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Style Highlight: Imperial Stout

Let’s dive into the deep dark depths and bold flavors of one of the beer styles that The Bruery is most known for, the Imperial Stout.  Imperial stout, a full bodied dark ale with rich warming flavors stands head and shoulders in popularity over most other craft beer styles and has been part of the “craft” beer scene since the eighteenth century.  


History


Imperial stout, or rather more simply, stout as it was known back then was really just a stronger version of another style of beer we know as porter.  It’s hard to give a history of stout without speaking to the origins of porter…a style that has truly paved the way for all dark beer.  Porter, a typically lower ABV dark ale, adopted the name of London’s worker class of porters as it offered a cheap (and enjoyable) way to recoup the necessary carbs and calories required to recuperate from the back breaking labor porters endured.  


Brewers, a crafty bunch, adopted a style of brewing called parti-gyle brewing that allowed them to be much more efficient in their use of ingredients and time.  Parti-gyle is the name given to the approach of brewing more than one beer from a single batch of grist (grain) in the brewhouse.  The first “beer”, or wort (unfermented beer) of this batch, contained the largest concentration of sugars.  The grains were rinsed with water in a process called sparging and the brewer collected the sugar-dense runnings and set it aside to be fermented.  The brewer then rinsed the beer again and the second runnings contained a lesser concentration of sugars.  These second and sometimes third rinses, with their lower concentration of sugars, produced beers with lower alcohol and were the perfect everyday drinking beer.  This was porter.  Stout on the other hand, was created from the first runnings and so it was typically stronger and more flavorful and stout-ier than its little brother porter.  And so the name Stout was born.


Slowly but surely, the popularity of the porter style began to fade in favor of this stronger version, especially among export countries, most notably the royalty and noble families of Russia.  Equating stronger and bolder with better, this taste for something even richer than stout gave way to the inception of Imperial stout or Russian Imperial Stout.

Style Guidelines


Let’s take a closer look at what defines an Imperial Stout according to the Beer Judge Certification Program’s style guidelines.  While we could look to the Brewers Guild style guidelines, The Bruery was founded by homebrewers during the resurgence of homebrewing in the mid-2000s and it feels appropriate to honor that here.  According to these guidelines, the overall impression of an Imperial Stout is,


“An intensely-flavored, very strong, very dark stout with a broad range of interpretations.  Roasty-burnt malt with a depth of dark or dried fruit flavors, and a warming, bittersweet finish. Despite the intense flavors, the components need to meld together to create a complex, harmonious beer, not a hot mess – sometimes only accomplished with age.”


It’s worth noting here that many of The Bruery’s imperial stouts don’t echo this sentiment and it's why we embrace “taste over style,” but we’ll get more into that in just a bit.

Beer Judge Certification Program – Promoting beer literacy, recognizing beer tasting and evaluation skills.

Beer judges score a beer based on five criteria: aroma, appearance, flavor, mouthfeel and finally an overall impression, the latter of which is not necessarily confined to the literal overall impression as stated above, but is rather a slightly more subjective version where the judge takes into account the bigger picture contained in the glass on the table before him.  Let’s take a look at what the style guidelines say for each:


“Aroma: Rich, deep, complex, and often quite intense, with a pleasant blend of roast, fruit, hops, and alcohol. Light to moderately strong roast can have a coffee, bittersweet or dark chocolate, cocoa, black licorice, tar, or slightly burnt grain quality, sometimes with a light caramel sweetness or toasty maltiness. Low to moderately strong esters often perceived as dark or dried fruits like plums, prunes, figs, black currants, or raisins. Very low to fairly aggressive hops, often English or American in character. Alcohol flavor optional, but should not be sharp, hot, or solventy. The balance between these main four components can vary greatly; not all need to be noticeable, but those present should have a smooth interplay.
Appearance: Color ranges from very dark reddish-brown to jet black. Opaque. Deep tan to dark brown head. Generally has a well-formed head, although head retention may be low to moderate. High alcohol and viscosity may be visible as legs.
Flavor: Like the aroma, a complex mix of roast, fruit, hops, and alcohol (same descriptors apply). The flavors can be quite intense, often greater than in the aroma, but the same warning about the balance varying greatly still applies. Medium to aggressively high bitterness. The maltiness balances and supports the other flavors, and may have qualities of bread, toast, or caramel. The palate and finish can be fairly dry to moderately sweet, an impression that often changes with age. Should not by syrupy or cloying. Aftertaste of roast, bitterness, and warmth. Same age effects as in the aroma apply.
Mouthfeel: Full to very full-bodied and chewy, with a velvety, luscious texture. The body and texture may decline with age. Gentle, smooth warmth should be present and noticeable, but as a background character. Low to moderate carbonation."

You can see how these guidelines allow for a fair amount of variation, even more so when we consider aging this beer in oak barrels, but we’ll leave the topic of wood-aging for another time.  

The Bruery, known for such Imperial Stouts as Black Tuesday, So Happens It’s Tuesday, Love Bites and the small batch collection of Black Tuesday variants inspired by various pancake flavors, aptly named The Shortstacks Collection, has masterfully brewed this style since 2008.  So how does a beer like Black Tuesday, hands down the most well known of imperial stouts by The Bruery, stack up to these guidelines?  Well, as a beer judge, the scoresheet might read like this:


Aroma: Very light to non-existent roast on the nose.  Moderate to moderately high notes of caramel and toffee as well as moderate notes of dark fruit yeast esters.  Imperceptible hop character.  Moderate to moderately high perception of alcohol, but not sharp or solventy.  Moderately high notes of sweet bourbon and toasted oak.
Appearance: Color is very dark brown with ruby highlights and quite opaque.  Upon initial pour the head is a dark tan, but it dissipates nearly instantly with really no head retention at all.  Alcohol quite visible in the legs upon swirling.
Flavor: very nearly mirrors aroma.  Low to imperceptible hop bitterness and flavor.  Moderately high notes of toffee and caramel (malt) alongside moderate notes of figgy dark fruit esters (yeast).  Finishes fairly sweet without being cloying and gives way to a considerably pleasant, not harsh, alcohol warmth. No off flavors detected.
Mouthfeel: Medium bodied mouthfeel with very low carbonation.

While Black Tuesday may score well in a competition, it may not score as high as prime commercial examples of the imperial stout style like North Coast’s Old Rasputin or Sierra Nevada’s Narwhal.  While many of our other imperial stouts might be truer to style, Black Tuesday was intentionally crafted with The Bruery’s house yeast, a Belgian yeast in fact, and features noticeably lower roast and bitterness all in an effort to better exhibit the part that barrel-aging has to play in the final product.

Experiencing Imperial Stout - Serving temperature and glassware


So now you’re thirsty for this bold, flavorful beer, is there a particular way to best enjoy it?  You bet, but just like style guidelines there’s room for subjectivity.  Let’s talk ideal serving temperatures.  No, you do not have to carry a thermometer with you to The Bruery’s Tasting Room to ensure the ideal serving temperature, but it’s worth understanding what this is.


Temperature affects both carbonation and how you perceive flavor and aroma.  When it comes to carbonation, the warmer a liquid is the less it can hold carbonation within the liquid itself.  The colder it is, the more carbonation stays dissolved in the liquid.  When you drink an ice cold lager, you’re going to get a lot more of that carbonic bite, that tingling sensation on your tongue than if you drank it at room temperature.


Your tongue, covered in taste buds, can taste things better in a given temperature range (55°F - 95°F) due to various taste receptor cells being activated by hot cold.  For instance, your sweet, bitter and umami taste receptors are regulated by heat and send a stronger signal to the brain at the above temperature range.  If your beer is too cold, these receptors are not activated at the same level and thus the perceived flavor is muted.  Again think of that cold light lager and how it tastes.  We imagine it’s much more enjoyable at low temperatures than at high right?  That’s because there isn’t a ton of enjoyable flavor to be had at higher temps AND that crisp carbonic bite, that thing that is refreshing about lawn mower beers, only comes into play at cold temperatures.


How does that come into play with imperial stout?  Imperial stout has a wealth of desirable flavors so if served too cold, those flavors wind up muted.  Similarly, the style is typically on the lighter side of carbonation so serving it too cold emphasizes what carbonic bite there is and that may overshadow those other muted flavors.  The ideal serving temperature for imperial stouts is 50-55°F, however this is absolutely subjective and why we suggest this be used as a guideline….to guide your experience.  Many of us here at The Bruery prefer the flavor journey that is experienced when the stout is served a bit colder than the guideline but then allowed to warm throughout the drinking experience.  This is where we say the beer is opening up to the palette and is revealing all of the wonderful flavors contained within.


This is where glassware comes into play and while we won’t get into all of the various characteristics of beer glassware, there are a few elements to consider when choosing the best glass for your imperial stout.  We recommend choosing glassware that has a rounded body to it, with or without a stem.  A rounded body allows for an easy fit into the palm of your hand where a nice transfer of temperature helps that imperial stout you just pulled from your fridge warm to that ideal serving temperature.  Goblets, chalices and snifters all have this shape and all have tapered top edges that are meant to aid in head retention.  These three styles of glassware, with their tapered edge, also allow for swirling your beer without spilling on yourself.  Swirling your beer reinvigorates the off-gassing of carbon dioxide and facilitates the further delivery of the beer's aromatics.  At The Bruery, we love our tulip glasses.  They are rounded like goblets and snifters, but instead of a tapered top rim it features a flared top edge that is meant to deliver more aromatics than its tapered-edge counterparts.  We find this a more than suitable option for our imperial stouts.


If you’ve made it this far, pat yourself on the back and pour yourself a celebratory imperial stout.  Throughout history this beer style has proven itself to be one of the more popular styles and with its bold flavors reminiscent of chocolate, coffee and caramel it’s easy to see why.  Next time you’re in the mood for one of these classic brews we encourage you to check out any of the commercial examples cited in the Beer Judge Certification Program’s Style Guidelines or head over to The Bruery’s website where you’ll undoubtedly find a handful of options to delight your senses.