22 oz bottle; nose of nose of brown sugar, vanilla, caramel, and yeast; clear copper with a very tiny offwhite head; flavor of caramel apples, yeast, sugary sweetness, and light spices;body is medium and finish is sweet. Decent but not great!.

Pour is a dark black with a small tan head. Aroma is wonderful. I get the hoppyness of the IPA plus the dark chocolate of the impy stout. Very well done to combine these 2. Flavor is coffee and chocolate with some roasted nuts. I wish the hops would show more in the flavor like they do in the aroma but oh well. A nice fusion/ hybrid type beer.

Enjoyed at the csbosox tasting 7/3 courtesy of Gregis and Indra (two bottles of this at a 6 person tasting, nice!). Pour is more or less all black with a rapidly disappearing tan head. Aroma is coffee, roast and a hint of dark fruit sweetness. Taste is deep coffee flavor throughout, beginning, middle and finish are all coffee roast. A whisper of sweetness. Really nice, extremely smooth (velvety) but somehow I can’t help but think this was too much coffee.

Bomber from black95tt, drunk on 5/26/07
Quickly rising medium-tan head tops a (nearly?) opaque black body with deep, chartreuse highlights. Head recedes to cover much more quickly than in HF’s other beers, and provides only spotty lacing.
Waxy, almost papery dark malt notes are the first thing I note in the nose, but a lush, though somewhat pepper-tinged, citric hoppiness breaks through, mingling with strong coffee to provide quite a charge of dryness. Black licorice notes rise up only to fall in to a chocolatey death of moist, double chocolate cake splashed with espresso. Somewhat of a short finish to the aroma, however, full of vanilla and light char, and again, that slightly astringent/papery dark malt note. Something slightly unpleasant hangs on the finish as well, perhaps just some higher alcohol or possibly a light phenolic note, but it saps the malt of its richness prematurely. Otherwise, the beer is clean and mostly devoid of alcohol.
Old coffee and bittersweet prunes jolt the palate as the liquid first enters the mouth, but are nipped by a particularly bold Spanish coffee note that seems quite dry and a little grating on the palate. However, in quick succession, a massively cakey fudginess takes over the palate and never lets go. Aided by the low, subversively loose carbonation, it gets intensely sweet and very sticky. You almost have to chew through to the finish, which has a minimal drying sensation from some green, citric hops and charred black malts. As the bottle progresses the heavily sweet chocolate flavors pick up sticky caramel as well and it just becomes too much, especially given the low, loose carbonation. More attenuation and stronger vinousness and/or balancing dryness would really do the trick, as this is a pretty tasty beer. Alcohol is mostly well-concealed. Definitely not a cookie-cutter American Imperial, but not where it could be yet, IMHO.
Yay, I just rated my 100th Imp. Stout....

Rich, dark and filled with flavor. Thick, oily black pour with deep tan head that diminishes faster than you would think. Dark roasted malts dominate the nose eliciting aromas of expresso and chocolate. There’s a sweet side in the nose, as well, with hints of plum. The flavor is softly sweetened, a sweetness that turns bitter by the end of the swallow. The finish stays bitter and last moderately long revealing notes of licorice. Full body. Moderate carbonation. While this beer makes a great first impression, it grew a little tedious by the end of the glass. Still, a nicely crafted Russian imperial stout.