Tap at Northern Monk Refectory, Manchester. Pours black with tan foam. Aroma: deep roast brown sugar, chocolate, coffe, liquorice. Taste: moderate to heavy sweet with some roasty bitterness, rich, chewy, unctious, dark choc, coffee, umami. Medium to full body with soft carbonation. Big.

On tap. Pours black with moderate head. Aromas of creamy coffee, red berries, vanilla, and rich roasty malts. Flavors of sweet creamy coffee, treacle, chocolate syrup, vanilla and oily roasted malts. Excellent.

As Block Tovarisch 2.0, but seemingly still aged on bourbon-soaked wood chips like the first version (launched in 2018) and brewed at Laugar (unlike its pendant Tovarisch Block, which was brewed at La Pirata) so I am assuming it is the same beer. Two of Spain's most prominent contemporary craft breweries uniting their flagship imperial stouts, both classics in their category now at least in Europe; I could not, however, find out how much Tovarisch this is and how much Black Bock, either the recipe for this beer is a hybrid of both or they literally threw both of them together to age them further on these bourbon wood chips (my bet is on the latter option). Dense, thick, creamy, pale mocha-beige, remarkably stable head on a jet black beer, not even letting any light pass at its edges. Dense aroma of hot ristretto and black coffee in general, 'pure' unsugared black chocolate, burnt walnuts, wet leather, dried blueberries, cold Irish coffee, even whisky - or indeed bourbon of the drier kind, oak wood (very clear and with some vanilla but not overly so), salmiak, hard caramel, teriyaki, bitter black honey, cappuccino, bayleaf, wormwood leaf, molasses in a bitter and non-sweet way, charred toast, hints of thyme, Worcestershire sauce, dry bladderwort, sweat, smoked bacon strips. Dense onset, some dried fig and dried blackberry sweetishness, light porcini-like umami, but generally quite restrained, with medium to soft carbonation; immediately after that, thick slabs of intense maltiness fill the mouth, with a certain hard-caramelly and walnutty sweetishness to them, but quite rapidly going into a more bittersweet mode, combining the joys of pure dark chocolate with intense espresso-like coffee roastiness - the balance is tilted from sweet to bitter swiftly and decidedly. Before long, a roasted coffee-like bitterness takes over at full force, propelled by a long-lingering, leafy hop bitterness; some of that subdued nutty and caramelly sweetness does survive, providing structurally important balance, but the general emphasis certainly lies on old-fashioned roasted bitterness here. Woody tannins are present but remain fairly mild, with a lower degree of vanillin-like retronasal aroma than I was expecting - forgetting, of course, that this beer has only seen wood chips and no barrels. Still traces of bourbon bittersweetness and gracious woodiness linger about in a finish otherwise dominated by roasted coffee-like and (subtler) more 'sedate' dark chocolate-like bitterness; the hops exhibit a well-felt leafy, wormwoody bitterness too, perhaps a tad more than they should. Whisky-like alcohol (more than bourbon-like actually) warms the throat, but oddly never interferes with the main flavours too much - and that is why I am scoring this collab so high: I had imperial stouts of even lower ABVs in which the alcohol heat was much more obvious. Being familiar with both Pirata's Black Block and Laugar's Aupa Tovarisch, I was not expecting the combination of both to be better than the sum of two forces - but I stand corrected: this is one of those less common cases where the sum of two parts is three rather than one and a half, as is all too often the case with collab brews. I wonder if this collaboration worked just as well the other way around - I must find a bottle of 'Tovarisch Block' now.

Ce Block Tovarish déménage ! Ce qui n'est pas fait pour me déplaire. Basé sur un duo café serré et alcool à 13 % très tonique mais très bien intégré, ce russian imperial stout a des arguments à revendre. Le visuel est sur un noir total, sans aucune effervescence. Au nez, on découvre de très beaux arômes de café brut avec une pointe de caramel. Simple mais efficace ! En bouche, ça en impose, c'est vif, intense et cela réchauffe bien ! L'attaque est légèrement suave sur le café accompagné de piment. La deuxième bouche est rock'n roll avec un alcool brillant mais excellement bien intégré. L'arrière toujours sur un alcool vif, voit ce dernier prendre des airs d'armagnac. Si le final en n'impose mois, il n'en est pas moins subtil est appréciable. Belle coopération de Laugar et La Pirata.

Black with a brown head - Sweet dark malt aroma - Good dark malt body with some notes of roasted malt and dark fruity tones - The sweet dark fruity tones goes into the finish - This was real good