Great Divide Espresso Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout

Brewed By: Great Divide Brewing Company in Denver, Colorado  

Purchased: 22oz bottle (Bottled On: 01/09/2013) bought at Spec's Liquor in Galveston, TX; 2013 

Style/ABV: Russian Imperial Stout, 9.5%

Reported IBUs: ?

I love lazy Sundays, and they are even better when they are followed by a day off. Let's not pretend that Memorial Day is anything but an excuse to drink lots of beer and eat lots of food. Really, they should give you Tuesday off too, because no one likes going to work with a food/alcohol hangover. About Great Divide:

The Great Divide Brewing Company is a brewery based out of Denver, Colorado, founded by Brian Dunn. Dunn was a homebrewer who attended graduate school in Colorado. Upon his graduation in 1993, he set out to open a brewery in Denver's Ballpark Neighborhood to brew unique and flavorful beers. In the beginning Dunn was the only full-time employee, brewing, bottling, and selling all on the same day. As the brewery gained momentum, it expanded into an old dairy processing plant in 2001. The brewery has won over 17 Great American Beer Festival medals, has received 5 Wolrd Beer Cup awards, and has consistently been rated as a top-100 brewery on Ratebeer and BeerAdvocate. To learn more, check out Great Divide's website.

Tonight's beer, the Espresso Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout, is a variant on the brewery's infamous Yeti Imperial Stout. The bottle states: "Espresso Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout is a new addition to the Yeti clan. A Generous infusion of Denver's own Pablo's espresso adds yet another layer of complexity to this beer, combining with the vanilla oak character, intense roasty maltiness and bold hop profile to create a whole new breed of mythical creature. It's official: You can now have Yeti with breakfast." Suggested food pairings include breakfast burritos, eggs Benedict, hash browns, cheese cake, and creme brulee. This beer is a seasonal release, clocks in at 9.5%, and is available in 22oz bottles or 5 gallon kegs. 

Espresso Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout

This beer pours a dark black color in low light, and kicks up one to two fingers of bready, dark tan/khaki/coffee colored head. The head is leaving some nice lacing as it drops off, and there are some legs on this. When held to a bright light, this beer is still impressively opaque and black. The head is sustaining nicely, and has a rich brown color. It's a good looking Imperial Stout, but it also...looks like an Imperial Stout.

The base Stout is incredibly rich and super aromatic, and you get a lot of the Yeti on the nose. It smells a lot like coffee-chocolate ice cream. There's deep chocolate and espresso richness, some boozy/fruit/molasses sweetness, some roast, earthy coffee, and dirt, and even a bit of floral/citrus hops. I'm guessing this one is aged with oak chips, but you do get a light vanilla/lactose/cream sweetness on the nose, ala a Milk Stout. The tl;dr version of the aroma is rich chocolate and espresso. This beer, like the regular Yeti, has rich and powerful aromatics. It's a great nose.

Awwww yish. There's a reason the Yeti is so fucking popular...it's just an amazing Stout. If you haven't had the regular Yeti, go track it down this weekend. This tastes like a beer milkshake, with a huge oily/dense mouthfeel. I'm getting a lot of the base Stout goodness, with huge chocolate, roast, and big hop bitterness hiding in the back. I'm also getting some booze/molasses, hints of rum, huge espresso/coffee, and some faint vanilla/milk/oak/wood. This is milkshake thick, boozy...and yet fairly drinkable. Is it da hops? 

Like Hoppin' Frog's B.O.R.I.S. or Oskar Blues' Ten FIDY, this beer simply crushes you palate with an award winning™ mouthfeel. This beer has it all: a full-bodied, milkshake-like mouthfeel, with tons of chocolate, roast, malt thickfreakness, and a big hoppy kick. The palate depth is outstanding. Complexity is good to above-average. You get big chocolate/espresso sweetness up front, followed by some booze/molasses/fruitiness; this rolls into roast, more boozy sweetness, some earth coffee and dirt; the back end is trailing roast, with hints of oak/vanilla/wood. The finish is lingering roast, boozy warming, and some nice hop bitterness. There's some hints of citrus in this, but the hops mostly sit in the background to provide some much needed balance via bitterness. 

Rating: Divine Brew (4.5/5 Untappd)

I'm feeling a Light Divine Brew on this. The Yeti is a great Stout, and the addition of oak chips and espresso only add to the fun. What brings this beer home is the huge mouthfeel and the nice hop bitterness. You get a lot more espresso in this than oak, with big sweet espresso and earthy coffee. The oak seems to play off the hoppiness a bit, sort of like Stone's Oaked AB. Bombers of this are pretty inexpensive, and this beer seems to be readily available just about everywhere. I'd pair this variant with breakfast, ribs, barbecue, pulled pork, chocolate cake, cheese cake, or as per the bottle, creme brulee. Thanks to the big hop kick and the 9.5% ABV, this one just sneaks by without getting tossed into the dessert beer category.

Random Thought: I am the proud recipient of a red light ticket. Woohoo! I've contested tickets before (and won), but this one looks to be pretty clear cut and against me. Having said that, fuck red light tickets. Chicago sets their yellow lights to the minimum three second limit, and clearing certain intersections during the yellow is becoming an art. I guess from now on I'll slam on my breaks and see how that goes. #YouOnlyRearEndOnce