birch syrup, cocoa, dark fruit, earthy hops, hint of coffee bean.

Taste - roasted malts up front followed by the birch syrup. It then goes into the cocoa, dark fruit, earthy hops and coffee bean.

Mouthfeel - Medium bodied with light to moderate carbonation. Finishes with a lingering sweetness from the birch syrup.

Overall - This has to be one of the better Big Rock limited offerings I've had to date. The birch syrup was a unique twist to the RIS style. The ABV is quite hidden in this one. Overall, worth a go and good for Big Rock for venturing in uncharted waters again.

650ml bottle, subtitled as a "Canadian Imperial Stout", because, ya know, birch.

This beer pours a generally clear, very dark brown colour, with prominent cola highlights, and one skinny finger of bubbly and loosely foamy beige head, which leaves some chunky melting snowbank lace around the glass as things slowly ebb away.

It smells of bready caramel malt, bittersweet cocoa powder, a bit of wet ash, meek black orchard fruit, an uneven grainy woodiness, and tame earthy, leafy, and somewhat perfumed floral hops. The taste is more doughy (of the sour variety) and bready caramel malt, aided by a further biscuity toffee sweetness, some mild day-old coffee, stale black licorice, hard to differentiate, but still adequate tree branch esters, a hint of lost char, and plain leafy, earthy hops. The 17-proof booze is more or less thoroughly sublimated.

The bubbles are quite active in their innocuous frothiness, the body a decent medium-heavy weight, and smooth enough, neither the hops (duh) nor the alcohol (really) taking advantage here. It finishes on the sweet side, the caramel, chocolate, and I suppose, weirdly saccharine birch, well, whatevs, presiding, in the face of a still helpfully ethereal booziness.

Well, I gotta say, this is one of the better Alchemist Edition offerings I've seen of late from Big Rock - it definitely falls into the old-world scheme of big-assed stouts, what with the less than overbearing caramel and woody essences (by design or result, I cannot say). Easy to drink, simple as ever was, and with an ABV that, while not exactly hidden, does well to convince you of its absence.