With the release of Pink Elephants second vintage of Rushin Imperious Stowt Adam and I decided that we would put the 2 vintages up against each other, I thought I would put out samples from the conditioning tank of the 2 batches of Merchant of the Devil as well.
Comparative tastings always seem to highlight things in the beers you are tasting that you might miss when tasting them in isolation.
On the palate there is sweet malt, a touch of sour acidity, a confected chocolate/caramel note, roast malt and a peppery finish.
On the palate this vintage seems much sweeter than last years did when young, it certainly has more body, a caramel milkshake note blends with chocolate and a perceptible although reduced roast character.
On the palate sweet malt, chocolate and dried fruit give way to a slightly acrid roasty and bitter finish.
You can find my notes for Rushin Imperious Stowt 2006 when it was young here and an account of the brewing of Merchant of the Devil here. Notes on the first Russian Imperial Stout tasting can be found here.
1 comment:
You make an excellent point about comparative tasting. I think it was tasting eight or nine Koelsch's in a row that helped me and Boak to get our heads round them, and on our most recent trip to Germany we started to notice all kinds of subtleties in what, at home, we would have written off as bog-standard lagers. The other week, we tasted St Bernardus Abt 12and Westvleteren 12 together and they were very different beasts. I wonder if we'd have though the same if we'd drunk them on their own, two weeks apart?
Post a Comment