The label reads, "This stout used to be called 'Rasputin,' but the people who make 'Old Rasputin' in California thought you were too dumb to tell the two products apart and threatened to sue us for trademark infringement. Think about that when you're looking for a way to spend your hard-earned beer money."So here's what I think about that: I am exactly too dumb to not think the two beers might be from the same brewer. I might know were I a beer geek, er, I mean beer collector, but alas, I'm only a troglodyte, and one who quite possibly is about to sound like my grandfather: you don't open a coffee shop with the word Starbucks in it and think they're going to feel pretty swell about that.
I am reading great things about this beer, which, incidentally, showed up conveniently near closing time last night with Izzy and Kristina. Izzy offered the beer, and Kristina brought me four eggs from her chickens, which is also awesome. So we ventured into this Russian Imperial Stout. Here are some tasting notes posted about it: raisins, licorice, cocoa, coffee, prunes, molasses, anise...all good things. What I tasted was something between band-aids and just a general antiseptic-ness. At first I thought it tasted like lint, but no, it was definitely band-aids.
I happened to run into Mike The Beer Guy while in Whole Foods today, and told him I tasted this. He had the same experience with it, and in two different sizes. He said it got infected. Which I guess is good, because it can treat its own infection with itself.