3.2 AROMA 7/10 APPEARANCE 4/5 TASTE 6/10 PALATE 3/5 OVERALL 12/20
Sampled at 1702 Tucson; December 2012
The beer arrives from the tap with a brown tinged, dark color. The beer is a rich, concentrated brown / black color. Nice roasted aromatics lead with roasted grain notes and cold pressed coffee aromatics. Hints of dark chocolate are noticeable, but really a full, whole-grain toasted brown bread character is quite prominent here. The smooth, complex, roasted, coffee like note gets more noticeable as the beer warms up.
Quite a bit drier than I was expecting, especially up front, it picks up a soft, full maltiness in the middle that helps to coat the palate, but doesn’t provide too much in the way of sweetness. Despite this, there is a touch of dark cocoa character, and some interesting sort of anise, sort of cola, or even sort of cleaner like character here; this last lingers on in the finish, though never really becomes prominent. The cleaner like note has quite a bit of fruitiness wrapped up in it; I am not quite sure what type of fruit character this is, sort of seems like a cross between berries, citrus and some funky melon like note. In addition to the weirdness, the finish has a nice bitterness to it that seems a combination of burnt malt and hop contributors. This is fairly light bodied for an Oatmeal Stout, it definitely has some palate heft, but remains quite quaffable.
Pretty good, and I really wonder what that interesting flavor has been derived from; is it purely derived from the yeast strain, or is there the start of something funky going on here, regardless, this hasn’t gotten so pronounced that this beer isn’t reasonable enjoyable.
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