Beer Felons Brewing 2021 Imperial Stout

Winter hits and within days the number of imperial stouts landing at Crafty Towers rises exponentially. Among the first arrivals are two that come with an enticement to let yourself fall for their luscious charms: BentSpoke's annual birthday beer, Descent (which you'll find elsewhere on this site), and Felons' 2021 Imperial Stout, heralded by the Brisbane brewers with an instruction to "Descend into the pleasure zone."

Should you take the hint, you're gonna want to take a decent torch with you as you'll struggle to find a beer that pours a denser black – even the head is a bark like brown. Once you've given up trying to make any light pass through the beer in your glass and tuck in, you'll find a stout thats full in a velvety as well as oily sense, in which there's dark chocolate and cacao powder galore, aromas reminiscent of a dark, fruit-tinged liqueur, yet little heat on the palate. Wearing its Old World influences on its sleeve – the only hops at play are English Fuggles, and lots of them too, adding to the grounding bitterness of the darker malts – it's traditional and intense in equal measure.

James Smith