Surly- Darkness 2018

Since we are coming up to Xmas and not sure whether our Wednesday beer tasting group is going to be able to meet next week, I broke out my bomber of Darkness that I’ve been holding on to since January.

I always hear people talking about this beer like it’s some magical potion or something, so am curious as to what it’s really like.

Our tasting and review today will be a mix of opinions from our little 4 person panel. So let’s get to it.

After we pryed off the fancy wax/plastic dip we poured in to our 4 glasses. And just from the pouring the aromas were striking.

Plums, raisins, chocolate, sweet grain, with a bit of a noble hop intermingled with a very full black malt base. All very pronounced, but stopping short of too much of anything. Definitely an impressive aroma profile here.

As we move to getting our tastings the first thing we all mention is the sweetness level. It about as close to my tolerance level of powdered sugar-like sweet as you can get with out being distracting.

The other main flavor no doubt is prunes. Max was pretty convinced that this was a beer mixed generously with prune juice. While I don’t think that’s the case,, I could definitely see how that could actually be.

At this point in tasting, I’m beginning to starting to wonder where the imperial stout part is.

The roast level in this “imperial” stout is very low (surprising considering the aromas it was throwing). but I guess if your trying to cover your base audience you probably want it about where it is. Low chocolate, and maybe some light coffee notes. Now that it’s warming up a bit more, Marachino cherries? Yea, far back there though.

Could use a decent amount more bittering to cut some of the sweet,, but this medium to almost light body with the moderate carbination does keeps it from feeling too heavy and quite easy to drink.

On a scale of imperial stouts, this would probably fit in the furthest side of light, easy going imperials. Almost no where in this beer was there much or any hop character.

Its pretty easy to see the point was to keep things very subdued for a specific genre of people. And doing that made for a candy like drink that disappointed after that awesome aroma in the beginning.

This is not a bad beer by any stretch. I like it. I would say… Misleading. An imperial stout named Darkness should have some balls behind it. It’s a stout for Pete’s sake, not a donut. This is something I would buy at a cotton candy stand at the kiddie carnival.

I would certainly drink this beer when ever offered, but not so sure I would actively look for it.

It was not worth the wait. 2.5/5