Reviewed: Victory Storm King
Commercial Description: A thundering hop presence collides with massive espresso and dark chocolate flavors in our dense and full-bodied imperial.Rolling in like a tempest in a tankard, Storm King is dense and full-bodied, with deep, dark chocolate flavors of roasted malts under a massive hop aroma, Storm King will assault your senses and then soothe your soul. Malts: Three imported, 2-row malts. Hops: Whole flower American hops. ABV: 9.1%
Storm King is the ultimate beer. For years, Storm King was the only Imperial Black IPA available. Yes, long before Stone’s Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale debuted in 2007 as Stone 11th Anniversary Ale and popularized a whole new beer style, Storm King was arguably the first imperial stout to be hopped like an IPA – the original Imperial Black IPA from way back in 1998. Sure, someone somewhere probably beat Victory to it, but whatever that beer was, it was never packaged, distributed, or turned into a well-known brand that still exists today.
I sampled this from a 12 oz bottle that says it is best before 2022. Okay, maybe the beer will last that long in the bottle, but I’d personally rather drink it fresh. But wait, where’s the packaging date? Looks like Victory goofed. Storm King looks clear sepia colored coming out of the bottle but jet black once in the glass. Gigantic foam rises nearly out of the tulip glass. You can see in the picture with my regular pouring style, this beer gave me about 50% foam fill in the glass. Hey, I like it.
It’s obviously been too long since I drank this beer because I took one whiff and one swig and said, “oh **** that is good!” Storm King may be the most extreme beer possible that is still easily drinkable. It’s sitting here at 9.1% ABV and 85-100 IBUs, but is still approachable.
The aroma gives you that now classic Black IPA aroma of wet forest floor, ionized fresh air after a rainstorm, pine needles, toasted chestnuts, tree sap and hop resin. It’s juxtaposed with the dry hop character that gives you grapefruit rind, grilled pineapple, and grilled lemon. Wow.
A plethora of flavors dance in the mouth: 80% cacao chocolate bar, waxy black crayon, chocolate-covered blueberry, high-end espresso with lemon acidity, and ruby red grapefruit that’s been butane torched…grapefruit brûlée? It’s a perfect mix of sweet and savory all packaged in a highly-structured vehicle that is easily a 10 out of 10 bitterness-wise. It’s a hop addict’s dream. Whole flower hops do their magic here with so much kettle hop-derived bitterness matched with an oily, rich body that keeps it in check.
The body isn’t too heavy as the sugar content is medium-low with mountains of roasted malt and coffee coupled with powerful kettle hop bitterness. It’s aggressive but balanced. The mouthfeel is soft and silky allowing you to really go at this beer head-on with no sipping or beating around the bush like other mega beers. This one isn’t for sharing or cellaring or showing off at a tasting. This beer is for here and now, just a 1 on 1 exercise in Black IPA perfection. That higher 9.1% ABV doesn’t even show up until you’re about half-way through the glass. This beer is so aggressive and flavorful that the alcohol content is well-masked.
From a quick Google search, the recipe for this beer was given out publicly in 2013. It includes 77% 2-row pilsner malt, 12% 2-row Vienna malt, 5% roasted barley, 5% Carafa III, and 1% CaraAroma. Carafa III gives you those excellent espresso flavors while Vienna malt gives some extra mouthfeel and body. For hops, it uses 50% whole flower Cascade, 25% whole flower Chinook, and 25% whole flower Centennial. Since pilsner is my favorite base malt and Chinook is my favorite hop varietal, my love for Storm King is now making sense. Now, this recipe may be outdated now since the Victory website does not have any specifics.
My final thoughts: this beer is bitter, sweet, savory, acidic, rich, smooth, and aggressive. It’s the dessert course at a Michelin star restaurant. This beer needs to be in my Top 10 of all time. The best of the best.
April 7, 2018 @ 10:52 am
Thanks for detailed response. Yes, that clears it up. Cheers!
April 7, 2018 @ 9:19 am
Why would The Alchemist call their Beelzebub an Ameican Imperial Stout vs a Black IPA then? good reivew.
April 7, 2018 @ 10:47 am
Hi Eric,
Thanks for the comment. First of all, a brewery may call a beer any style they wish. Usually, professional breweries hit the styles right on the head. For newer breweries, many times they miss style guidelines completely or ignore them on purpose. This is all fine and dandy, but consumers may be misled. If a consumer sees IPA on a beer and pours it out of the glass and it is black, that is not going to go over well. Indeed, many IPAs from ten years ago would be categorized today as something like Red IPA due to excessive use of specialty malts. Ten years ago, there was not enough saturation in craft beer to warrant ten different sub-styles of IPA. But times have changed.
Now, let’s take a look at Storm King. Storm King debuted long before the craft beer boom. There was no reason at all to call this anything other than an imperial stout. However, it is kettle hopped and dry-hopped like an IPA. Today, this beer would be called and marketed as an Imperial Black IPA. Indeed, if Storm King was entered into a BJCP competition in the American Stout or Imperial Stout category, I personally would disqualify it because we now have more categories like Black IPA that fit this recipe. Rewind ten years ago, and Storm King would have been entered into Imperial Stout because Black IPA as a term had not been coined yet, and even if it had, there were not enough of them to warrant a separate style category.
As for this review, what I want to make very clear to anyone who has not had Storm King before is that this is much closer to Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous than it is to North Coast Old Rasputin or Great Divide Yeti. Storm King hasn’t updated the style on this beer as it is already nicely established. If they were to change the name to Storm King Imperial Black IPA, then consumers would believe that the old Storm King was discontinued and that a new version has taken its place. No one wants that. And so it remains marketed as Imperial Stout.
Regarding The Alchemist Beelzebub, I had this beer in Vermont and commented that in every way this is an Imperial Black IPA. Doesn’t matter what the brewery wants to call it, that’s what style it would need to go into for an official competition in my opinion. Breweries, again, can call a beer anything they desire. For the purposes of competitions, it doesn’t work that way as beers need to follow guidelines. It’s also my personal opinion that if you want consumers to continue buying your products, you need to label beers as accurately as possible style-wise. The Alchemist, in this sense, is taking American Stout to mean something that is very modern as it has been dry-hopped to hell with newer hop varietals much in the same way that Modern Times would call Blazing World an American Amber Ale even though it is just an IPA. It does not fit the guidelines, in my opinion, of what BJCP outlines for these styles. That is their own prerogative, but you have to be kidding yourself if you say, “This is not a Black IPA because the brewery told me that it is not.”
I hope that clarifies things.
December 26, 2017 @ 2:02 pm
Why do you call this a Black IPA. It’s an Imperial Stout. By recipe and the brewery?
December 26, 2017 @ 2:31 pm
Have you tried the beer before? Not being facetious, but this beer has been called an imperial stout since 1998 when there was no such thing as “Black IPA.” It makes it abundantly clear in the official description and I make it abundantly clear in my review that this imperial stout has incredibly assertive whole flower Pacific Northwest new-age, American hops varietals seeping out of it in every direction from the aroma to the flavor to the palate. This is not a regular imperial stout and any other brewery making this recipe today would call it an imperial Black IPA because that is what it is.
GT