Sadly, Stout Week has come to a cloudless, warm, and sunny end now that our week of Spring has limped off again like a legion of worn Irish peat extractors after their 6PM last call .
But this did not happen without a full-scale and delirious assault on a supremely first-rate Imperial Stout escorted by a good portion of The Walkmen's musical catalog while in the garden the other night -- and few things go together better than fat beers and guitar-driven post-punk revival.
If you've ever allowed yourself to dream what it would have been like to be Augustus Gloop, hand-scooping delicious river-chocolate into your gob at a pace that will satisfy you before you are reprimanded by Oompa-Loompas, then Founder's Imperial Stout is your golden ticket.
From the initial pour, you are exposed to the beautiful properties of a dark-chocolate fountain steeping into your tulip as if plumbed from Wonka's factory itself -- and, heavens no, not any of that weak arsed faculty-end-of-year-party bullshit fountain. I'm talking Jean-Philippe Patisserie at The Bellagio type-of chocolate fountain. And the best part: tongue fondue. I was ready to absolutely glaze myself in this stuff.
Without any ancillary suggestions needed, the beer tasted just like a pull from Francois Payard's imagination. That was no false advertising. What took an hour to pour, took milliseconds to adore. In a blog that applauds and aggrandizes imperial stouts like tourists at the Italian opera, this could possibly be the one by which all the others are measured. Its a nasty force, this one -- the brutal, but smooth strength of an Earl Campbell. The Pearl of Beers. That's what it should be called. An absolute specimen.
I very much look forward to the other three in my four-pack, but this one will be even more difficult than usual to share with grovelers. I can feel the shadows of my wife creepin' and my usual insistence that my beer cellar is not her HEB. I need a doorman.
ABV: 10.5%
Acquired: Jack's Market
★★★★★★★★★★
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