Stone Brewing Co. - 2013 "Imperial Russian Stout"

Just a quick snapshot today, on a very special day - this is the last of my stock of Stone Brewing Co.'s "Imperial Russian Stout." These stouts, which I've reviewed here before (like my review of this same beer in 2015) are/were around 10.60% ABV. This one was bottled seven years ago today - March 22, 2013. So seven years is long enough! I don't normally review the same beer or wine twice, but I make exceptions for vertical aging projects...I grabbed a bunch of these back in 2013, one of the last years they made it. Let's dip in.

Check out that bricking! Aroma is soft and malty, with that elusive "aged wood" quality.

So, yeah, as expected, this beer really mellowed out. It's lost a lot of the original flavor, and presents now a much softer, oaky, malty flavor. It's kinda neat - soft, leathery, tobacco flavors and barely any cocoa or coffee notes, as evidenced in the fresh original. Soft, silky, and still packs a punch, albeit different from when I bought it. Definitely left "too long" in the cellar, but I still enjoyed it. It's fun not only to see how aging works and to compare, over many years, the different taste profiles. And don't get me wrong - this beer isn't bad, just different.

And may I say, at the risk of sounding crotchety and old, I miss the old days when breweries would make cool stuff in the 22oz bottle formats. Stone, and many others, used to make a lot of fancy stuff in these formats, and was a common sight on this blog. This was one of them and a nice memory.