Victory Storm King Stout

Great nose, burnt sort of double FES awesomeness going on from the first instant.

And indeed a rather nice progression of flavours, including a bunch of good choc / coffee / roast notes that work well in the style. What's different about this beer is the way they're presented - it feels like it's maybe backwards in a way, providing the comforting chocolate stout presence first up, before bitey aggressive roast smokiness second. The whole thing leaves you with a pretty powerful dry roasty mouth presence which is not unpleasant, but a bit different to the norm.

Good stuff here - perhaps not quite the traditional 'imperial stout' for mine tastewise, though it does slip through at an unobtrusive but substantial 9.1%. It's not that the taste or body is lacking - it just comes across as more like a hyper awesome full roasty FES party monarch than the sweeter and heavier, benevolent imperial king you were expecting.

Fun times to be a royal. 8.0

Victory Golden Monkey

Right. I have to say I had no idea what was lurking in this bottle what with the label, name, and walloping 9.5% ABV.

And yet I was still pretty surprised by the lightness of this: the head, the body, and strangely the taste itself.

Given this in isolation I think I'd call it some sort of Belgian witbier, primarily lemon and wheat based flavours, slight candy, not a lot else. The label bangs on about this being spiced; but I didn't get too much of that. The strangest thing is there's very little indication of the alcohol here - just a slightly sweet finish.

In this then it's a pretty impressive effort. But given the relatively uninspired flavours around it, it's just not that enjoyable. 7.0