Collaborations Are For Lovers
Stillwater Artisanal Ales

 

 

This beer just does not come together as the flavors of mango, coffee and vanilla do not compliment each other at all. As a matter of fact they fight with each other and make it father difficult to drink. The mango is too sweet and comes off as artificial. Too thin bodied for an imperial stout.

 

Cohesiveness is a virtue for anything including beer. So is complexity. However blending tastes does not necessarily translate to cohesiveness, nor to complexity, as is the case here.
Too smokey - the sweetness of the mango is underlying but feels out of place. It's a bit like having a too sweet very dark chocolate - the two just don't really go together.
Great feel though.

This deep brown beer has a milky thick consistency and smells like coffee and caramel. I was pleasantly surprised by the light mango taste; its mostly vanilla and coffee flavor is delicious and complements the sweeter fruity notes well.

 

Pours not as dark or thick as an imp stout especially one pumping 16%! But nose is wonderful w/ coffee , slight mango and hints of vanilla ..Taste follows nose ..Not a bad collab and damn tasty

2018-08-05
16oz can served in a pint glass. No dates I can see.

Pours a deep dark reddish-brown with a medium head and moderate to low carbonation. Smell is chocolate, coffee, alcohol.

Taste is alcohol burn, cherries, burnt malts and/or coffee.

Mouthfeel is kind of watery. Overall...it's not terrible, but it's not that good. Drinks a bit like a mixed drink.

16 oz can poured into a Pilsner glass.

Appearance
Mahogany brown with ruby highlights. Short head dissipates quickly. Good clarity.

Nose
Coffee, S'mores, graham cracker, vanilla, and chocolate fudge.

Taste
Medium roast coffee grounds and overripe mango. Baker's chocolate and earthy roast. Lactose and vanilla cream sweetness.

Mouthfeel
Medium-light bodied, sweet, and oily.

Overall
The mango and coffee flavors are weird, but I respect that. Cheers!

The CANQuest (tm) rambles & rumbles on with some selections from Stillwater Artisanal Ales today. It will be a strange admixture of styles, types & flavors, but variety is the spice of life. It should be interesting.

From the CAN: "Imperial stout brewed with Mango, Coffee and Vanilla"; "Label By Marke Saaremets/Pouala".

Sheesh! A mere 16% ABV. This is a session beer, for sure! I was surprised, on the Crack!, when it revealed itself to be a brimful craft CAN. I would have thought that they would short-fill the CANs, but this was a nice surprise, given its exorbitant price. I employed a slow, gentle Glug because I did not want to chance losing even one precious drop. It fizzed and foamed as I poured, forming a brief finger of light-tan head with poor retention that quickly faded to wisps. Color was Dark Brown to Very Dark Brown (SRM = > 27, < 34) with mahogany highlights & NE-quality clarity. Hmm. Nose smelled heavily of coffee and vanilla as well as an unidentified peppery spiciness. Hmm. Mouthfeel was medium, but thin for this style. The taste was rather weak, like watery coffee, but with a pronounced alcohol burn. Warming, I began to taste the mango, but the vanilla was getting lost in the heat. Finish was dry, but mostly due to the unrelenting alcohol heat. I CANnot help but wonder what the intentions were behind this collaboration. It was really boozy, the coffee did not translate well, the adjuncts either did not mesh or were lost in the intensity & the cost was both prohibitive and unwarranted for what I got from it.

Not sure what others like about this. Super boozy which I like but just not good in my opinion. Expensive too.

L: Poured from a tallboy can to a pint glass. Had a dark, mahogany brown color and a thick, opaque consistency. There was a half inch of foamy, tan-colored head that lasted a below average amount of time. Very good lacing.

S: A nice aroma of coffee, malt, tropical fruit, vanilla, and chocolate.

T: Tasted of a fair amount of malt (present throughout), a surprising amount of tropical fruit (mango), light milk chocolate notes, and a hint of vanilla. This is one of the more interesting imperial stout flavors I've tried recently. At first the mango sounds like a bad idea, but for some reason it works. High ABV% is barely noticeable. Pretty tasty.

F: A fair amount of carbonation with a smooth, yet dry, finish. Medium-bodied.

O: An unusual beer, but definitely drinkable. Worth a look.

lots of mango, super robust coffee with some nice vanilla to even it out

Collaboration with Sleeping Giant and Logan House coffee... 3/28/18 canning...

Pours a rather translucent medium brown, but in the oversize snifter looks dark brown-black with translucency around the edges... Center-pour produced a thin finger of brief tan head which was reduced to a thin collar for the rest of the way... I'm not sure how much of a fan I am, but the beer delivers on the advertised ingredients: mango, vanilla, and coffee... The coffee has a mildly roasted aroma with milk and sugar added kinda flavor; mango's fruitiness come through on the nose and as a sweet juice on the palate; and vanilla weaves its way though all of this... The body is fairly light, sweetness at the fore, no real bitterness... Carbonation feels absent, and typical stout characteristics like dark malt roastiness are suppressed by the mango coffee juice... High abv is well-hidden... I dunno - probably not my thing for a stout: too thin-bodied, too fruity, and too sweet without much by way of bitter roast in counterpoint, BUT, not a bad beer, taken as a unique beer that doesn't conform to typical style expectations... Perhaps this beer would've been better suited to a DIPA format?

16oz can. Canned On 03/28/18. Pours a blackish dark brown with 2 inches of frothy brown head. Some lacing. The aroma is mostly coffee and vanilla with some roasted malts and earth. Caramel malts and tobacco. The taste is where the mango finally comes out. Light and sweet coffee, cappuccino, vanilla, roasted malts and some chocolate. Nowhere near as boozey as I expected by a beer at 16%. Sweet vanilla and coffee finish with a bit more mango. This beer is weird as hell but somehow works very well. Very light body for the style. Moderately carbonated. A pricey, strange beer that was worth buying 1 can of. Probably wouldn’t buy more but it’s quite good and glad I got to have it.