Help Us Get Blind: Imperial Stouts

July 21, 2017, by Crafty Pint

Help Us Get Blind: Imperial Stouts


We brought our Getting Blind With Crafty blind tastings out of hibernation in June – and took them public with Tallboy and Moose too. The plan now is to make them bi-monthly and next up in August will be imperial stouts.

It's the first time we've looked at the style in four years and, as you'd expect, there are more around than ever before. After some discussion, we decided we would only look at current vintages (much as it's tempting to line up multiple Clout Stouts, Red Hill Imperial Stouts and Hargreaves Hill R.I.S. vintages and so on). We also decided to exclude barrel aged beers so, alas, no Ramjet, Southern Courage, The Kalash, Barrel Breed and the like. We'll do them next winter.

There are some in the long list that feature ingredients other than water, malt, hops and yeast, but we're happy the added ingredients won't have an impact in the same way that time in oak might. That said, there has been an executive decision at Crafty Towers to exclude Stockade Brew Co's delicious GABS winner, The Mountie, as it's so mapled-to-the-eyeballs it would stand out a mile. 

As with the reds and ambers last time around, even with those exclusions, there are more beers available than can reasonably be assessed in one sitting so we're asking you to help us whittle down the list. Below you can vote for those you'd most like us to put to the test.

Pick the ten you'd like to see featured from the list below and we'll aim to get our hands on the ten most popular from your combines votes. We'll judge 15 beers in total – in five flights of three – meaning we keep five selections "in house" in case there are beers that haven't come up in the reader poll we think should be there, whether that's to try and feature a spread from around the country, ensure trophy winning beers are included or for some other good reason.

If there are any beers missing, please email us ASAP so we can add them. We'll close the poll on July 30 to allow time to source the beers.

NB We're only requesting your email address to ensure there are no multiple entries.




You can read past blind tasting features here and get your hands on a mixed dozen of the beers we featured last time around from Carwyn Cellars so you can try it at home. Crafty Cabal members get free delivery.

Look out for another public event at Tallboy and Moose featuring the top rated beers from our panel towards the end of August too.

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