Deschutes Obsidian Stout

Bottle at Stockholm Beerfestival. Black coloured with a beige head. Roasted aroma of coffee. Roasted flavour of coffee and chocolate.

Bottle from mystery beer swap V2.0. Opaque body with red edges and a half inch reddish brown foamy head. Nose-chocolate malt and toffee. Taste-toffee, malted chocolate, bittersweet, a bitterness I can only describe as burnt orange zest, unroasted coffee beans, slightly lactic. Pretty damn good. BTW, Obsidian is not necessarily volcanic. I’m just saying.

Tasted 10/9/06 from BrewNZ . Nice interplay of powdery cocoa and stone fruit aromas. Big chocolate notes continue on the palate with hints of roast and toast. Very nice warming stout. I wish it was imported here so I could get some more.

Bottle, best by June 28th, 2006. This is a couple of months too old, but it is still damn tasty. Molasses, coffee, milky chocolate, slight anise, roasty malts all grace the nose of this stout. Amazingly aromatic and pleasant. Gorgeous silkly dark brown body that is opaque, with an even more attractive, nutty brown head that is large and long lasting. A beautiful beer. In a word, this beer is very rich. Tons of roasty nuttiness with a fair amount of coffee flavors present as well. Finishes with nice grapefruity bitter hops. This is extremely well-crafted and a delight. This will be my go-to beer in California so long as it is available.

ever start to rate a hard to find beer only to be interrupted by a phone call or dinner? it just happened to me, and now i’ve got a mere five ounces of obsidian-- well warmed-- to interview for an informed rate. (the rest i guzzled with my dinner. i can report it complimented my haricots provensal quite nicely). the beer of course is fairly dark, like something scraped off the bottom of coal-burning locomotive boiler. a sandpaper head rose in foamy castles with some rigidity-- like atlantis confident in it’s eternal and grand loft above the deep-- yet likewise it too sank. obsidian reeks of cola, raisins and plum jam, with coffee and raspberry sherbert and just a note of a smoldering cigarette on a hemp mat. a sweet, full-bodied stout with corpulent crowds of dark malts and fruity sour orange bitters rushing forward all at once to pack onto the modest elevator of my palate. some jostling occurs, but everyone gets to their corner and it seems balanced enough to lift me and my mood to higher levels.

Tasted 18/09/2006. 12oz bottle from BrewNZ. Inky black with a dark tan head that dies but laces strongly. Ash-like on the nose, with subtle plummy notes and a little sweet malt. Clean, dry and roasty in the mouth. Big burnt toast middle and a pleasant lingering astringency. Slightly warming. Medium body with light carbonation. Simple and delicious.

Big thanks to Kenb for hooking me up here on one damn fine stout. I actually had never really known or heard much about this beer, which is good, because I just went ahead and rated it without any preconceptions- and I was pleasantly surprised. Pours a very deep dark black with a nice fluffy lasting beige head- that never dies. Aroma is a sharp dry acrid roast character that defines a well made stout- light hints of chocolate and coffee in the background. Light sweetness and toffee in the flavor, with more nutty chocalate and dark malts with a great dry roast finish. Smooth body and aftertaste. Damn- I wish I had more of this.

Black body with a decent tan head. Dry, roasty aroma with hints of chocolate and wood. Flavor starts out roasty but is replaced with a rather acidic bitterness.