“Our annual release of Jumping the Shark is always super exciting here at Moon Dog! It’s our opportunity to make the biggest, most bad-ass, delicious beer we can think of. We jam in as much flavour as possible to create something really ridiculously special. This year we thought we’d chuck this huge imperial stout into vanilla barrels, wait a while… then whack it into maple syrup barrels, wait some more… all just for the fun of double barrel aging it. Bloody genius!’
Glassware: Snifter.
Appearance: As expected it’s black as midnight with a covering of loose bubble which reduced instantly. Sparse lacing as it subsides.
Aroma: The barrels do a lot of the talking – the maple barrels especially with its mouth watering caramelised sweetness, brown sugar and toffee. The vanilla barrels are slightly less definitive although they still offer a gorgeous creamy sweetness. And then we have the formidable impy stout notes of charred malt, licorice, dark chocolate and leather underlining it all. Ooph!
Flavour: Spicy maple, vanilla, treacle, toffee, dense oak and milk chocolate lead the charge. Although it displays some subtle charred and roasty notes it seems to be lacking a little in the depth department. Guys like mollasses, espresso and dark chocolate are either MIA or too mild to pick up. Anywho, it finishes nice and roasty with a well drawn out sweetness.
Mouthfeel: A little too lean for our liking. They’ve hidden the 12.2% ABV incredibly well though. And quite a smooth creamy texture they’ve landed on as well.
Overall: It’s exciting to see MD release another vintage of what we believe to be their best line of beers. We finally see what they’re doing too…releasing a JTS on every odd year. Thankfully we’ve got another 5 of these in the cellar to get us through to 2021!