Southern Tier rolled out a whole line of these imperial stout monsters that tasted like other things, creme brulee, mokah, jahva, all kinds of things. You don’t see that in other formats, I have never seen a baker making cupcakes that taste like an imperial stout, I guess it’s a one way street for people with things to take care of. Anyway, let’s get coffee wasted and start cupping in today’s review.

Southern Tier, Mokah 11.2% abv, Imperial Stout

A: Deep dark oily hues, not so black as Satan’s magic or straight up Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, but, still pretty black. Mild tiny bubbles, tiny carbonation, tiny everything. Get your mind out of the gutter.

S: Very sweet milk notes, not unlike their crème brulee, with a solid coffee waft as the backbone. I am very intrigued by this penumbra between the two elements. “Oh wait, he is intrigued?” not a single fuck was given today, I know. But seriously, the dichotomy is amazing.

T: The taste is a spot on rendition between a sweet stout and a deep coffee stout. It is just amazing on both polar ends. At the outset you get an amazing caramel milky sweetness that subsides into a drying coffee dryness. It feels like a cuvee between a milk stout and a coffee stout. Again, just amazing on all fronts.

M: This imperial stout is not overbearing but is incredible in the mouth feel. It coats and imparts some great sweet and bitter notes and fades quickly, not overstaying its welcome. The whole endeavor just smacks of value. This beer has a great breakfast stout character to it without any barrel aging, very impressive.

D: Very drinkable, incredibly silky in its body with a great mouthfeel and coating to it. I cannot believe that this is a simple off shelf beer and again, when it comes to stouts, the east coast is spoiled beyond belief. I feel like I just spoil this category but I seriously could drink this stout for days on end, it has an incredible balance. For reals.

Narrative: Do you ever feel like someone is just controlling your every movement? Like Truman show? No like literally hedging every single one of your clips and turns. In what way? Ok, I don’t want to invoke the old deontological chestnut where we discuss pre-destination relative to a divine plan, I mean, in this earthly world, some people are destined to encounter some conflict and resolution, purely on the basis of man’s plight and have it resolved by the same anomalous factors. Well sometimes, like a flat tire and a serendipitous tow truck? That sort of thing? Exactly and now what those conflicting elements interplay so succinctly? Well usually something bad happens and then something pretty cool happens. The bitter and the sweet. Well, yeah. So who determines this balance, if it is determined, the interplay should be fairly evenly divided but who is the wholesale recipient of a load of bitter while others receive nothing but sweet. Well, to that I cannot say? It feels arbitrary and totally unfocused but at the same time, it is uplifting knowing that at any given moment a blast of splenda or carmelized sugar could come my way, sure it could be in the form of strippers or Magic: the Gathering cards, but the treats are nonetheless sweet. Well, I guess I feel you, but I can’t help feeling that this entire discussion was a paper thin pretense for both deontology and simple aromatics in food. Well, basically. Those two are pretty aligned.