Surly: Darkness 2022 (USA: Imperial Stout: 12% ABV)
Visual: Black. Still. Very large creamy coffee froth brown head.
Nose: Treacle. Cinnamon. Liquorice. Roasted nuts. Coffee. Vanilla. Sour dough. Toffee.
Body: Treacle. Chocolate liqueur. Sticky toffee pudding. Chocolate cake sponge. Cinnamon. Molasses.
Finish: Molasses. Liquorice. Sticky toffee pudding. Charring and slight charcoal like bitterness. Crushed walnuts. Cinnamon. Mulled wine. Bitter black coffee to slightly sweeter mocha.
Conclusion: Oh this is a big, sticky beer. It feels like a throwback to the mid 2K heavy duty thick imperial stouts, and made me realize how much I missed those unbalanced monsters.
This treacle thick and sweet but with a stodgy, cloying sticky toffee pudding weight layered on it as well. Just heavy thick sweetness layered over heavy thick sweetness. Frankly, too much for the (American) pint you get in the can if you looking for ideal serving side. It would work better in smaller measures. However, I will (oh my) have to make myself enjoy the whole can, and taken as a beer to share it is hard to fault, and a small fault at that.
There are other flavours – it is not just that thick treacle and toffee style, though most are still sweet. Lots of cinnamon dusted over it for example, gives hints of a kind of dark Christmas drink feel.
There are some counterpoints to that real sweet, dessert like character. There is a mild charred bitterness, some bitter coffee and roasted nuts notes. Not too much mid body, but they grow in the finish to underline the experience and contrast the sweetness of the main body.
As time goes on it even becomes almost, but not quite, balanced. And that teetering on the edge, just about unbalanced , over the top character is what gives it its charm. There are technically more proficient and with it better balanced beers, but this manages to go one step beyond what should work and still manages to be excellent while snubbing the need for restraint.
It doesn’t quite unseat my top few favorite imperial stouts, but that is just because it is such a hard fought scene. It is still absolutely incredible. Probably would be not in my top 50 beers, but only just, and I can see how it holds that place for many people – it is definitely one of my favorite beers of recent years.
This is a wild ride, a callback to the more adventurous days of brewing and an exceptional beer. Definitely try if you can, just be warned this is sticky, sweet, strong and pulls no punches, but it makes that work!
Background: Ok I was very excited when I found this. I was In the always amazing Tanakaya Liquor Store in Tokyo, prying through this selection when I saw this – one of ratebeers listed top 50 beers in the world. Now ratebeer as always does have its biases, towards imperial stouts like this for one, but finding an untried one of their top 50 is always exciting – and for not too bad price. The few times I have seen versions of this in the EU it has been flipped for silly money. This worked out at about 13-15 pounds after conversion from the yen, which is not bad at all for such a big beer. While beers drop in and out of the top 50, so how many I have tried at any time varied, at the moment this will be the 16th I have tried from the current line up. As shown this is the 2022 release so at a guess about six months to a year since release. Looks like it is easier to get hold of than it used to be – bottles are still done exclusively on “Darkness Day” but a can like this seems to have a more general release. Also darn looking at their site they do a lot of different variant releases of Darkness now. Any which way, was super happy to get my hands on it.
