Iron Hill Bourbon Russian Stout

Brewed by Iron Hill North Wales
Style: Imperial Stout
North Wales, Pennsylvania USA

Serve in Snifter

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Bottle at Paul’s tasting. Sweet bourbon and roasted malts, sweet dark chocolate, and lighter coffee. Super rich and delicious. Really damn good, and one of the highlights of the tasting for me.

750 bottle @Paul’s Blind Stout tasting-tan bubbles-black. A-bourbon/rye, licorice/anisr-sweet dk malt, peat/chickery. T-alcohol, bourbon/rye, licorice/anisr-sweet dk malt, peat/chickery bite.

UPDATED: JAN 8, 2013 Bottle at Paul’s "blind" tasting of massive quantities of imperial stout. Pours black. Nose and taste of roasted chocolate malt, milk chocolate, vanilla, oak and coffee roast. Medium body. Slight alcohol in finish.

Location: Bottle at Paul’s Blind Impy Stout Tasting, 1/5/13

Aroma: This one has a really interesting nose of bourbon, vanilla, and chocolate
Appearance: The pours is a dark brown-black color with a fairly small head
Flavor: This one is rather sweet, and tasty, thought the flavor doesn’t quite live up to the nose
Palate: The body is on the full side, it feels a touch sticky, with a warming finish
Overall Impression: Had this one blind. Overall, this was a fairly impressive one. The notes I enjoyed in the nose were not quite as good in the flavor, but it was still really enjoyable.

Bottle at Paul’s for the Blind Stout tasting. Pours a deep black with a thin beige head. Big bourbon still, loads of it, sweet and malty, oxidization and plums. Big cocoa and plums, chocolate, lots of sweet vanilla and cocoa. Roast, chocolate, long bourbon, cocoa, chocolate. Lingering roast with a touch of vanilla. Tasty.

Pours dark brown. Aroma consists of chocolate an vanilla with some obvious notes of bourbon

Sweet aroma, vanilla molasses, bourbon; Flava is incredible blend of licorice, molasses, alcohol; finishes long and sweet with def licorice; feel creamy smoothw/ some zing on the tongue .

Aroma of praline pecans, caramel, coffee and chocolate. Pours black and thick with a relentless head. Taste is super sweet with a nice alcohol burn. Tastes of chocolate, cherry cordial, vanilla, and slight coffee. Great bourbon aged stout.

750 bottle gifted from lily and clint...mystery bottle...old! Cork was blank rather than iron hill labeled. Im positive this is the one! Pours pitch black with a thin mocha head that dissipates quickly...low carbonation (very old bottle). Aroma has dark fruit...very slightly vegetal...and boozy bourbon notes. Flavor has bourbony vanilla notes on top of dark fruit and coffee notes...definite bourbon and vanilla! Mouthfeel is full...not too lively but not lifless either...and the finish is roasty vanilla bourbon.

28-Feb-11 (12-oz sample bottle not commercially available: Free bottle for stewarding the 2008 World Beer Cup in San Diego, CA)
This lightly carbonated beer pours a black body with some translucence at the edge, but only a thin dusting of beige-colored head. The nose is intense with vanilla, powdered cocoa mix, sweet chocolate, but if the beer is left undisturbed for awhile, strong aromas of nutmeg and dill emerge and are pretty easy to identify. This is a very sweet beer that’s reminiscent of eating liquor-filled, dark chocolate candy. For a bourbon-barrel aged beer, this is not boozy in the least; while the actual bourbon flavor is light, the barrel-induced flavors of intense vanilla, sweet oak, and toasted coconut are much more prominent and are pretty nicely balanced with the sweet, dark, roasty malts. Roasty bitterness, however, is quite gentle, while other flavors of chocolate-covered cherry, coffee with cream, licorice, and ashtray add complexity. So delicious and well integrated, there are no rough edges anywhere. Full bodied, bordering on syrupy, and sticky sweet on the palate, but there is a modest cherry-like tartness and a gentle, dark-roasted bitterness that prevents the beer from being cloying. Carbonation is light, but there is just enough for this style of beer that you don’t for even a minute think of the beer as flat. Overall, this is a pretty amazing beer that could only be made better by a modest reduction on the vanilla-like aspects.