7.6

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5

Deep black colour, brown foam. Nose of roasted malts, coffee, ashes, some sweet fruity hints. Taste is roasty bitter, some sweetness. Well balanced. Good stout.

7.4

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5

33cl bottle from JefVerstraete, many thanks! Euro swap 2/2020. Poured pretty much black in color. Heavy roasty and chocolate aroma and flavor. Some mild wood and licorice notes, finished dryer with ashy notes.

7.8

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8

2 February 2020. At Brugs Bierfestival. Cheers to Anke & Pieter! Cloudy black, lasting, very thin, dark beige head. Aroma of cold cappuccino, cream, chocolate ganache, fig, raisin, toast, tobacco, whisky. Taste has sweet chocolate, fig & prune on thick bready-toasty maltiness, bittersweet cappuccino in the middle with earthy & slightly umami accents. Dry, earthy hoppy finish, toasty & tobacco-like, soft sweet maltiness overpowered by quite a strong whisky effect. Medium body, creamy texture, lively carbonation. I think your nightmare is a dream come true, Bram, this is an excellent Imperial Stout - perhaps only hampered by the palate. You can count on it I'll look out for the BA versions if I still can.

7

Too carbonated and not that well balanced. --- Beer merged from original tick of Brewer's Nightmare on 07 Mar 2020 at 22:44 - Score: 7. Original review text: Too carbonated and not that well balanced.

7.8

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8

The basic version of Bram Neudts’ newish imperial stout, also (limitedly) available in three barrel aged versions. Re-rating properly from a bottle bought at Geers. Slow gusher, but manageable with enough patience. Initially inches thick, deep ruddy-brownish mocha coloured head (among the darkest ones I ever saw on a beer brewed in Belgium, actually), very mousy, dense and quite regularly shaped, slowly receding but remaining stable over a pitch black beer. Intense nose of hot black coffee, coffee grounds, toasted walnuts, burnt toast, wormwood leaves, whisky, old liquorice, dusty old 'fondant' chocolate bars (but the chocolate component remains much weaker than the coffee component here), dry clay and even a touch of dry peat somewhere even if this is not one of the peated whisky barrel aged versions, bayleaf, fainter hints of nutmeg, dried prunes, cigar ashes, vague background touches of sweet caramel and roasted beef. Spritzy onset, a tad overcarbonated for the style perhaps with minerally 'stings' and distracting a bit from the flavour beneath, revealing itself to be only very restrainedly sweet with a slight dash of umami and underlying sourishness, impressions of prunes, black olives, bladderwort and dried fig, slick oily body again suffering a bit from the overcarbonation, but feeling pleasantly full nonetheless, as befits an imperial stout; some light black-chocolatey effects underneath, but much more predominantly roasted, with a completely mouth-filling, even slightly ashy bitterness. Overall black coffee effect, very strongly so in the finish, where the roasted bitterness is supported by a peppery hop bitter aspect and a perhaps even more peppery, whisky-like alcohol warmth. Light bready-yeasty aspects in the distance but remaining well in place, in spite of producing some retronasal spicy phenols (clove); in all, remaining relatively clean (contrary to many other Belgian attempts at this style) and focused on this old-fashioned, very robust and 'muscular' roasted bitterness. I miss that kind of bitterness in many stouts these days so in a sense, this one is a sort of flashback to the genre's past history, paying tribute to those few original imperial stouts made in Britain before the advent of the craft beer movement. This may be a nightmare for the brewer, but it is by no means a nightmare for the consumer, even if you have to be able to take a lot of roasted, coffee-like bitterness; there seems to be a kind of inherent peaty aspect hidden in this beer somewhere, in a dry, earthy, spicy note, so it was a brilliant idea to have this one aged on not one, but three different peated whisky barrels - see these respective entries for further details. I know Bram Neudt (the brewer) as a modest man, but he has all the reason to be proud of what he does: this Brambrass project is delivering one stunning and decidedly non-Belgian beer after another, and for me it deserves a lot more exposure and appreciation from the beer community. Keep up the good work Bram!

7.4

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7.5

1/II/20 - 33cl bottle @ nieuwjaarsreceptie Gentse Biervereniging, BB: n/a (2020-97) Thanks to everyone for sharing all today’s beers!

Clear dark brown beer, small dense creamy beige head, little stable, bit adhesive. Aroma: malty, grains, some chlorine, nice roast, some cardboard. MF: lively carbon, medium body. Taste: malty, nice roast, alcohol, bitter hops, very roasted, coffee, bit sourish, some charcoal. Aftertaste: bitter, very roasted, hoppy, bitter and dry, some chlorine, dry, cocoa powder, decent but a little too much carbonation.

8.4

Appearance - 9 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8.5 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8.5

18/01/2020 @home - 33cl bottle from Bierhalle Deconinck. Black, big pearly brown head; heavy carbonation on pouring, no problem when drinking. Nose is dark malts, dark chocolate, coconut. Taste is dark malts, dark chocolate, coffee, coconut, bit ashy sometimes. Nice.