Russian Imperial Stout
Brewsters Brewing Company & Restaurant - Eleventh Avenue

 

355ml bottle (the 2017 version) - they've made an RIS before, but at a much lower ABV, and not bottled, FWIW. Bourbon barrel aged.

This beer pours a solid black, with the barest of amber basal edges, and two fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and somewhat fizzy brown head, which leaves a few instances of cannonball splash aftermath lace around the glass as it quickly blows off.

It smells of bready and doughy caramel malt, some free-range ashiness, bittersweet cocoa powder, weak cafe-au-lait notes, anise spice, and tame earthy, musty, and rather soused-up floral noble hops. The taste is gritty and grainy caramel malt, a lesser biscuity toffee sweetness, some hard to pinpoint besotted woody esters, medium dark chocolate, generic red berries, day-old coffee grounds, faint barrel staves, and more understated earthy, leafy, and musky floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly restrained in its innocuous frothiness, the body a decent medium-heavy weight, and more smooth than one might have been anticipating here. It finishes off-dry, the malt, cocoa, and sweet booziness presiding.

Overall - well, I do believe that they have knocked this one out of the proverbial park, rendering a tasty and surprisingly easy to drink 26-proof ticking time bomb, which hides its elevated strength quite sneakily. Worth checking out, especially if you prefer them big and brawny.