No flash = no quality pic. Thanks, Brewdog, for the image.
Brewdog says:
“It (Tokyo) is a 18.2% imperial stout brewed with jasmine and cranberries added in the kettle. After fermentation we dry hop the beer with a combination of North American and New Zealand Hops. Furthermore we then age this beer for 4 weeks on toasted vanilla French oak chips.”
Brewdog Tokyo
Imperial Stout, 18.2% ABV
Sayeth the Guys:
Karl: We sampled these as something of a nightcap – we had just polished off the Schalfly Barleywine Vertical and were talking about big beers (you know, like we do) and Cliff from Twisted Spoke said, “Hang on a second.” He disappeared behind the bar and came back with 4 snifters of a black, fluid substance with a cloud of pain and bad feelings behind it. This is the Dementor of beers, bringing clouds of fear and terror wherever it goes. This is BrewDog’s Tokyo Imperial Stout.
18.2%. Just chew on that for a while. An 18% ABV beer. We had about 4oz. a piece and believe me, that was plenty.
It should be noted that I basically consider BrewDog a stunt brewery. I could be way off on this – perhaps in Scotland (where I totally hope to visit someday) they have some balanced, relatively restrained beers for daily drinking. But here in the states, all I hear about is their obscenely huge beers, their taxidermy beers, or their middle-finger nanny state beers. All told, I know their PR better than anything about their actual product. Fair or not? You tell me. It’s how it is.
So when I saw BrewDog on the Twisted Spoke draft list, I actually kinda laughed. I never expected to like it. Then again, I never expected I’d be trying it.
When I say I like it, I don’t mean I’m going to run out and find a 6-pack come hell or high water. I like it more along the lines of “hey, that’s better than I thought it’d be.” It’s basically port. The body is hefty enough, and the cranberries in the brew are very much in the forefront on the nose along with the HUGE scent of alcohol. Believe it or not, but for a beer with what might be the hugest ABV I’ve ever had, it’s well balanced. The liquor burn isn’t as gargantuan as I had expected, and I get some nice flavors of red grape, chocolate and roastiness. I missed the jasmine here, tho.
Eventually as it warms and opens it turns into a glass of raisins and burning. It could just be the combined previous beers and high ABV, but here’s the last line I wrote. If you can figure it out, more power to you:
Delops to ysut tleb [squiggly line]
So I guess it was pretty all right, then.
Andrew: WOW. I’m glad we finished with this beer instead of starting with it.
Tokyo is thick and dark as night with no head at all. It is an absolute all-out barrage on the senses. Booze, booze, coffee, chocolate, malt, dark fruits, black licorice and more booze permeated from the glass in both nose and in taste. It’s thick and syrupy and gives a nice little alcohol burn on the back end.
I’m not sure I could, or want to, drink a lot of Tokyo in one sitting – I suppose the same could be said for a lot of other high ABV beers. Regardless, good beer – glad we had the opportunity to try it.
Ryan: I’m kind of with Karl on the whole image of Brewdog’s beers. Their over-the-top, kick you in the teeth with a huge ABV beer that will crush your taste buds image does seem a bit gimmicky. But as I have found out before with Heavy Seas beers and the He’Brew beers from Shmaltz, gimmicky labels or marketing doesn’t equal bad beer. I loved Heavy Seas Rye Porter and bourbon barrel aged pumpkin beer and He’Brew’s Bittersweet Lenny’s R.I.P.A was off the charts good. The only offering I’ve had from Brewdog was their collaborative black IPA with Stone called Bashah, which I thought was solid.
I was actually intimidated when Cliff emerged with snifters of this dark, evil monstrosity. I swirled the black liquid around and fully expected to be able to smell a mix of rubbing alcohol and puppies tears long before the glass reached my face. But I could not. In fact, the beer had a surprisingly pleasant nose of oak, wood chips, chocolate covered cherries and black licorice. I could not pick up any of the 18 + percent ABV, which is kind of fascinating considering how high the alcohol content is.
Take a sip and you get smooth, warming alcohol, mixed berries, vanilla, woodiness, milk chocolate, molasses and black licorice. As you can probably guess, the alcohol does get more pronounced as this beer warms but never to the point of being undrinkable.
I was pretty impressed at the drinkability of this beer, although that may have had something to do with the small serving we got – probably about 4 oz to 5 oz. This is definitely a sipper and should be shared, not because you’re a nice person, but because we want you to wake up the next morning.