7

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

Can. I mean, what the fuck is this going to taste like? I hate bananas and I almost never like peanut butter in beer. It's dark, but the head died almost instantly. I imagine there's too much oil in this, right? The aroma is about as much of a trainwreck as you'd expect - peanut butter and banana in there for sure, with chocolate, coffee. On the palate, it's salty. I notice that right away. Bacon or just a salted peanut butter, who knows. I can taste bacon and coffee/toast for sure. There's some banana sweetness to it, but this mixes with the other elements so it comes off as a caramelized banana. The peanut butter, thank Christ, is subdued under all this cacophony of elements.

In a sandwich, the three main flavour elements are all quite strong, and create a cacophonic dynamic that (in theory at least) makes sense. In an imperial stout, with the added chocolate and coffeeish roast elements, there's even more crazy swirling around. However, the brewers have clearly sought to strike a balance between all of the different elements, and they succeeded. Without that success, this would be a clusterfuck as viewed through a funhouse mirror.

But they brought it home, and as a result you have a coherent beer where the excesses of the concept are reined in, which honestly is like reining in a hungover hippopotamus with blue balls. So I like it better than I thought I would, because a couple of those elements aren't things I want in a beer, but altogether it's made quite well.