Timberbeast (2023)
Great Notion Brewing

gorgeous and enormous stout from these guys in the sexy black bottle, thanks to my buddy for sharing, never seen this one before. awesome that they used blantons barrels for this, 26 months no less! heady already, but then they jazz it up with toasted pecans, marshmallow, cocoa nibs, and caramel, sounds like a lot, but shockingly for great notion this one doesnt present as over flavored, in fact, despite being sweet, its stout and barrel for me in front of the extras, which i appreciate. this is close to black, viscous like old motor oil, and has almost not head or bubbles. boy this is thick and slick, palate coating, quite sugary, and its like syrup going down, almost surprised the abv isnt stronger. the nose is awesome, tons of vanilla from the whiskey, brown sugar, and burnt oak there too, really quite obviously higher end bourbon on this, easy to appreciate. the pecans are aromatic, the rest of it kind of just goes generic desserty sweetness, but there are dark chocolate, coffee, and dark soil notes in all the roasted grain this is built upon, i get light coconut and maple notes too. the flavor has some dark fruit, fig and raisin, twisting and winding among all the oak and bourbon, they could have stopped there, but the pecans are nice, nutty and distinctive, lightly sweet too like a praline, but also with an almost fatty oily thing happening which slicks this up in a cool way. caramel seems fully unnecessary and id like to try this without that element, same could be said for the marshmallow, although i think i can kind of taste those in here directly. sweeter than i need, but amazing depth of flavor, and with the stout being as good as it is on its own, and the blantons adding its thing, this was always going to be awesome. feel lucky to have shared it wish such great folks on an awesome day of eating and drinking, this is a side of great notion i need to explore more!

edit: almost just as good on tap, super complex but also very together, not sloppy at all for how big it is, high end whiskey very apparent, nice chocolate profile, just really big and good!