Hypnopompa Imperial Stout

Let's start off with an admission: I'm not a huge admirer of weird flavored beers, and this one, in addition to uncontroversial vanilla flavoring, there's marshmallow flavoring.

Fortunately, marshmallows really don't have their own flavor. Marshmallows always have the flavor of whatever you flavor them with, "regular" marshmallows are flavored with vanilla.

So, what I'm saying is that the beer doesn't really taste like marshmallows because marshmallows don't taste like anything.

After those brief introductory remarks...Hypnopompa pours a deep, deep, mahogany-ish almost-black. The head is a nice healthy, frothy, two-finger tan head.  No marshmallow, but a very obvious vanilla taste, since, you know, they brewed it with vanilla beans. But the tastes that result from interplay of the malt and the hops include brown sugar, caramel, dark chocolate, and molasses. The 11%+ ABV doesn't really overwhelm the tastes, but you can feel a bit of heat at the back of the palette.

We all thought Spring was hear and that it was time for lighter beers, but it was winter today, so I'm glad that I had a stout in the fridge.