The can freely states that this is an imperial stout. However, this is clearly a dessert beer, and imperial stouts don't tend to be particularly sweet. Among the listed ingredients are oat milk and milk sugar, so they could probably have called this a milk stout, right? I'm not entirely sure why they didn't. Maybe there's some nuance that differentiates the milk sugar from a lactose sugar, but I'm just going to move on and drink this beer.
The beer pours with a significant amount of head, but it is counterintuitively a mass of very large bubbles with some smaller bubbles intertwined. The color itself is brown. This is a thick, mud brown that I would have expected a brown ale to have brought. The aroma is nothing like a brown ale, and it features raspberry, vanilla, and a toasted malt lurking underneath.First sip tastes like they tried to cram 10 pounds of beer into a 5 pound bag. The raspberry is slathered all over the other ingredients, so they become very muddled as the tongue tries to discern what flavors it should be tasting. Vanilla peeks out, and the dry, bitter beginning of the beer definitely gets sweetened by the sugars and raspberries by the end, but it's not a smooth experience. A lingering seared cocoa tells me that there should be a lot more inside this beer than the raspberries are letting through.
Tip-in is raspberries, vanilla, and an unexpected sweetness right up front with very little carbonation active. The middle is silky smooth with the raspberries taking a backseat to the sweetness, cocoa, vanilla, and the crust malt. The finish is a swell of bitterness with the return of the seemingly overwhelming raspberries as the whole drink turns dry for the trail off.
Bottom Line: I can see its beauty, but it has work to do.
2.25/5