From the back label:

”Brooklyn Black Ops does not exist. However, if it did exist it would be a robust stout …..aged for four months in bourbon barrels, bottled flat and re-fermented with Champagne yeast, creating big chocolate and coffee flavours with a rich underpinning of vanilla-like oak”.

Black Ops is a fun beer idea with a very serious side to it. Although Brooklyn Brewery jokingly deny all knowledge of it ever being made it they’ve obviously gone through a lot of trouble to create it, using time-consuming and unconventional techniques such as cask aging and bottle re-fermentation.

The result is a stealthy stout that is as hard to decipher as the Enigma code. It pours from a stylish corked champagne-like bottle an oily black with a stupendously thick and resilient cappuccino-frothy head.

There’s a definite double agent quality to the aroma, with the expected and welcome bitter chocolate, oak and coffee tones slightly double-crossed by subversive smells of contact glue and unripe green pears.

The stealthy part of this beer becomes evident in the mouth. For a stout (one of the more powerful beer styles out there) which has then been aged in Bourbon casks its body is incredibly light. Like a spy whose identity has been compromised it simply seems to vanish into thin air, leaving behind a trail of fruit snaps, rich bitter chocolate and molasses.

It’s this beer’s most remarkable achievement that it manages to camouflage its 11.6% of alcohol so well. The level of bourbon is perfect – just enough to complement the other flavours rather than detracting from them.

If you need a stout, if no one else can help, and if you can find a bottle then perhaps you can buy Black Ops.