12 oz bottle as a single from Hop City, Atlanta, GA, USA. Can’t remember the exact price but I remember it as being very expensive for what I was getting.
The beer starts off with a great looking black pour that appears totally opaque with little or no colored highlights when held up to the light. Head is small but the film across the top of beer is surprisingly complete. Looks good. Would have been better if I just looked at it rather than tasted it!
The beer exudes a smell that is similar to a double IPA, with a strong hoppy note but with some astringent citrus and roasty licorice aromas. Not my cup of tea but not bad.
The tastes have some citrus (lemon) like notes and some VERY aggressive hops that are unrestrained. There is also a nasty, burned plastic character that to be honest is the adibing memory of this beer. VERY aggressive and dry in the finish. I’m not sure where the pilsner angle comes in, nor am I sure of the point of a “black” pilsner, in fact the whole thing is completely lost on me. What starts off as a touch of grapefruit in the taste very quickly becomes a combination of cough syrup, old lemon rind and light pepper. Plastic, plastic, plastic! Hot, messy, over the top alcohol as well.
To me, a beer that is perhaps simply trying to be big for the sake of it, and is just “showing-off”. This matches what I expect from Brewdog and their take on things, but I was hoping that Stone would resist the temptation to get caught up in this nonsense.
Aftertaste is very dry, astringent and frankly unpleasant. Nasty drainpour, put simply a misguided collaboration/emperor’s new clothes type beer, that someone managed to convince themselves was great, and then inlficted upon the general public.