pours extremely black with a very dark brown head that soon disappears, like BA heads often do. but wow.. dark!.
hard roasted malty aroma with finer wood notes and a tiny bit of salty notes, faint bisquits, basically though, a very complex traditional imp stout on barrels that ended up having one of the best BA imp stout aromas i've ever sampled. aroma is not that powerful, but the roasted malts are very very solid, the rest of the complexity leaves the malts to shine still. outstanding aroma.
flavor is roasted malts, licorice, wood, end is super heavy long lasting roasted malty, it is very impressive and amazing that they managed to gain this kind of intensity and power without the beer going burnt caramelly or way boozy or the like. it's more or less pure extremely amped up roasted malty. bit sweet, but inside reasonable limits. quite a bit of licorice initially. some dark chocolate hidden inside. crazy, crazy beer. All the stuff that they did to it turned out really well.
so strong and powerful it's definetly a sipper. You get overwhelmed if drinking it too fast. Tastes like ABV was a lot higher, not boozy but the intensity....