Rock Art Extreme Pumpkin Imperial Spruce Stout

Brewed by Rock Art Brewery
Style: Imperial Stout
Morrisville, Vermont USA

Serve in Snifter

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Bottle at the ChrisO Snow Tasting, London - thanks to Colin! Pours clear, red-brown with a light, off-white cream head. Mellow aroma, some semi-dark malts. Light to medium sweet flavor with toasted dry malts, moderate leafy bitterness, earth. Medium bodied with very high carbonation. Sweetish finish, some semi-dark bread. Not much pumpkin, not much spruce. Fairly bland, actually, and certainly not extreme.

Bottle 22fl.oz. @ ChrisO Snow Tasting.

Clear medium to dark brown amber colour with a large, frothy to creamy, good lacing, mostly to fully lasting, off-white head. Aroma is moderate to heavy malty, old malt, pumpkin, squash, vanilla, earthy, light orange peel and wood. Flavour is moderate to light light heavy sweet and light to moderate bitter with a average duration, dark malt, caramel. Body is medium, texture is oily, carbonation is soft. [20130120]

660ml bottle (Snow@ChrisO)
Sweetish aroma, a bit of a mess, but intriguing - you do want to know what the quirks are. Agressive carbonation. Gently spicy - a sprucy sweet juiciness. OK, but rather boring. Thank god it wasn’t actually extreme, or like all the other inane pumpkin beers that I’ve suffered through historically.

Bottle at ChrisO Snow Tasting, thanks to Colin. It pours deep brown with a small, light tan head. The nose is pumpkin, squash, vanilla, earth, orange peel and wood. The taste is caramel, pumpkin, squash, honey, wood, spice, sweet tangerine and metal, with a dry finish. Medium body and moderate carbonation. Not a great depth of flavour and fairly unbalanced. So-so.

Bottle at Chriso’s snow tasting 20/01/2012. Hazy caramel brown colour and beige head. Aroma is spruce, nutty with a little alcohol. Nicely balanced and interesting spruce / piny character. Chalky carbonation /water profile. touch of roast in there as well.

Bottle at Chriso Snow Tasting, from an IP trade with Kurt, 20/01/13. Hazed dark brown with a thin tan head that soon dissipates. Nose is dark fruits, drak malts, spice. Taste comprises dark malts, background chocolate, touch of wood (spruce I guess), fruit, light soap. Medium bodied with some bitterness in the finish. Ok - drinkable stuff but lacks depth and ultimately fails to deliver for an 8% beer!

0.65l bottle from my secret Santa 2012. This is a deep dark plum-brown one with a nice big but quickly fading brown-ish top. On the nose I get some sweet licorice tones, some Christmas spices, slightly ginger tones, pastilles and some soft leather/vanilla confetti chocolate. Smells quite nice this! It’s average+ on the carbonation and the mouthfeel is soft oily to almost watery. Well, perhaps not watery, but at least a bit lighter than I would imagine. Immediately I notice a really present bitterness. Forest-like bitterness with spruce, branches and some herbal heather. Snickers chocolate with some soapy hints. It has a good amount of flavor this, and it’s quite tasty. Exciting to try, and actually quite a pleasant one. 26.12.2012

Bottle at Chriso Snow Tasting. Rubber on aroma. better in mouth. Ok ish. some choc sponge

Thanks to Bruce for the opportunity to try this one. Pours a solid dark brown/black color with a smallish off white head that quickly dissipates to a cap. Smells of roast caramel and ash with a spicy earthy menthol aroma that I assume is spruce. This beer smells a bit oxidized or maybe that’s a mix of spruce and pumpkin. The flavor is a bit spicy and roasty. Herbal spicy menthol hits up front followed by a roasty caramel and toffee. This finishes with a long lingering bitterness that seems more intense than just hops. Medium body with a moderate level of carbonation and a roasty bitter mouthfeel. This one is certainly out of the box, but it really didn’t work all that well for me. The pumpkin is almost non existent and the spruce adds a harsh bitterness that I really couldn’t get into.

22 ounce bottle. I forget who threw this in as an extra in a trade awhile back. Wasn’t fresh then - pumpkins had yet to be released. Now, pumpkin has faded. Brown sugar. Malty. Not bad. Would have been good for a braise.