Poured into a teku showing pitch black and no head. The nose shows lots of oak with hints of peaches. The palate is smooth, silky and medium bodied with barely any carbonation. Moderately sweet fruit flavors, intermediate flavors of lightly brewed coffee, rum alcohol burn on the finish.

Bottle at home. Pours black, nose is roasted chocolate, sugary, light peach, taste is rich, sweet chocolate, sugary, fruity peach. Seems a little thin in the body for a 13% beer, doesn’t drink like one.

From a 750ml bottle on 23/4/2015 (a birthday present from my wonderful wife). Pours close to black with a big tan head, with audible fizzing on the pour. The bottle gushed big time on popping the cap, requiring a bit of rushed consumption. Has a strong, quite unusual nose featuring chocolate, soy, booze and peach. The flavour is big rich and bold - mainly milk and dark chocolate, with some caramel, rum, raisins, prunes and peach. Really smooth and complex. It presents as a big beer but hides the 13% well enough to make dangerously easy to down. The texture is creamy bordering on syrupy, with the carbonation lively. This my first Struise and first Black Damnation, but won’t be my last. A terrific impy.

One of the Black Damnations I hadn’t tasted yet, apparently only one batch dating back to 2012, but I fortunately found this vintage bottle online somewhere. Opaquely black colour under a thick, creamy, lively crackling, deep beige head, captured after a dramatic form of gushing - not only did the foam ejaculate from the bottle upon opening, it kept creeping out even after I had poured half of it in a large wine glass so I constantly had to keep an eye on it. Complex, rich and strong bouquet of brown rhum, cappuccino, sweet sherry, liquorice, some shoe polish-like solvents but surprisingly working well in the whole, overripe peaches (which I understand have actually been used here), elderberries, a subtle finesse of coffee liqueur, blackcurrant, brown sugar, sour cream, brown bread, passion fruit, wet leather, candied figs, bayleaf, candied orange peel and of course a truckload of bitter chocolate. Taste is thick and rich as well; candied fruits at first, as well as a hint of canned peaches sweetness, Belgian estery yeastiness but not overpowering, medium carbonation (just the right amount for the style), sour fruit touch (berries) as well as a low ’background’ sourishness; deep oily maltiness follows, thick, oily and vinous body, very chocolatey and nutty, with subtle spicy notes playing above. Finishes in a pleasantly gentle coffee-like roasted bitterness as well as strongly lingering bitter chocolate maltiness, somewhat tangy and orangey spiciness paired with a peppery and spicy hop bitterishness, not too strong but providing perfect balance; oaky woodiness, though less tannin-like than I had expected; and of course a great deal of warming, rhum-like alcohol, though it somehow manages to remain subtle, as is the case in Black Albert or most other Black Damnation offerings. In all: a complex, very well crafted stout, in which the brown rhum barrels and the peaches did add finesse and blend in beautifully without disturbing the balance. I passionately hate gushing, but in a beer of this quality, I can easily forgive that. What gained my sympathy here, is that the sweetness, though quite intense, does not stick to the palate, and the presence of rhum stays in the background - in fact, I had more famous American barrel-aged stouts not achieving these two features to the same degree. Glad I tasted this, this may well be the best one in this series for me, absolutely delicious, and the oxidation of three years only added to its complexity... Now on the search for the other Black Damnation issues I missed!