Things are finally starting to settle down around here after our move to Carlsbad. Time to finally get another review up. This beer was one I happened to stumble upon online while I was shopping for another beer on the Top 100 list online. While I didn't end up with the beer I was trying to buy, somehow I ended up with a beer I had never heard of- Arcadia's Imperial Stout. I wasn't too excited about this bottle until I actually received it in the mail and saw that the bottling date was back in 2007. A 4 year old Russian Imperial Stout? Yes, please!
Arcadia Imperial Stout pours a very dark brown color with an absolutely enormous mocha colored head. As soon as the beer touched the glass, it foamed up like a root beer float. The 12 oz. bottle took almost ten minutes to fully pour, which may be a record for me. The beer smelled really different for a Russian Imperial, with notes of banana bread, clove, brown sugar, chocolate and bourbon.
The smell of the beer may be on the sweet side, but the taste is the polar opposite. I got a lot of a roasted and maybe even charred malt flavor right away followed by some dark chocolate and dark roasted coffee on the finish. A slight hint of apple cider vinegar crept in somewhere in the middle of the taste and threw me off a bit. The high levels of bitterness really made me wonder how this beer must have tasted 4 years ago. Overall, it was a good beer but nowhere near some of the better Imperial Stouts out there.
Final Grade: B
Top 100 Beers Tasted: 22
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