7.8

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

Bottle. Black with a fat coat of tan head that's soon at the rim. Muscular roasty aroma with obvious oaked red wine, plums, chocolate. Creamy texture. The red wine notes don't overwhelm the stout, but there's lots of sweet red fruit and a fair bit of oak - those barrels were not very empty, I'd guess. The roast and a bit of strong bread and chocolate fill things out and then there's some bitterness as well as oak at the end. It gets pretty drying after a while and maybe a whole bottle will be too much. But this is lovely. [For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure I had old Brass Monkey in the late 80s at the Redback Hotel in Flemington - IIRC it was creamy, quite sweet and about 5.5% ABV. ]