You'd have thought, with Thornbridge being Thornbridge and all, that this experiment would turn out to be rather good. It turns out that if you thought that way you'd be wrong. At least, you would be in my opinion anyway.
For the tenth installment of this irregular series of blog posts I took a bottle of St. Petersburg, Thornbridge's 7.7% Imperial Russian Stout and a bottle of Halcyon, their 7.4% Imperial IPA.
I'd had St Petersburg before, last February (2011) at the Battersea Beer Festival. It was one of the best beers I had during my session there, and one I've wanted to try again since. As a result I was looking forward to opening this bottle. Another result of this was that I was slightly disappointed that this bottle didn't seem to live up to that first time I tried the beer.
The aroma is a mixture of subtle spicy berries and high cocoa dark chocolate. It has a warming alcohol taste to it, with a burnt toast after taste that coats the mouth and lingers far too long for it's own good. If there was more in the initial taste of the beer I could cope with this, but there's not, and so ultimately, I was disappointed.
The Halcyon was a new beer to me. The aroma was a floral/grassy aroma, rather than the citrusy aromas that are common in Imperial IPAs. It seemed to be much more subtle, and less hoppy than most Imperial IPAs, and as a result, much easier to drink.
This subtleness wasn't a good thing for the mix though. The characteristics of the St. Petersburg dominate, though the harshness of the burnt aftertaste has been lessened by the Halcyon. The good mixtures I've been able to write a fair bit about. This inspired nothing.
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