Friday 24 July 2015

#281: Out of Kentucky

I recently transcribed notes of KBS onto the Destrier, and in doing so remembered the underwhelming experience that was the drinking of it, and in turn remembered the underwhelming experience that was the drinking of the regular Breakfast Stout from Founders, all of which reminded me of the third indulgent stout from the Grand Rapids outfit that needed investigating; their Imperial Stout.

Founders Imperial Stout is black as death and looks the business with its dark brown head. It also smells the business; dark chocolate in all its bittersweet glory, round but strong espresso and a bit of booze. So far so intense. There's no messing with this formula in the flavour stakes, with more rich, strong dark chocolate and black coffee and caramelised grain and sweet malted biscuit all doing the rounds. It's as full and thick as you'd like, and it seems to play like an arguably more subtle Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout, though a side-by-side test hasn't been performed.

Whatever the case, with their standard imperial stout Founders have proven to me that they can make a big black beer just as well as they can make a porter, a session IPA or a double IPA, proof that was much needed after the relative misses (by their standards) that were KBS and Breakfast Stout.

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