Tasting Notes: Brewdog: Tokyo: Rising Sun: Lowland Edition

Brewdog: Tokyo: Rising Sun: Lowland Edition (Scotland: Imperial Stout: 13.2% ABV)

Visual: Black and still. Fizzes brown but no real head.

Nose: Treacle toffee. Honey. Chocolate chews. Blueberry. Buttery shortbread. Black liquorice.  The chocolate flavours become more like an indulgent chocolate box as it warms. Distinct whisky aroma, starts slightly medicinal but smoothes shortly after pouring. Slight smoke and oak, but not long lasting. Toasted crumpets.

Body: Blueberry crumble. Thick chocolate fondue. Toffee. Milky coffee. Spiced blood orange. Very smooth. Glacier cherries.

Finish: Black cherry. Sweet sugar dusting. Milky coffee. Toasted marshmallows. Cranberry. Plums.

Conclusion: Less than four hundred bottles exist? Forget rare, this beer is bloody blue (A steak joke in a beer review, I am such a hack). A very sweet beer as well. Considering that the base Tokyo beer was hardly lacking in sweet and fruit flavours that isn’t a surprise, but this beer is just wallowing in it. Blueberry, plums, toffee, blood orange.

It is very fruity and sweet, the interesting point is that it still feels distinguished despite that. There is this whole crumpet/ toasted teacake/toasted marshmallow feel going on that makes for a dry toasted element without breaking the sweetness momentum. If you add to that the fact that all the chocolate elements feel like high class examples of such it does give an air of decadence to the proceedings.  A useful tool that just about manages to keep down what could have become quite sickly without it.

The base Tokyo marries quite well to the new flavours, possible because they are so close to the elements it already had itself. It does seems more evidently alcoholic, with the whisky aroma floating above the glass, but it  is still not harsh in its expression of its strength.

Very nice, on comparison I would give the edge to the Highland cask version, as that brought more varied set of flavour layers to the mix, while the whisky ageing for this has added but similar elements.  Despite that it has definitely changed for its time in the oak, not surpassing the original Tokyo, but carefully trading closely linked elements, taking the coffee down and the fruit up for a suitable enjoyable new beer. Nicely done.

Background:  Based on the original 12% ABV Tokyo, this has spent four years ageing in Lowland whisky casks. I very much enjoyed the Highland version of this, and the Tokyo* so I was looking forwards to this.  This lowland version was from a very small cask so under four hundred bottles were made. I am not an unbiased actor on Brewdog beers but I try my best.