**add water for best results** Blind taste test - color is a nice medium amber. Aroma is very strong and ethanolic with rye spice. Taste is at first a gentle caramel with a quickly arriving sharp rye spice with some tobacco (?) and herbs at the finish. Upon reveal, the finishing note in question is barley and some of the sweet/nutmeg/dark chocolate notes are there but subtle. All in all a little too much punch and not enough backbone… 2.5 on its own… added a splash of water and a lot of the heat dissipated, giving way to more of the sweeter, maltier flavors. Still only a 2.75 with water added