Lion Stout

Brewed by Lion Brewery (Sri Lanka)
Style: Foreign Stout
Biyagama, Sri Lanka

Serve in Snifter, Tulip

UPDATED: FEB 16, 2005 Dark with a big and rocky head. Rich, sweet and chewy. Decently balanced. Evident alcohol. Subtle chocolate and coffee flavors were nice. Roasty and a little spicy. Somewhat cloying at times. Pretty good stuff, but like a few others, I found it just a little under par to the hype. A decent stout, sure, but not as great as some make it out to be.

Can @ home. Black appearance with a big, fluffy, dark brown head. Somewhat boozy, roasty, dark malty, very aromatic and powerful nose. Boozy, very roasty, dark burnt malty, powerful flavor with a very roasty and fairly boozy finish. I don’t enjoy it very much but I can see how it can be appreciated.

Pours into my 25cl tulip glass with a dense, creamy, initially four-finger thick, deeply brown stained, full tan colored head. The beer is a full black color that shows just a flash of ruby to it when held up directly to the light. Weird, the aroma is quite weird; buttery, but with an almost chemical undercurrent. What is weird is that this might not be diacetyl, this is the most likely culprit, but for some reason it just seems a bit different than your typical diacetyl signature. Buttered popcorn aromas clearly dominate, but there is just a hint of roast character noticeable towards the finish.

Quite sweet with a fairly agreeable flavor until the finish which has a phenolic, chemical edge to it. The body has a nice fullness to it as well as a nice soft, chocolate tasting, roast grain flavor to it. That strange buttery note is not nearly as noticeable in the flavor, but the chemical note still manages to mute my enjoyment of this beer pretty significantly.

This is newly arrived in Arizona, so I don’t understand why this is so bad; and to be honest the flavors of this beer seem pretty fresh, it is just that there are also some significantly off components to this beer as well.

A superior stout. Slightly olivine aroma, with good stout character. Flavor was nicely roasty, bitter, balanced and the palate was stellar. Fine, fine stout.

Pours deep black with a tiny head. Worried this may have been slightly infected. Aroma is coffee, a little dark fruit. Flavor is a touch roasty but not very much so, nothing special really.

What a joy to select a beer because of it representing a different country to sample, and it being something other than a skunky international-style lager. This beer deserves a ’10’ for appearance--poured ungently, a unique and gorgeous type of cascading followed, leaving a caramel colored lace head, mostly diminishing after five minutes. Dark as a winter’s moonless night. I could sense some alcohol in an otherwise understated and malty aroma, but that was mostly absent from a relatively (but not supremely) complex mix of smoke, coffee, and bitter chocolate (the smoke was the strongest). Michael Jackson’s endorsement (on the bottle label) of this as a liquor-like beer is perhaps charitable, in that it might also be interpreted as having fleeting moments of medicinal-like flavors--a slight flaw on an otherwise enjoyable beer, one worth seeking out.

UPDATED: MAR 17, 2008 Bottle. Dusty hops on a supremely roast aroma, dark notes of burnt chocolate. Light nuttiness in an occasionally muddled malt profile. Pitch pour with a large, rocky, gorgeous light-medium brown head. Strong roast taste (burnt, not-quite ashy malt rather than coffee) with nutty and sweetish chocolate. Overtones of prunes and lesser molasses. Not too sweet, as others have noted; I actually find this to be rather well-balanced. Very crisp carbonation on a full body, but seems creamier with passing sips. As for the alcohol, the body is there but the burn is not. A semi-dry, soulfully dark stout with a focus on Quad-like prunic notes instead of impy stout coffee tones - and all the classier for it.

Gassy sweet malt aroma, chocolately with some Twizzlers and rotten strawberry. Malted milk and dusty leather. Dark black clear with medium thick tan creamy lacing head. Heavy watery body with medium carbonation. Alcohol warming and a bit of carbonic burn. Starts with heavy, thick chocolately malt. Sweet and cloying, with dusty undertones and carbonic acidity. Alcohol vapors and roasted, burnt coffee bitters. Good tangy bitterness comes in to finish, with nutty bitter hops killing off some of the sweets. After stays long on the tongue, with smooth sweet bitterness and a hint of oily resinous hops. Still a little rough overall, but darn good.