One of the many recently released new Black Damnations, this one aged in Glen Grant barrels, a Speyside whisky. Thin, yellowish beige, lightly lacing head, quickly dissipating but remaining stable as a thin rim around the edge, over a black beer with hazy burgundy edging. Aroma of hot chocolate sauce, whisky but no peat (which is not to be expected from Glen Grant anyway, of course), toffee, wet leather, vague vanilla, shoe polish, hazelnut oil, hints of treacle, calvados, apple skin, soy sauce, sherry, glue, dried sage. Candied fig and raisins in the onset with a deeper, elderberry-ish sourishness, touch of soy sauce and black olive umami, soft carbo, thick and viscous, oily mouthfeel; very thick nutty and chocolatey malt body, mocha-like coffeeish notes towards the finish, bittersweet evolving to mouth-filling roasted bitterness, very full, with a lot of indeed recognizably, pear- and apple peel-like Speyside-whisky-like flavor colouring the end and providing considerable booze along with the natural alcohol from the beer; a spicy hop kiss and drying, vaguely vanilla-ish wood tannins contribute to a certain ’end complexity’. The alcohol is strong in the end, but somehow drinkability does not suffer too much from it and the whole is less boozy in taste and ’heat’ than the previous rendition I had (Hollow), making this a lot more palatable to my personal preferences. Beautiful imperial stout really, so far the best of these new generation ’cask strength’ BDs for me, but I tasted only a few of them so far so there is a lot more to discover. If I can still find the others by now of course, but at the prices that are being charged for these bottles, I am not motivated to purchase them all...

Thank you kraddel & tderoeck! Sampled draft @ VCBF 2017. Black, dark mocha only small rim on the sides, looks like the others of the currently released series. Nose is sweet mocha, honey, sugar, cane sugar, mellow plastic, Black Albert sludge. Taste is boozy molasses Black Albert syrup, chocolate, cereal, more round, some honey & dark cereal notes, cacao. Flat syrup chocolate & molasses. Nice, top 2 of the new series together with Ivan the Terrible. Good but feels closer to modern Black Albert than the old series, I assume that age took away the complexities. Pretty similar ones, hard to note the difference for me, maybe we should have tried really hard? Still good stuff take on its own, not for how much a bottle of this costs.

Imported from my RateBeer account as Struise Black Damnation XVIII - Major Tom (by De Struise Brouwers):
Aroma: 9/10, Appearance: 4/5, Taste: 8/10, Palate: 4/5, Overall: 17/20, MyTotalScore: 4.2/5

11/VI/17 - on tap @ Vleteren Craft Beer Festival - BB: n/a (2017-846) 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 sweet, spicy, molasses, maple syrup, alcohol, caramel. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: spicy, pretty roasted, bit sourish, lots of chocolate, bitter, alcohol, roasted. Aftertaste: bit oxidized, spicy, alcohol, pretty dry, dark chocolate, molasses, nice one!