Beer · Medium strength
Imperial Stout
Espresso, dark chocolate, and gravity. A beer you sip from a snifter.
How to order it: Barrel-aged versions drink like dessert and land like whiskey.
Flavor profile
The proper serve
- Snifter or teku
- Serve at 50–55°F — let it warm
- Sip; this is the nightcap beer
- Pairs: chocolate, blue cheese
- Barrel-aged versions age for years
The story
Eighteenth-century London brewers, shipping stout across the Baltic to the Russian court, made it strong and heavily hopped so it would survive the journey — and legend holds that Catherine the Great was notably fond of the result. The 'imperial' in the name is that customer. The style nearly vanished in the twentieth century, kept barely alive by a few English brewers, until American craft beer adopted it as a canvas for maximalism. Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout, first brewed in the early 1990s, added whiskey barrels to the equation and invented a release-day ritual of lines around the block. Espresso, bittersweet chocolate, double-digit alcohol: a czarina's nightcap, democratized.
Adjacent pours
Carajillo
Cocktail
Espresso over Licor 43 — Mexico City's favorite way to end dinner and restart the night.
Vieux Carré
Cocktail
Rye, cognac, vermouth, Bénédictine, two bitters — the French Quarter, stirred.
Espresso Martini
Cocktail
Vodka, coffee liqueur, fresh espresso. The drink that says the night isn't over.