Lagunitas Cruising with Ruben and The Jets

Brewed by Lagunitas Brewing Company
Style: Imperial Stout
Petaluma, California USA

This brew was very smooth, went down real easy. I thought that this beer was a barley wine. High alcohol, low flavor. I never would have guessed a stout. Even a strong ale, but not a stout. I have to judge this by how it compares to its genre...its a bad stout. But standing alone ...its smooth and sweet.

Good sized medium brown head of fine bubbles. Reduces slowly with light carbonation. Strong prune and date aroma with some sweet malts and milk chocolate. While observing the pour you could tell that it was a very cloudy dark chocolate brown in color. Medium bodied. Lots of roasty character, more mild chocolate, sweet malts and a hint of licorice. Light alcohol presence. Silky smooth in the mouth and goes down extreamly easy. Lingering alcohol tingle along with some sweet malts. A different take on an imperial stout and a pretty good one.

22 oz bottle: Aroma has a big malt characteristic, dark chocolate, light plum, light caramel, and maybe some toffee notes intermingled. Appearance is an almost opaque black with a small sized tan head that turns into a soapy tan film. Taste is somewhat fruity with a candy sugar, and slight hop characteristic. malts is front forward, plum, brown sugar, chocolate, caramel, and a cake like texture too. Palate is nicely carbonated, thick on the tongue at first, the diminishing into a bubbly aftertaste with malt as the most prevalent texture. Overall, a light Imperial Stout in texture got some nice flavors. Cheers!

22oz bottle pours a opaque black with a creamy, lacing, slightly off white head. Aroma is sweet, toasted malts, chocolate, earth, honey. Flavor is sweet, dark chocolate, Belgian yeast, toast, caramel. Creamy in the mouth, faint zing of spice on the end with a touch of sourness. It’s not your typical imperial, reminds me more of Allagash Black than Victory Storm King.

Liquid caramel in color witha smallish tan head. Chocolate, toasty malts, caramel, honey, and a little spicy pepper. Full, syrupy body. Very chocolaty flavor. Molasses, tasted malts, pepper, and some dark honey. The pepper shows itself on the sides of your tongue. An interesting stout but not something I could enjoy regularly.

Sampled from a 22 oz brown bottle this beer poured a black color with a large creamy dark tan head. The aroma was ch0colate, licorice, sweetish & toasty malts. The flavor was dry, bitter and toasty with notes of licorice, pepper, cocoa and floral hops. The finish was long with dry malts, licorice and cocoa. Interesting.

Bottle, Mr. Goodbar Beer Club. Nose is caramel/molasses, dark honey, rich malt, unami. Flavor is huge roasted malt, caramel, chocolate, toffee, rich honey - just awesome. Lingering caramel & cocoa finish w. a slight twinge of hop/burnt. How did I wait so long to try this?

22 oz bomber from Market of Choice. Pours out dark brown with a medium sized tan head that stuck around for a while. Aroma of light coffee, licorice, cinnamon and other spices and a bit of pepper. Flavor full of chocolate, light pepper, cinnamon and slight roast. Only an okay beer, but I have to admit that I’m truly sad to see the end of the Zappa series. The labels were so great!