One day, while we were brewing one of our first test brews a Panda, travelling with his knapsack full of sichuan peppers, got stuck in our brewing kettle. We didn’t get him out. Only when using soya sauce as lubrication we finally realeased the poor creature. This egocentric panda though (yes they look cute, but they really are lazy, egoistic bastards!) claimed it was our mistake and demanded a few bottles as ransom. He wasn’t planning on moving any further until we ‘do him right’.
A while later we got a message from the Imperial Panda of China that his missionary gave him a bottle of our Stoute Panda (directly translated as Bad Panda) letting us know how impressed he was with our intent to brew a stout including the real flavour of the sichuan pepper. And that is when he demanded us to brew something stronger, more holy, more worthy. Then the Imperial Panda was born.
Okay, basically we just brewed a stout using oriental supplements, specifically soya sauce and sichuan pepper and were very pleased with the outcome. We thought it would be even better if we used the sichuan pepper flavours in an even stronger version, so it became an imperial.
