9-4-8-4-16 Bottle, #220104, three years before bbd. Pours black, with a small creamy mocha head. Aroma is dark roasted malts with coffee, liquorice and muscovado, as well as sweet bourbon notes. Full, creamy body, with soft carbonation. Flavour is dark roasted malts with tobacco, coffee, liquorice and muscovado, as well as tannins and bourbon barrels.

As Block Tovarisch 2.0, but seemingly still aged on bourbon-soaked wood chips like the first version (launched in 2018) and brewed at Laugar (unlike its pendant Tovarisch Block, which was brewed at La Pirata) so I am assuming it is the same beer. Two of Spain's most prominent contemporary craft breweries uniting their flagship imperial stouts, both classics in their category now at least in Europe; I could not, however, find out how much Tovarisch this is and how much Black Bock, either the recipe for this beer is a hybrid of both or they literally threw both of them together to age them further on these bourbon wood chips (my bet is on the latter option). Dense, thick, creamy, pale mocha-beige, remarkably stable head on a jet black beer, not even letting any light pass at its edges. Dense aroma of hot ristretto and black coffee in general, 'pure' unsugared black chocolate, burnt walnuts, wet leather, dried blueberries, cold Irish coffee, even whisky - or indeed bourbon of the drier kind, oak wood (very clear and with some vanilla but not overly so), salmiak, hard caramel, teriyaki, bitter black honey, cappuccino, bayleaf, wormwood leaf, molasses in a bitter and non-sweet way, charred toast, hints of thyme, Worcestershire sauce, dry bladderwort, sweat, smoked bacon strips. Dense onset, some dried fig and dried blackberry sweetishness, light porcini-like umami, but generally quite restrained, with medium to soft carbonation; immediately after that, thick slabs of intense maltiness fill the mouth, with a certain hard-caramelly and walnutty sweetishness to them, but quite rapidly going into a more bittersweet mode, combining the joys of pure dark chocolate with intense espresso-like coffee roastiness - the balance is tilted from sweet to bitter swiftly and decidedly. Before long, a roasted coffee-like bitterness takes over at full force, propelled by a long-lingering, leafy hop bitterness; some of that subdued nutty and caramelly sweetness does survive, providing structurally important balance, but the general emphasis certainly lies on old-fashioned roasted bitterness here. Woody tannins are present but remain fairly mild, with a lower degree of vanillin-like retronasal aroma than I was expecting - forgetting, of course, that this beer has only seen wood chips and no barrels. Still traces of bourbon bittersweetness and gracious woodiness linger about in a finish otherwise dominated by roasted coffee-like and (subtler) more 'sedate' dark chocolate-like bitterness; the hops exhibit a well-felt leafy, wormwoody bitterness too, perhaps a tad more than they should. Whisky-like alcohol (more than bourbon-like actually) warms the throat, but oddly never interferes with the main flavours too much - and that is why I am scoring this collab so high: I had imperial stouts of even lower ABVs in which the alcohol heat was much more obvious. Being familiar with both Pirata's Black Block and Laugar's Aupa Tovarisch, I was not expecting the combination of both to be better than the sum of two forces - but I stand corrected: this is one of those less common cases where the sum of two parts is three rather than one and a half, as is all too often the case with collab brews. I wonder if this collaboration worked just as well the other way around - I must find a bottle of 'Tovarisch Block' now.

Tap at Brew Wild, Madrid, 30th November 23. Pours a thick black stout. Aroma is chocolate, liquorice, rich, vinous notes. Taste is rich, chocolate, barrel, liquorice, wine and tanic notes, sticky, well balanced some roasted malts and bitterness to temper the sweetness. Nice

Tap a Wild Brew Pizza Bar, Madrid, 29th November 23. Pours a deep black beer. Aroma is barrel, wet wood, liquor, brandy. Taste is barrel, wood and chocolate, liquor and liquorice, wet wood, layered, roasted and burnt malts. Lovely and warming

Tap at Brew Wild Pizza Bar, 29th November 23. Pours a thick black beast. Aroma is vineous, chocolate, coffee, taste is so smooth, chocolate and light bourbon, coffee and chocolate, is silky smooth. Excellent

(Keg at Pikkulintu Myyrmäki, 20231125) The beer poured black. Its head was medium sized and lightly brown. Aroma had burnt malts, smoke, cocoa powder and ash. Palate was full bodied and warming with medium carbonation. Flavours were burnt malts, smoke, dark chocolate, wood, vinous notes, ash and bitterness. Aftertaste had burnt malts, smoke, wood, ash and bitterness. Delicious and balanced.

Tap at Pikkulintu Myyrmäki, Vantaa. Color is very dark brown with small slightly brownish head. Aromas and flavors: Cacao, chocolate, cognac, roasted malts... Heavy barrel elements... Simple but enjoyable.