I’ve only had a couple of these stouts and this was not my favorite and I think the reason is clear. It’s 45% Bourbon barrel aged stout and 45% non bourbon barrel. Totality Stout (Eclipse’s base) is not the greatest so it took the quality down a bit in my opinion. The 10% coffee addition was plenty and if you don’t like coffee, avoid this one. It’s like drinking coffee with stout added and not the other way around.
4.2
AROMA 9/10 APPEARANCE 5/5 TASTE 8/10 PALATE 3/5 OVERALL17/20
adamjackson (1787) – Lyme, New Hampshire, USA – JAN 1, 2014 [delete] [move]
Pours pitch black. nice lacing 1 finger creamy espresso coloured head. The nose has a lot more oak character than I expected. coconut and creamy buttermilk. Obviously coffee is here but it’s a day old coffee nose and not fresh. This is the most coffee forward stout I’ve ever had. You get a huge punch of acidic notes, pine oil and half & half creaminess. No sweetness and that’s a good thing. There’s this rawness that reminds me of chewing on a chocolate covered espresso bean. sort of the flavor you get after the good stuff is gone and you’re left with just raw acidic oily bean residue. it’s not a bad thing, but you have to really love coffee to want to put yourself through that. The light hearted will probably want to take water breaks in between sips. Coffee up, dudes.
