Pours as black peat, with an exceptional head of coffee foam. Smells of ripe summer fruits, mixed berries and blackcurrants.
The initial taste is dominated by an exceptionally powerful and unexpected lingering sweetness. It's only on the second sip one can delve deeper into this dark delight. It's a whirlwind of coffee, hints of chocolate, but finishing with an asserted ripe fruity sweetness that leaves a taste buds twanging like a banjo string.
The hops are the final lingering presence of this beer, a flash of herbal bitterness. A wiser tweeter than me said of a review of Riptide "Riptide review in the style of @thebeerbunker: When you took the back off your Ferguson cassette recorder and it never worked again? That." Quite.
I kind of like the riptide analogy, like being dragged backwards out to sea past a kaleidoscope of sights and sounds to be met by a sweet mermaid who smiles and pushes you back to shore for another sip of stout.
7/10 An epic fruity and kaleidoscopic stout.
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