Rating #7000!!! Finally, here it is...beer #8 of my 7000th rating celebration - the completion of my long run for the week and a day before closing on my first home purchase! Deep pitch black coloured body with a ridiculously nice and microfoamed rich brown head, about four centimetres tall at first. Aroma of clay, play-doh, peat, smoked malts, pears, plums, grapes, yeast, honey, oak, vanilla, bourbon and a dose of complex pitted fruits and sugars - very nice, incredibly aromatic and very wide-ranging while remaining pleasant throughout in the nose. Medium-bodied; Assertive and quite pungent grain at first with a soured and very tart pitted fruit, prune and grape-like flavour with a dose of tobacco, light peat, a ton of oak and vanilla flavours, some bourbon and a touch of alcohol near the end. Aftertaste shows a very nice, robust and complex flavour with the soured flavours at first, some subtle yeast and sweet notes from honey and showing a rich pitted fruit, deep dark fruity bite with the prunes, raisins, plums, figs, light toffee and niagara grapes on the edge which gives this some sour quality as well. Overall, a great choice for a milestone beer and one that has done great things in the bottle after all these years. I don't want to say that it's hard to make this one much better, and i'd be curious to know what another 5 years might do, but this was great the way it is, still had body and complexity, but this tasted like it had at most 7,0% abv - very smooth throughout. I sampled this corked and caged 75 cL bottle purchased from Bottleworks (Where else?!?) in Seattle, Washington [state] on 11-January-2013 for US$29,99 sampled at home in the real Washington on 27-August-2018, almost five years after purchase, as beer #7000!