Herevana – Behemoth – Bourbon Batshit Crazy Imperial Stout
Improbably long named beer time, and another Stout. A sentence I’d written a few weeks since when I was on a stout bender. I wrote about this Stout binge in the Hoppines Magazine.
I’ve had a few beers tonight and so perhaps that time when I should take notes, which I’ve never done , or plough ahead with awful prose and spelling mistakes.
What’s the worst that could happen ?
Behemoth (Chur) Brewing Company make the Behemoth Bourbon Batshit Crazy Imperial Stout in Auckland, 🇳🇿, New Zealand as a Stout – Imperial of 10.2% ABV, this is 3.5 standard drinks in NZ
Typically I think that you’d have had a few beer before you got to this, unless you started with it. I’m not convinced that in the general you’d have this beer as your beer for a starter. You might have just this beer of course, I have no idea, it does seem a one beer kind of evening.
That’s mostly cocoa when you open the can, which lends itself to that chocolate note.
There is nothing to fault in the pour, a lovely pitch black beer with a thick and firm head that is off colour and sits atop like a foam on a milkshake.
The glass releases more of the coconut aroma, but there is a lot of that dry cocoa powder going on.
When you talk about fireworks you’ve never had this, it’s all on for donkey kong. There’s everything and then a bit more. There is, in no order; cocoa, coffee, vanilla, sweetness, a bit sourness, a bunch in the face, a lovers kiss, a hug and embrace, and a commitment to a life long friendship. Oh and Coconut.
There is quite a sour ending and lingering in this beer, this isn’t a bad thing by any means, but it’s like you went from sweet to a sour in just no time at all, and at the same time the longest time of all .
As it warms it seems to settle itself into lanes, and what I found is that sweetness dials up to what might seem a ridiculous level, where the sweetness become a bit of a bully on what else might be happening.
I realised that I hadn’t mentioned the blackberries, as you do, and it’d be easy to say that this is where that particular thing is coming from, and you have that and the apparent vanilla infusion from the bourbon.
So, to recap, this is the bestest thing ever, such like you’ve not known, then it reaches a plateau from where you begin to point out the things that are not quite as they might be, the bits that make this a bit less. The bit where the sweetness catches up and can’t stop and crashes over and leaves you with a sweet beer that you just can’t find a way out of.
The Pdubyah-o-meter rates this as 8 on the arbitrary number scale. It bolts from the start like a startled rabbit but runs into a problem of pace, and things catching up, and those sweet things to to overwhelm and overhaul this into being just on the wrong side of too sweet. To be honest I changed my 9 to an 8 .
Music: Well as much as I like the Kings of Leon I’ve never listened to Come Around Sundown.
Herevana beers are those I drink at home, I’m not at some beer festival, like, for instance, Beervana, but am just in my kitchen, usually, dining room table, sometimes, or outside, occasionally, where I can take an average picture and write in real time about the beer that I’ve invested in, both in a monetary and emotional way.
Philip himself.
Imperial Stout made with Blackberries, Toasted Coconut, Cocoa Nibs and Aged on Bourbon Staves that have been soaked in NZ Whisky.
Churly
Stout – Imperial
The “Imperial Stout” or “Double Stout” is an intensely-flavored, big, very dark reddish-brown to black colored ale with a wide range of flavor balances and regional interpretations. Roasty-burnt malt with deep dark or dried fruit flavors, and a warming, bittersweet finish. American versions have more bitterness, roasted character, and finishing hops, while the English varieties, or “Russian Imperial Stout” (RIS), reflect a more complex specialty malt character and a more forward ester profile. Like a black barleywine with every dimension of flavor coming into play. More complex, with a broader range of possible flavors than lower-gravity stouts.
A life just as ordinary 