Variations on a Theme Tasting

It took some time, but the three Imperial Porters were finally ready for their blind tasting.  The Variations on a Theme experiment results are below.  Also, pretty sure that our blatant use of OM's album cover will go unnoticed, but we're more than happy to donate samples if that's not the case.

The three samples were presented to the group left to right:  At Giza, Thebes and Annapurna.  Although this was the order they were brewed chronologically, there was not a suggested order for tasting.  Appropriate to the style, these were allowed to warm up for about 20 minutes opening up the flavors that are much tighter at refrigerator temps.

At Giza:  This was the one we aged over Kentucky Bulleit bourbon soaked oak chips.  The bourbon and oak were apparent in both the nose and in the flavor.  The oak was a little more astringent than we'd normally be going for but definitely not off-putting.  The bourbon was nicely rounded and the malt backbone provided a nice chocolate contribution.  Overall very nice and definitely worth doing again.

Thebes:  This was the most experimental of the three.  With 5 minutes left in the boil, dried hibiscus was added instead of aroma hops.  While the wort was cooling, it was steeped with a mixture of crushed Chon Weasel coffee (yep, that stuff) and cocao nibs.  It paid off as the flavors were complex and opened up as the beer was brought closer to room temperature.  The coffee was evident, but only just slightly and it added another layer of the chocolate flavors already contained in the malt.  Odds of doing this one again are slim as finding more of that coffee is not so easy.


Annapurna:  Unlike the others, this one received no special treatment after the boil.  The difference here was the addition of a pound of smoked malt into the initial mash.  If going for an actual smoked beer, like a rauchbier, the percentage of smoked malt would be much higher.  Again we were only hoping for a mild contribution.  The result was that this one was truest to the style as it was mucked with the least.  The smoked malt was there but very subtle and surprisingly worked ok with the chocolate and coffee flavors that all three had by default since they have the same grain bill.

And the winner?  Well, the good news is that none of them ran away with the title and none of them got creamed.  However, At Giza, with its Bourbon chocolate goodness was the fan favorite.  Only a few bottles of this one left unfortunately.