8.5

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 10 | Overall - 8

Bottle courtesy of tkrjukoff. Pours velvety black with a rather small creamy dark mocha head that doesn’t leave much trace on the glass while dissipating. Smell is sweet and malty with roasted malts, high quality dark chocolate, rum soaked raisins, dark roast coffee, moist soil, alcohol, vanilla beans, sweet dark bread, burnt caramel, sweet liquorice candy and oatmeal cookies. Taste is sweet and bitter with roasted malts, high quality chocolate, dark roast coffee, vanilla beans, rum soaked raisins, dates, brown sugar, alcohol, charred peppery wood, alcohol, sweet dark bread, black pepper corns, roasted nuts and very subtle hints of solvent. Mouthfeel is thick, round, smooth, velvety, very tiny roasted astringent and full bodied. finish is bitter with roasted malts, vanilla beans, rum soaked raisins, high quality dark chocolate, moist soil, charred wood, vanilla fudge and hints of liquorice. Very very nice... I get a bit distracted by the vanilla and keep my fingers crossed I’ll come across an uninfected bottle of the original some day. --- Beer merged from original tick of Nooner Batch 2 on 19 Nov 2013 at 14:00 - Score: 7. Original review text: From this Saturday - Crazy good but I suspect the uninfected original is better.