Draft @ the brewpub. Pours a black color with a small tan head. Has a roasted malty chocolate aroma with hints of coffee. Roasted malty kicorice and chocolate flavor. Has a roasted malty licorice and chocolate finish.

On tap at the brewpub pouring deep darkness with thin ruby like mahogany edges and thin light tan head. The light aroma has sweet rich dark fruitiness and lesser amounts of dark roasted malts. The taste quickly brings up slick dark fruity sweetness with over ripe cherries, prunes, juicy ripe plums and some date fruit sweetness in there too for good measure. A moment here and there thin layers of roastiness, black strap molasses and black licorice timidly surface attempting to create some balance to the sweet dark estery onslaught. It stays very sweet and rich with dark fruitiness deep into the after taste. This is smooth sweet rich stuff.

From tap at the brewpub. Pours pitch black with a minimal tan head. Slight boozy and dark malty aroma. Sweet dark malt flavoured, clear alcohol presence. Dark roasted malt flavoured mixed with a slight sticky sweetness. Too overly sweet and sticky into the finish mixed with alcohol notes. Not my thing.

Pours thick to viscous, sporting a greige head for scant seconds; black beer with brown reflections. Alcohol, vanilla, ink, wood, liquorice and fusels vying for dominance - generally sweet nose. Alcohol and higher alcohols, sweetish. Bit medicinal, medicinal herbs. Pretty roasted, and retronasal smoked vanilla, soft gingerbreadcrust. Very slick, viscous, oily; obvious alcoholwarming, velvety texture. Very good beer - I’d rather classify it as a very roasted barley wine, rather than a stout, for one. Many thanks, Rodger, for this one - but could somebody explain this enigmatic name to me, please???

Growler. Pours black and almost opaque with a vague orange hue. sweetish aroma of hard roasted malts and alcohol with an edge of peaty smoke. Quite full-bodied, hard roasted malts, a little tar and dried fruit. Some malt bitterness and an extreme alcohol burn. 110709

Draft. Black beer with a light brown head. Rich malt and chocolate aroma with light licorice and light leather. Chocolate and rich malt flavor with vanilla. Fuller bodied. Alcohol well hidden. Chocolate and vanilla lingers with rich malt and toffee.