500ml bottle pours out black topped with a tan head. Nose is chocolate bourbon barrel peppers coconut. Taste is more of the nice sweet chocolate rich malts bourbon barrel vanilla coconut and plenty pepper spice.

from Siris at meug festival 2022

The maple syrup barrel aged version of a coconut-flavoured imperial stout by Westbrook, sample from a three year old bottle from Siris, cheers kraddel. Pale beige, very thin and immediately open ring, quickly dissolving altogether on a black beer with burgundy edges. Intense and beguiling nose of indeed clear but natural coconut (as in fresh coconut milk), also Bounty candy, chocolate liqueur, thick sweet maple syrup clear enough too, very prominently vanilla-scenting oak wood, Belgian chocolates, toffee, walnut paste, ‘fondant’ chocolate bars, bourbon, mocha ice cream, cappuccino. Intense onset, sweet but not sticky, dense and concentrated – full of raisin, candied date, fig jam and hazelnut, softly carbonated with full, very oily mouthfeel. Thick layers of thoroughly dark-chocolatey, toffeeish and hazelnutty malts fill the mouth, deeply drenched in sweet and spicy maple syrup and scenting of vanilla from the oak barrels, until of course the coconut sets in – but in a very natural, ‘unforced’ and lovely nutty way, contrary to those artificial coconut aromas you often encounter in this kind of beer. Light tannins, lovely bitter roasty notes (coffee) but in a soft and elegant way, lingering coconut and vanilla, light peppery hops – all heated by a strong glow of bourbon- and brandy-like alcohol: a beautiful finish to a truly beautiful beer. Westbrook sure knows how to flavour their strong stouts in such a way that everything remains natural and credible without going all ‘pastry’ in a caricatural way as is so often the case – so even if this is very contemporary in its flavouring, the execution is rather old school, and truly stunning. I could easily down a whole bomber of this.

Pours black. Scent is full, roasty, to an almost smokey touch. Taste is full, intense, roasty, liquid chocolate. Mild maple, no smoke here, obviously. Coconut is very mild. lovely !