Four Seasons Of Mother Earth - Autumn 2020
Mother Earth Brew Co.

 

 

a barrel aged imperial salted caramel oatmeal stout, a mouthful in more ways than one. its got some flavor added to it, the salted caramel piece, and its a lot, to me too much, covers up in aroma and flavor any nuance of the base beer or the barrels, and makes this diabetic and sort of overdone to me, not as refined as the best beers in this series, and a step behind the most recent big stouts they have done for sure. it pours pretty flat from the pint can, a crazy format for a beer like this, murky deep brown and viscous with just a little tan fizz at the edges. the aroma is literally like browned butter, rich and fatty to me, that aspect of the caramel is way out front, some vanilla and oak and brown sugar sweetness too, and not as much deep roasted barley as something like this should have, more sweet middling chocolate and caramel maltiness, a subtle yeast element too. the flavor is so sugary, but up front the first thing i taste, just like the nose, is this cooked butter element, really weird, it seems off to me, like something artificial added, this would be better without it, but its still not great, starchy from the oats and palate coating but no smoother in feel to me, the barrel treatment makes it boozy but doesnt add a ton of depth or woody mellowness, and the sugar is remarkable. one cool feature is the salt, which kind of dries my tongue out on the swallow as my teeth start to decay from residual sugar, like that this can do both at the same time is pretty cool, but the flavor of the beer overall is neither cohesive or well balanced, and the need for a bolder dark roast element is obvious. i had much higher hopes for this, especially after being so impressed with other recent iterations of this series. in the future they need less emphasis on a gimmicky flavor like salted caramel, and more focus on the base beer and attention to detail, just my opinion, but i couldnt finish this, too much buttery sugar everywhere. i will give them credit, it tastes like liquid salted caramel, and if thats what you want, than you may love this, but there just isnt enough around it to make this particularly appealing to me...