Yum Smokey

For this one I decided to choose a dark beer a I dearly love!! It's not just a jizz in my pants kind of beer, it's the kind of beer you bend down on one knee and present the ring to. For my particular taste buds few are in it's echelon of taste. I will also mention that I am totally biased towards this beer by nature of also being a big scotch fan, and this beer is an awesome blend of both of those worlds. It comes from a great brewery in Scotland called Brew Dog. They make some great extreme beers, some that have collaborated with other breweries in as far away as the US and Norway. This one is called Paradox Islay. It is an Imperial Stout which is usually a great beer in itself, but this particular one is aged in 1998 Bowmore Scotch casks. There are the dark chocolaty flavors of an imperial stout, accompanied by all the malty notes of the scoth barrel. If your a person who enjoys tons of flavors this has it, you could spend a good portion of the day trying to pick out all the subtle hints of flavor that come from aging this ale in a scotch cask. There are other flavors of this particular brew which will all give a different flavor depending on the region the particular scotch cask came from (Islay, Speyside, etc.), each individual barrel will give off a unique flavor all it's own. So while you can have a similar brew each time you taste this beer, it is almost a guarantee the flavor will be different in some form. Now if your not a big fan of a smoky aftertaste, you may avoid this as aging in a scotch barrel will always give off some of the smoky flavor of that particular peat. As for the imperial stout part, the sweet edge is a nice complement towards giving the beer an overall smooth characteristic, all the flavors are in a battle of sorts so that no one flavor overpowers the other with any kind of intensity. Aging in the barrel gives it that wonderful cask finish to, if you've never had these beers they are given a longer natural fermentation which enriches both flavor and smoothness. Drink this at room temperature if you want the boldness of all the flavors, or refrigerate if you feel it's one of those drinks you need to temper the edge with so to speak. The one downside, it's about 12$ a bottle so she ain't cheap, but you will certainly get a satisfying experience. That being said I encourage anyone to try this beer, it's so pristinly made that even dark beer haters will admire the taste and finish of this product.