Goose Island Beer Company The Muddy Imperial Stout, Featuring Amplified Sweetness with Licorice Notes, Brewed & Bottled by Goose Island Beer Co., Chicago, IL. Imperial Stout Brewed With Licorice. 9% ALC./Vol., 32 IBU.
A salute to the Chicago blues style, named for Mr. McKinley Morganfield (AKA Muddy Waters) , I presume. This seems right up my alley. Let's check it out and see.
Appearance: Solidly stygian, utterly devoid of light, with a rich, creamy tan head on top, looking beautiful.
Aroma: Deep stuff, vast notes of cocoa and coffee, and the advertised aniseed trails a bit behind. so far. Starts creeping in eventually, with peppery notes, as well.
Taste: Slight hop bitterness at first, then fades back, covered by rich, dark malt. Medium-to-full bodied, but not as rich as I'd like. Wouldn't call it thin, but a touch disappointing. Thankfully, the sweetness is not actually amplified, but neither are the licorice notes very pronounced. Nice presence on the palate, but definitely lacking in thickness and fullness. Comes up short in the chewy department.
This is my assessment halfway through the bottle. Getting into the second half of the glass, I want to give it another chance, or delve further in and discover it's special virtues. The licorice does grow, deepen and widens, gets bigger on the palate, but it took it's sweet time, didn't it? Maybe if the beer was warmer to begin with? I warmed it up some, but didn't get it all the way to room temperature.
In the end, I find The Muddy fails as an Imperial Stout, lacking many of the rich extremes of flavor that are a part of any good RIS worthy of the name. If they boast of an amplified sweetness, they're off the mark. Any good RIS that is also sweet, needs to be full-bodied and rich, as well. This one is not.
Goose Island is not a bad brewery because it is now owned by Budweiser, but if they keep making mediocre beers like this…I'm not sayin'…just sayin'….
No comments:
Post a Comment