Prepare your taste buds for an imperial beat down!
Every Tuesday evening from 6PM-8PM is beer tasting night at Round the Table, and this week we are moving on from the wimpy, delicate ciders to something BOLD. Something DARK. The Imperial Stout! These suckers clock in at close to 10% ABV and were a beverage of choice by the Russian court of Czarina Catherine the Great. How much more convincing do you need? Did I mention we are taking donations for the Lynnwood Food Bank?
Back to the beer. Believed to have been originally developed in England as an export to the Russian Crown, the strong dark ales quickly took the moniker of “Russian Imperial Stout”. While the name is still around today, throughout the 19th century it had the unfortunate problem of going in and out of style depending on the diplomatic relations between the two countries. If you have ever played Diplomacy (boardgame), you know just how dicey it can be!
Like with our cider tasting, we’ll be sampling out three different American takes on the style– North Coast Brewing Company‘s traditional Old Rasputin, Oskar Blues Brewery‘s viscous Ten Fiddy, and Boulevard Brewing Company‘s wacky Dark Truth Stout. All vaguely similar, and yet each starkly different.
For more information on the history of this type of beer, feel free to check out the link below. Otherwise, we’ll see you tonight.
http://zythophile.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/imperial-stout-%E2%80%93-russian-or-irish/
