Well July is a month for fireworks and explosions, so why not start out with a beer that has equal the amount of bang. My first selection for this month is another damn strong ale, this one is not far behind Dogfish Head's 120 min. IPA either. I'm going to file this in the section of throw your keys down and prepare to remain inebrieated for oh let's just say a smidgeon shall we. The name is Tokyo, named after a space invaders game in Japan from the 1980s so the bottle reads. The brewery it comes from is BrewDog in Scotland (not usually associated with Tokyo the game or city for the geo-culturally impaired), they make some of the most extreme beers in the world of which I've already written on a couple. Why the odd name? Well this brewery fancies itself as new-age material, with a lot of alternative themes, and artistic attributes about their company. They pulled out all the stops on this one, slapping on a very eary looking picture attached to the bottle as well. Down to the good bits though, this beer is an intense version of an imperial stout. Weighing in at 18.2% alcohol this little baby is definitely not a lightweight. At this amount of alcohol you may expect a grand amount of pure sugary sweetness to this particular brew, but no, for what it is, and how much alcohol content is contained within the intermingling flavors do a great deal in diminishing that overwhelming sugar taste that can have a beer dangerously close to tasting like cotton candy. Nope this little gal left the excessive make-up for the clowns, it is delightfully subtle in the beers approach to flavor. This Imperial Stout was aged in French Oak and made with cranberries and jasmine. Now I've had beers with cranberries before, mostly lambics, and they have been some of the most god-awful monstrosities ever brewed, most simply taste like somebody left cranberry juice sitting out in the sun for oh a couple months. I've only had one other brew made with Jasmine, that being an IPA made by Elysian, and that was good. Upfront the first taste that accompanies all the normal stout flavor is the cranberries and jasmine. The Jasmine presents a mild, but good taste all it's own, but the magic here is that it seems to temper that overwhelming cranberry taste from just overwhelming the drink. The flavor becomes much more subtle, and closer to a flavor produced when mixing cherries in with a stout, but with slightly more tartness to it. The Oak aging comes in to play as this delightful little number lingers in your mouth for a while. It makes the beer much smoother, as well as a nice finishing taste on the back end of the brew. I think this is also the final piece of the puzzle the wrangles in the cranberry flavor, another ingrediant that rounds out the accute flavor of the berry itself. While I have been talking about the addtional flavors, this is still a tried and true stout, and still has all that exceptional stout taste to it. What I truly appreciate about BrewDog is the constant expermentation, and the no fear attitude they present about beer constantly swinging for the fences with any brew they make. I myself have never played the so called space invaders game, or have any idea (even an artist) who the hell would ever try and make a brew metaphor for it, but I am really happy they did. And if Japan liked an old pixalated arcade game that most likely had square little squinting aliens, just wait till they get ahold of some of this, it makes all space invaders, and even godzilla seem like a pussies.