This release is getting aged enough to be pretty good. Wine notes come out pretty clearly. Still very roasty and strong.

A yearly tradition, trying this beer when it's far too young. Strong, umami chocolate roast with fruity, round red wine notes around the edges. Needs quite a bit of smoothening, but you can see how this could get (much) better.

Ack. I think I'm giving up on "young" Abyss for a while. This was strongly alcoholic and complex in a variety of directions that all led to bitter. These beers age for the better, but this wasn't there.

This beer is always better aged, and moreso on draft. Very smooth but very boozy. Roast coffee with hints of cherry or blackcurrant on the finish.

Good stout nice roasyiness weird booziness

Like the 2013, but more woody, and all that implies.

A significant step down from the 2010. The flavors are less smoothed out, and the finish is almost ashy. On its own, it might have done much better, but context was not kind.

Best of the bunch - very similar to the 2009 but with a pleasant vinous tang added to it. This might be the only Abyss where I actually could detect the wine barreling. I don't know if the finish was any less woody, but it felt less bitter.

Very smooth, very woody.

Had to try this on nitro. The beer is expressed totally differently this way, with the wine notes and other sour flavors coming to the forefront. It's still rather opaquely roasty, although it doesn't come across as ashy as with CO2. Didn't sense much bourbon. The nitro does give this a bit of a weird, vegetal overtaste which prevented me from falling in love, but it made me wonder how this version would age.

An extremely dark stout, with a hint of red wine in the flavor and some roasty smoke. There is an extreme amount of dry wood flavor in this beer, which builds up in bitterness over time. Makes it hard to love, but (as usual with The Abyss) probably worth trying again after some aging.

Dark and roasty. Dangerously close to tasting burnt though.

A lot of what I said about the 2011 still holds true for this version. It's even more smoothed out, with vanilla being a dominant overtone, but not sweet at all. Smooth wood and coffee with faint tartness build up to become a little bit too much wood over the course of the glass. No noticeable spirit flavors.

Starring Sigourney Weaver.

Faint sour smell. Sour taste start but with thin body quickly transitions to pleasant coffee bitters and roasted chocolate finish. Does not leave mouth tacky.

A lot going on here, which now seems normal for Deschutes's high gravity brews. Aging has mellowed out the vanilla-cherry-bourbon flavors in the middle (making it better than the young 2012 I've had), but the transitions aren't smooth and there's a sharp wood quality that reminds me of my less favorite features of, say, the Yetis.

Strong coffee & wood in the flavor -- too much wood for me today. Nice fragrance. On any other day...