Mission Brewery - Dark Seas

YARGH! AHOY mateys!!

Um, oh. Sorry. Just enjoying my Wednesday Night with a new beer. A new beer? But of course! It's that time of the week. When we creep past the half way point and can see the sweet glimmer of the weekend in the distance.

So tonight I decided to pick up a beer I thought I'd consumed before but much to my surprise, I haven't. Tonight I'm drinking a beer by Mission Brewery in San Diego, I'm drinking their Dark Seas. A 9.8% abv Russian Imperial Stout. I love Russian Imperial Stouts and I love saying goodbye to the early part of the week, so let's crack this beast open and get some 9.8% RIS goodness in us.

Dark Seas pours out a completely pitch black. There is absolutely no light shining through this beer, much like the depths of the sea. There was about a half finger of a mocha head, bordering on a straight brown color. The initial appearance of this beer has me excited. It pours out thick and viscus like a Russian Imperial Stout should be. No watered down bullshit here. The head doesn't stick around for long and kind of leaves behind a lacing the resembles the white wash from a wave crashing on the shore. This is looking great. Let's get the nose.

The very first thing I get on this beer is plum and dark fruits. Surprise the back of the bottle makes mention of notes of plum and port. There's definitely a port character here. The plum and figs are very prominent here. I'm getting a nice creamy character behind the port as well. There's some nice cherry notes coming through as well. There's some chocolate in here too. Both milk chocolate and dark chocolate. It's pretty sweet smelling. There's a nice vanilla and coffee character coming through. I'd compare it to a vanilla latte. There's also a nice chocolate covered raisin note here too as I let it warm a little. This beer smells delicious. Time to drink up.

Right away there's a nice creaminess. I'm getting quite a bit of vanilla on the front of the tongue. That's immediately followed by a port/plum character that I picked up on the nose. The plum isn't as strong here but it's there. Middle of the mouth you get the milk chocolate characters, dark chocolate, kind of a roasted coffee flavor. It's incredibly smooth. Back end of this beer you get more sweetness and a bit of an espresso character. There's vanilla on every level of this stout along with those dark fruits and port notes. I'm getting more raisin characters as the flavors sort of subside. This is an incredibly easy drinking RIS. 9.8%, there's next to no alcohol here on the nose or tongue. It's masked very well.

So overall, Dark Seas is a really nice surprise. I didn't go into this beer expecting a ton. I had previously had a couple of Mission beers and thought they were average at best. But Dark Seas has definitely got my attention. I'd highly recommend checking this one out.

Rating: A

My wife has dubbed this beer "Dark Grossness" So... yep.