Imperial stout aged in apple brandy barrels, by this interesting Swedish brewery and meadery, run by a Finn. Sample at Billie’s Craft Beer Fest 2019. Papery-lacing, creamy, remarkably dense and thick, pale mocha-beige head on a pitch black beer. Aroma of strong calvados indeed, fondant chocolate, coffee grounds, pipe tobacco ashes, freshly cut apples, lots of wet oak wood, dried blackberries, pronounced shoe polish-like solvents, old dry cloves. Restrained sweetness in the onset, light beef stock-like layer of umami, sourish undertone, medium carbonation; full bitter-chocolatey, toasted brown bread- and toasted walnut-like maltiness, with a pronounced roasty-bitter finish alongside strong leafy hop bitterness, obnoxious solvent effects and drying woody tannins, before a very strong, hot, obviously calvados-flavoured, astringent alcohol effect comes to dominate everything – and obliterate everything in its path. Old school roasty stout that I would love to taste in its basic form – I think I would like it a lot more than this harshly boozy and strongly solventy apple brandy variant.

Non boil lacto soured stout with blueberries;aged on oak for 2 years with Brett;aroma of sour dough, yogurt, spicy wood, low blueberries