Tuesday, May 10, 2011

St Petersberg. Leningrad. A stout by any other name....

Stout, but with more. Even the bottle means business. It is pointy and purposeful, swathed in foil and adorned with strange, dark Gothic symbols. In short, it's an attractive bottle fully worthy to house the imperial stout within. The beer itself doesn't disappoint, pouring as black and ominous as the creepy symbol on the bottle neck. Yet again I served this stout too cold but a little time spent enjoying the coffee and dark chocolate aroma while also admiring the tightly packed foam topped inky blackness in the glass passed the ten minutes or so required to get the most from the sumptuous mix of roasted malt this beer was engineered with. At 7.7% abv this is a proper stab at an imperial stout, if perhaps a little on the low side, but the alcohol doesn't really feature in the show at all. Sure, you're aware that this beer is not to be trifled with, but the effortless blend of bitterness and coffee wrapped in full body is the memory taken away.

2 comments:

Ed said...

Or even Petrograd.

Thomas said...

It must be due a renaming at this stage. I'd still drink the stout.