Hack Weight
The O.T. Brewing Company

 

Yet another Alberta brewery that just seemed to pop up like a mushroom overnight. 355ml can with a curling stone label. The can has a little blurb about Tahitian vanilla beans. Let's get cracking.

Pours out with a large frothing mocha head, the beer a deep black, nearly impenetrable to light. Looks really good.

Lots of cola and vanilla on up front on the aroma, along with chocolate coated raisins, burnt toast, a touch of cinanmon and lactose. Really lovely fresh vanilla aroma predominates, however. It's sweet and milky, with very little hopping showing up, which is fine by me in an Imperial Stout. I guess it reminds me quite a bit of a pancake breakfast with fresh Canadian maple syrup. It's really quite delicious smelling.

The taste is all that and more, with some added complexity. The flavour is still full-on vanilla beans and maple syrup and chocolate milk, but with some added hoppy resin and a nice toasty malt finish. Many of the usual dark suspects are here too: a little fig, some licorice and espresso, dark chocolate, raisins and prunes, etc. It ends fairly sweet, and the body is on the full side, syrupy but not sugary or cloying. Well balanced, with just enough carbonation.

A smart addition to the Alberta scene. Something I'll definitely come back to.

355ml can - made with whole Tahitian vanilla beans. The name here is a curling reference, and let's just say that it implies that this baby is heavy.

This beer pours a solid black abyss, with the barest of basal amber edges, and four fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and creamy brown head, which leaves some decent layered EKG readout pattern lace around the glass as it lazily sinks out of sight.

It smells of gritty and grainy cereal malt, bittersweet cocoa powder, those little vanilla cookies, a touch of anise spiciness, and some very plain earthy, musty, and dead floral hops. The taste is bready and doughy caramel malt, medium chocolate wafers, a hint of free-range ashiness, vanilla ice cream, licorice root, and more well-understated leafy, herbal, and gently perfumed floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is adequate in its palate-coating frothiness, the body a dense middleweight, and generally smooth, with maybe a touch of booze astringency starting to chip away at the veneer at this point in the game. It finishes off-dry, the malt and chocolate essences presiding.

Overall - this is a pleasant enough offering, full of flavour, with just a minor kick. My only complaint is one that seems to be coming more and more common: cans that are filled so full, that even when you carefully pop the tab, beer sprays fucking everywhere. I'm all for getting bang for my buck, but come on already. Fin.