Three Floyds Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout

Brewed by Three Floyds Brewing Company
Style: Imperial Stout
Munster, Indiana USA

Serve in Snifter

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UPDATED: MAY 10, 2005 2005 version: It was with great anticipation that I awaited the release of Dark Lord. Promoted a club trip to Three Floyds with tailgating and all. Make it an event. Well, it was fun. As for the beer . . . . This year’s batch is missing a dimension. Oh, the aroma is mostly there and the flavor is there and the appearance is there but the mouthfeel, the body has lost some of it’s lustre. Filtering? Perhaps. Last year’s had that oily mouthfeel, that richness that clung to the tongue and embraced the tastebuds and made the mouth feel all warm and cuddly. That is missing this year. I gave last year a perfect 5.0 because I thought it was as damned near perfect as a beer could be. This year’s deserves high marks, too, but the change in the mouthfeel precludes any perfect score. Why mess with perfection? Yes, this is still an outstanding beer but just not up to last year’s standards.

2004 version: Oh my god! This is awesome. From the label to the aftertaste it was an amazing experience. The label artwork is a masterpiece. Hey, Nick, make T-shirts, posters, etc. Open it and pour. Jet black with a thick, foamy, dark tan head. Perfection. Take a sniff. It’s a beer you can get excited by just from the aroma. Chocolate, coffee, molasses. The taste? If I wrote a novel, it couldn’t convey that flavor. Wow. Did I say Wow already? Well, I’m speechless. And I was able to share the experience with two good buddies, Gasspasser and Alcoholist. This beer lived up to the hype. It deserves the hype. It’s NOT hype. It’s fact. Just about perfection in a bottle. I gave Brooklyn Black Chocolate a perfect rating. In that case, this rates 5+. And I have three more bottles to enjoy. Hot damn!!

2006 gold waxed top 22 oz bomber. FINALLY GOT SOME OF THIS, after trying for 3 long years to get it !!! Drove up to Munster,Indiana from PA with a friend for Dark Lord Day just to get this. Pours a pitch black oily color with a thick creamy brownish beige head. Aroma is full of rich dark chocolate,dark sweet cherries,molasses,fine malts, and sweetened whipped butter. Flavor is extremely complex and as rich and thick as an imperial stout can get. A perfect blend of dark rich chocolate,expresso, marashino cherries,malts,plums and currants. Leaves an aftertaste of slightly burnt molasses. As good as it gets !!! A SUPERB DRINKING EXPERIENCE !!!

Cafe Mocha anyone(cappuccino + dark chocolate...screw the milk!)? Bottle, shared @ O’Brien’s in SD, courtesy of DSYSOCCER--THANKS!!!! Rich, thick, chocolaty, coffee...smoothe and silky, pitch black, nice sized, dark head...nice lace. I tried this and just went "Wow." Alcohol is hidden incredibly well. Super smoothe. It really tastes like something you could pick up at a coffee shop. Amazing stuff. I lost my notes from that night, but no beer I’ve had really competes with this stuff...in a class of its own for uniqueness--it’s not what you would expect from an imperial stout--and it’s really well done. I didn’t have any "man, they should have..." thoughts.

Pours a thick black without much more than a trace of head. It looks as omninous once poured as it did hiding behind that scary label. The aroma is quite complex, lots of scents detected, most noteably: Leather, licorice, chocolate, raisins, coffee, half-way dried roses, and maybe a hint of alcohol. Very complex flavor, I can't quite sort it all out. It's very heavy on the dried fruits and chocolate. Coffee notes are present throughout but seem to play just underneath the threshold. Slightly smoky finish. More notes can be deciphered but I can't find names for them all, besides whatever I did call them would sound something like "'x' crossed with 'y' with a hint of 'z'." All the flavors combine synergistacally(sp?) combine to form liquid poetry in my mouth. This beer is like a whore that is trying to get with every tastebud in my mouth that it can! The mouthfeel is incredibly thick and creamy without being offensive in any way. Drinkability is out of this world for a beer of this magnitude. I can't think of a beer with this abv that is this well hidden. The beer is infinitely interesting so boredom is no worry. Like I said before this beer is like intercourse for your tastebuds!

In every way, the worlds most perfect beer. I had the joy of tasting this out of a bottle on release day in ’06. Very strong aroma...poured so think I was as giddy as a school girl watching it...increadable. I jut tapped a bottle on Jan 1st I had cellared in a dark closet since release day....couldn’t believe how much this beer mellowed with age....as great as I thought it was on day1, I enjoyed it even more now. If thre was any harshnes to the beer before, all edges were rounded....reminded me of a find brandy or something....I still hve one left...I have to find a way to make it last until the next release, two months away!

Pours like a crazy tsunami! the tight knit bubbles rose up to meet the syrupy, oily brew. Huge coffee, chocolate and alcohol aroma. Deep chocolate and burnt coffee flavor. ABV is very present and warming. Very good.

Bottle at Marinaro500’s gathering. God bless the kind soul who brought two bottles of this joy. It is big and bad!!! Thick, chewey, with so many damn elements going on it is overwhelming. Worth the hype!!!

#1,000!!!!!!!.. HUGE thank you to BBB63 for this one, and I know he’s gonna love my review! Wow, it’s great to get to 1,000, and I picked the perfect beer for this occasion. The beer pours dark black with slight ruby around the edges. The aroma is behemoth, with tons of dark malt, chocoff, black licorice, sherry, slight soy sauce, and fine cognac. The taste.......whoa Nelly let me tell ya ’bout the taste! Super rich on the tongue, with tons of malt, chocoff, dark fruit, black licorice. Very sweet, full-bodied, and complex. When I first tasted this, I said "Holy shit!". This one’s flavor and palate is on par with DFH Worldwide Stout. The palate is the richest, thickest, and firmest of any beer I’ve ever had. I take nothing away from the great stouts, among them Stone RIS, Bell’s Expedition, Central Waters BBS, and Great Divide Yeti among my favorites, but the flavor here is an entire new level....a level I previously thought unapproachable. The alcohol is very well hidden. As for the "sludge", I’ve poured very carefully, am about halfway through my bomber, and I’m telling everyone that I will gladly drink the sludge and ask for more. The Dark Lord will enter your soul, take over your senses, and make you a Satan worshipper! All hail the Dark Lord!!!!!!!

It’s too dark, for one. The head is little and brown which is pretty remarkable considering the massive amount of alcohol in this—but what’s really on display here is the darkness. Think about the time before you were born and that’s Dark Lord. We’re raised to appreciate two kinds of goodness in the worlds of taste and of smell. There’s the natural and the artificial. Cherry Jolly Ranchers taste good, and so do real cherries, even if they don’t taste anything alike. This is a combination of the best natural, earthen, fruity, and grainy smells you’ve ever come across, along with the best unnatural, chemical smells. The thing is that these smells are natural, just so intense as to defy nature. Kids don’t know the smells of unprocessed molasses, burnt grain, or wood smoke. This would seem like a medicine chest mixed with a cookie jar mixed with a walk in a field—one whiff could scar a kid for life. Too much complexity. On the very tip of the tongue it tastes like a dark wine, then it gets bittersweet, like fire roasted grain, browning apples, and molasses, then it gets regular sweet, like half-dark chocolate and a café mocha, and then it gets a little zippy, like Belgian alcohol and yeast. That’s—that’s like you’re falling down a hill of flavor and then you climb it back up again, from the valley of the alcohol, into the sweet, and then into the bittersweet, and then into the wine. Giving this to a child would be like giving them a bar of acid and taking them to Disneyland. Nothing would ever make them feel happy again, ever.

Yep, yet another perfect rating for DL. I’ve tended to be skeptical of the hype that quite a few beers out there have but this one came through completely (unlike Westy 12).

Bomber. Poured into a snifter an absolutely opaque black with a massive dark chesnut head. Just looking at the pour you knew the body was going to be incredible. Aroma hit you with the molasses but not unfavorably so. The nose progressed into coffee, chocolate and roasted malt with sweet caramel and toffee lingering around. I got a bit of oakiness out of it though it may be from the vanilla that is used in this beer. Flavor destroys your palate. It had everything going on that was in the aroma, and yet a decent ester profile (cherries and dark dried fruits) managed its way through the massive roasted malt and chocolate and coffee flavor. Hops were minimal in the flavor, but there was definitely adequate hop bitterness to balance this beast. At 13%, I was surprised that the sweetness was fairly moderate, but given all that was going on in this beer, I guess everything was in correct balance. I got no alcohol in this at all though my sample size was small, I’m sure I would have felt it more had I consumed the whole bomber, but in the flavor, none was found. Mouthfeel was perfectly smooth with a complementing amount of carbonation. Full bodied and syrupy, but far from ’sludgy’ as the previous years DL was described. Wow....