7.5

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

Bourbon barrel aged strong stout by this young one-man brewery in Desselgem (West-Flanders), from a steinie bottle straight from the brewery - filled up to about one inch below the crown cap, less than I am used to from this type of bottles (hopefully the content makes up for that). Some light overflowing but no real gushing so no worries. Thinnish but regular, greyish pale beige, open, moussey 'ring', gradually dissolving into nothing over a very dark chocolate brown robe - as good as black, but with a burgundy glow visible around the edges. Aroma of pronounced Kentucky bourbon (too pronounced for its own good, perhaps), toffee, wet milk chocolate, Brazil nuts, oak wood (vanillin), coffee grounds, bayleaf, dried prunes but also ripe red plum (fresh), raisins, fig jam, black pepper, wet leather, liquorice (quite pronounced warming up), walnuts, almond cookies, some solvents (varnish) but subtly so, dry earth, bread crumbs. Sweet, dense onset, prune, raisin and dried fig notes, hints of (even green) pear and red apple, with a dim sourishness underneath reinforced by surprisingly active, finely but vividly tingling carb (in spite of the label explicitly stating "low carbonation") - an effect which, together with the alcohol, even thins the mouthfeel a bit. Pleasantly dry-caramelly, walnutty and toasted-bready core with a dark chocolatey edge, a tad less chocolatey than the average consumer expects from an 'impy' these days I guess, but nevertheless pronounced enough to fully convey the strong stout feel; roasted bitterness enters soon, becoming coffee-like in the finishing stage, where drying (even astringent) woody tannins set in, carrying along the bourbon, which heats up the throat in a peppery way, bordering on wry and harsh but managing to keep itself more or less in check. Leafy hops and lingering roasted malts prolong the bittering effects, but the booziness of the bourbon gets the last word. A touch less bourbon, with its bittersweet, thinning, astringent, heating effect, would have worked better for me personally, but I must admit that all things considered, this is not a bad attempt at the classic U.S. formula of "BBA stout", especially considering that this brewery has been operational for only a relatively short time (and has already churned out a whole bunch of potentially interesting brews). My third Straete beer so far and the third time I am not disappointed, in the end.