Bottle @ Danish Ratebeer Summer Gathering. Nice head with good duration. Color is black. Aroma and taste are roast malt, chocolate, coffee, caramel and hops. Full bodied.

Botella. of @Manu, Thanks you so much!! Cata. 22/07/2017 Bottle 739/2000..
Color negro opaco espuma beige escasa, aromas tostados, sabor es tostado con notas licorosas cuerpo medio.

Bottle at the hanging bat. Pours black, nose is sugary, chocolate, roasted, taste is sweet, dark chocolate, bitter, thin, hint of honey.

Bottle at salty.. Thanks Adam... Dark murky brown... Thin tan lacing.. Soft meaty chocolate roast malts.. Heavy meaty chocolate roast malts soft chocolate.. Massive whisky... Not boozy but very whisky

Thank you kraddel & tderoeck! Sampled draft @ VCBF 2017. Lagavulin might be less peated than Octomore but Octopussy is was far more mellow than Hollow. Looks the same as others black with only deep mocha rim on the sides. Otherwise it is just pure peat overkill, massively peated with charred oak in the back, roast. Taste is just your flat pancake syrup Black Albert, some roast & the peat totally dominating everything & it isn’t fun anymore for me. Flat boozy molasses Black Albert syrup. Only Black Frog I disliked even more when it comes to Black Albert variants, I might have liked BAOS even a small touch more than this one.

Imported from my RateBeer account as Struise Black Damnation XXIII - Hollow (by De Struise Brouwers):
Aroma: 8/10, Appearance: 4/5, Taste: 7/10, Palate: 3/5, Overall: 16/20, MyTotalScore: 3.8/5

11/VI/17 - on tap @ Vleteren Craft Beer Festival - BB: n/a (2017-852) Thanks to 77ships and kraddel for sharing today's beers!

Clear dark brown beer, small creamy beige to brown head, pretty stable, non adhesive. Aroma: very peated, sweet, malty, caramel, dried fruits, very roasted, coffee, more peat. MF: ok carbon, full body. Taste: lots of alcohol, very peated, roasted, coffee, very bitter, cocoa powder. Aftertaste: roasted, mostly peat, dry hoppy touch, some coffee.

The first one in what is apparently intended as a second string of ’Cask Strength’ bottles in the wider Black Damnation range (a few others have followed shortly after this one), so an ongoing series of what is basically Black Albert matured on a variety of barrels that previously held other alcoholic beverages, in this case Lagavulin whisky. From a 75 cl bottle with crown cap, apparently number 1176 out of only 2000 made (so far). Creamy, regularly shaped, lightly lacing, pale brownish beige head, quite dense and remaining closed for a long time (but vanishing into thin air in the very end), resting on top of a pitch black beer - though a glimpse of hazy chestnut brown is visible under close scrutiny, bright light and less than one millimeter off the edge. Strong bouquet of indeed Lagavulin, whisky as such, but the strong moist peat remaining as well (fortunately without that headache-inducing iodine thing - so a bit faded already), piercing through and competing with a thick body of bitter black chocolate (even melting ’fondant’ when warming up), leather, burnt toast, old walnuts, dry earth and even dry manure somewhere, dead tree leaves, cold espresso, salmiak, a hint of soy sauce, dried prunes, hard butterscotch candy, damp wood, fainter notes of old wrinkled pears, clove-like phenols, shoe polish, baked banana hidden faraway in the background, tar, rye bread, black radish, nutmeg, burnt barbecue meat and cigar ashes. Dried prunes and old raisins in the mouth with a dash of dried banana slices, distantly sweetish with a sourish undercurrent of roasted grains and almost immediately confronted with a cured meat- and even vaguely soy sauce-like umami taste; softly carbonated (as is explicitly indicated on the label - and the labels of all these ’Cask Strength’ Black Damnations for that matter) but still some fine tingling, not interfering with the flavour whatsoever; mouthfeel is expectedly very thick, ’fat’ and oily. The mouth cavity is swiftly coated in a rich black maltiness and graininess, some underlying caramelly notes but superseded by a strong burnt toast- and heavily roasted nuts-like character, stretching into a long roasted bitterness, a bit ashy and coffeeish towards the end with some of the subtle dried fruit aspects on top. This roasted malt and barley bitterness also fills the finish, but its dryness is then further enhanced by woody tannins, a peppery and leafy hop bitter touch buried underneath all that roastedness, and, unsurprisingly considering its tangy effect in the aroma, a lot of whisky-like alcohol, very ’bare’ and (too) easily recognizable Lagavulin at first, but mostly peppery, wry alcoholic heat in the end - blotting out the other flavours. Very boozy, too boozy in fact for my taste even for a 13% stout; the whisky flavour is one thing, you can love or hate Lagavulin and believe me: it is there and strongly so, but too much alcoholic burn and astringency in the end is not a good quality for any beer in my book, even for those in excess of 10% ABV. The earthiness and almost dried manure-like hint returns retronasally too, but it gets quickly overwhelmed by the peat, which sticks in the nose for quite a while - fortunately I got used to this effect after so many peated whisky barrel aged stouts. The earthiness seems out of place here and if the alcohol would have been a tad less astringent, this would have been a top notch stout of international class to me. Admittedly though, those are minor criticisms, and generally speaking, this is a stout with an attitude - like the other ones, a beer of great boldness and intensity, so a great beer nonetheless, especially considering its Belgian context - which so far has produced only a handful of truly worthwile imperial stouts (if all these Black Damnation renditions are considered as a whole, that is). The yeasty earthiness and phenolic aspects betray this as being Belgian, but since Black Albert, the father of this whole series since 2007, explicitly presents itself as a ’Belgian imperial stout’, I will assume that this was intentional... In short: surely a great beer, above average for a Belgian imperial stout even if this concept is to be seen as a style, but too harsh in alcohol for my personal taste, which is keeping me from granting it a 4/5 score. And - it should be said - way too expensive for what it is, even here on the home market.