Avery - Out of Bounds Stout

Tonight's beer comes to us from Avery Brewing - this is their year-round American Stout offering.  Avery boasts that this stout is big, roasty, and takes flavor to the extreme.  That is certainly true of some of their other brews (Maharaja, The Beast), but this should be a bit tamer than those meaner beers.  Specs register at 6.3%ABV, with 51 IBUs and lots of dark malts in the grain bill.

The label on the bottle depicts an extreme downhill skier going down an 'out of bounds' run.  I accidentally did that during a college snow-boarding trip in Park City, UT about 5 years ago - it was terrifying.  Actually, it was a double-black diamond that was "poorly" marked, but there were rocks and trees everywhere, so it seemed out-of-bounds enough for me.  Needless to say, I spent most of that run on my ass.  But I digress!  The label design is cool, as expected from Avery.  This pours dark ruby black and consumes all the light around it.  The aroma is full of roasty chocolate malts and coffee beans, and burnt toast.  The flavor starts off with those dry chocolate malts - it reminds me of burnt bread crust.  Then comes some hop bitterness that tries to balance things out, but is actually kind of unwelcome and leaves a sticky off-flavor that lingers.  The aftertaste almost reminds me of old, stale coffee.  The carbonation is fine, and the texture is stickier than expected for a stout. 

Overall Rating:  (3.0 out of 6.0)  Honestly, this beer was a little disappointing.  It provided some of the nice roasty flavors initially, but the second half of the beer was full of burnt, old, stale coffee that lingered on the palate.  Not a terrible beer, just left me with a 'blah' impression.