Friday Brew Review: Dark Intrigue

There’s an argument to be made that individuals shouldn’t try to improve themselves through any means other than those that’ve been pre-approved In this mindset, personal evolution is certainly acceptable, but circumventing the system is not. You want to   push yourself to the very edge of your potential? Sure! Go for it! Make the most of your experience on Spaceship Earth! Just make sure to never, ever, consider redefining the limits that’ve been ascribed to you.

After all, if you stumble across a way to improve yourself that others aren’t hip to, well, that wouldn’t be fair. Right? In fact, some might even call that cheating.

But others…well, we call it innovative.

Think of the bad motherfuckers that Earth would’ve never seen   do awesome shit if they’d felt compelled to play by the rules. Robert Rodriguez wouldn’t have decided for himself that an action movie could be made for less than $10,000. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa wouldn’t’ve found the right supplements to give baseball fans the 1998 home run race. And perhaps Bruce Banner wouldn’t’ve ‘t acknowledged what’d happen to him after jumping into the path of a gamma bomb.

Sometimes being good just isn’t enough, even if you’re a director or a baseball player or a scientist. The bottom line is that if you can figure out a way to exponentially increase your talents, whether they’re limited or formidable, you’d be a fucking fool not to. Take whatever it is your good at, and rock it as hard as you can.

This is the very idea behind Dark Intrigue.

The folks at the Victory Brewing Company haven taken a page out of Bruce Banner’s book and given one of their beers the proverbial gamma-ray bath. The brew in question is Dark Intrigue, and it’s the result of aging Storm King Stout in bourbon barrels. As a fan of both beer and bourbon, I get amped whenever I hear about a brewery trying to inject some of smoky Kentucky-heat into their beer. So when I was at the liquor store and stumbled into this product of Victory Beers, I knew it’d be coming home with me.

It’s like eyin a smokin’ hot babe from across a bar. And then she winks at you. Even if you’re a garbage-eatin’, gap-toothed miscreant, you’re going to try your luck.

Curious about my newly acquired Dark Intrigue, I did some cursory Internet research. While most breweries are more than willing to rifle off a few paragraphs of gibber-jabber, Victory Beer clued me in with the following video:

So according to the man in the Phillies hat, Dark Intrigue is what happens when Storm King Stout picks up the vanilla notes and ethanol-heat of bourbon.

With the prospect of a superpowered beer in front of me, there’s only one thing to do – drank it all down.

The beer poured into my glass as a dark abyss of (apparently) syrupy goodness. The darkness of the ale was only offset by the beige hue of the head, which was actually more daunting than I would’ve anticipated. Even after waiting a couple minutes for it to settle, the head was still quite thick. (Full disclosure: I might’ve just botched the pour.) With that being said, Dark Intrigue is no misnomer and I found myself utterly captivated by opaque wonder.

As dictated by my pre-imbibin’ ritual, I took a hearty whiff of the brew. My schnoz detected a heavy dose of bourbon, curbed by a baked or roasted sweet somethin’-or-other. This beer definitely has an alcoholic quality to it, but it’s far from a straight-up spirit. My smell detector sang out, “Warning, R. Frankenstein, warning! The beer you’re going to drink is stronger than most of the beers you’ve already drank! You will get drunk!”

Game on!

Dark Intrigue is a fucking dangerous concoction because it is so damn tasty, drinkable, and intoxicating. The flavor of this once-barreled beauty is rich and complex, offering not only the darker qualities of a stout but also the smokiness of a bourbon. Additionally, I’d be negligent as an amateur brew-reviewer if I didn’t mention the hoppiness that seems to keep poppin’ onto my palate. The image that keeps running through my mind is that Stout and Bourbon got drunk, brought home Stout’s cute friend IPA, and fooled around on the couch in the warm glow of a lava lamp.

Summarily, there’s quite a bit goin’ on in terms of taste.

Again, this is a dangerous brew, and part of this can be attributed to the relatively light body. For a stout that was aged in hard liquor casks, Dark Intrigue goes down nice and smooth. I’m now at the tail-end of the entire 22-ounce bottle, and my gut doesn’t feel like it’s been filled with cement. Had I the energy, tolerance, or reckless spirit, I could keep on drinkin’ into the wee-hours of tomorrow. This betrays my initial ocular assessment, which had picked this beverage as being molasses-thick.

The Victory Brewing Company has crafted something really worthwhile in Dark Intrigue. It’s not the best bourbon stout I’ve ever had, but it’s also neither the worst nor the most expensive. This may be real small niche I’m speakin’ to here, but if you’re a fan of dark brews that’ve been aged in liquor casks, this is solid middle-of-the-road option.

Dark Intrigue is a mighty fine product: B+