Big Bad Baptist - Cherry Bliss
Epic Brewing Company

 

 

The chocolate and burnt elements are dominated by the cherry, which is a bit much. And the barrel taste makes it all a bit like cherry flavored medicine.

The cherry aroma is nearly overpowering on the nose. It's both promising of what might be ahead yet suspicious, as one has to wonder how much artificial cherry flavoring may have been used instead of real cherries.

It definitely delivers on the palate. There's very little sharpness from the cherries; tart Michigan cherries, these are not. However, if it's artificial flavoring ... it works. It's delicious. Chocolate is restrained; if they were shooting for a chocolate cherry cordial kind of thing, they missed. Whiskey is similarly restrained, limited mostly to neutral grains and oak, and although it works, part of the entire BBB "thing" is being a whiskey barrel aged imperial stout.

Overall, I think this beer is simultaneously delicious and underwhelming. I am a huge fan of cherries - it's one of my favorite foods and flavors - so I'm biased here, and anyone looking for more richness or complexity will likely walk away with a lower rating than I'm scoring it. However, the entire premise is "Cherry Bliss," and again, other than lacking in chocolate flavor, it certainly delivers.

Poured into a Fremont small snifter. Pours a dark root beer brown, nearly opaque in the glass, with a half finger khaki head that dissipates to a thin film with light lacing. Aroma is cherry from the can opening through the pour; a closer smell detects some dark malt, but bright cherry juice is the main component. Flavor is mild, dark toasted malt and cherry juice; the cherry flavor varies a bit during the sip from a sweet cherry cola profile to bitter cherry. Sweet/sour cherry finish with hints of chocolate. Medium bodied with light to moderate creaminess. This is the most idiosyncratic of the BBBs I've had over the years and has the lightest malt depth of any of them. I'm a huge fan of the base malt in these, but it is subsumed into the cherry flavor. I was a bit put off at first by the lack of balance, but even after finishing the first full taste, I kinda like this one. The malt is light, but there is a pleasant chocolate sweet cherry floating in cherry juice character here that was enjoyable. Not a great flavored stout, but a good cherry beer with some appealing suggestions of chocolate in the background. Kind of a miss, but I liked enjoyed it. Not as sweet as I feared. I'm not a huge fan of strong fruit flavors in stouts, but this reversal of stout in a fruit beer suited my palette. Lot number with no date, but I'm guessing late 2024 for this one.

Poured from a pint can my son got us into two rocks glasses.

Look: Black, with a small tan head that pretty quickly dissipated into a foam ring, with finely-bubbled lacing.

Nose: Maraschino cherries, totally.

Attack: Initially the dark roast, followed almost immediately by the whiskey barrel and the cherry.

Finish: Bitterness from the dark roast to balance the sweetness of the cherry flavoring.

Mouthfeel: Thick, with just enough carbonation.

Overall: Complex, reasonably well balanced, sweet but not cloying. Actually, a fairly good recovery drink after my marathon training run this afternoon.

i used to look so forward to these, but the trends in recent years have not been awesome with this series, more desserty and pastry-like, more forced and less natural, and the last few rounds have even given up the indelible personality of the iconic base beer to the added ingredients, which for something of this magnitude is a bit of a cardinal sin. even how they word it, cherry flavors and other natural flavors added, like thats basically saying hey we didnt use any actual cherries in this, which is not what this is about, feels cheap to me, frustrating even, ive been loving the baptist and its variants for as long as i can remember, but it now seems unfit for the cellar when it used to be encouraged, i dont know, the sky is clearly falling. this is over the top cherry, sweet and syrupy, unnatural, to the point of being almost cough medicine, i mean it tastes good and people will like it, but the discerning palate that has been with these for a long time will wish for something a little more authentic. the pros are that the body and the cocoa element are still fully here, this has a chocolate dipped cherry vibe, dark and earthen and fudge-like, but the sweetness rises up and is totally over the top, the cherry lingers longer than anything else, fruit punch, cherry cordial, red popsicle. the whiskey barrel element is really slight, more oak than whiskey, but subtle vanilla is in play and its nice with the dark malt here, but its nothing like it used to be, not a ton of room for nuance with this much syrupy cherry in play. i dont get the coffee in the way that used to define these, bit there is some bitterness and even an astringent element. it does have good carbonation too, especially for the style, which is needed to lighten this. on the whole its much sweeter than just about any of them have been, and this feels almost throwaway and uninspired in a way id never thought i would see from this series. maybe i am being too harsh, like it does taste good, but if you have the best of them as reference point, its a long way away. i worry the best days of this series are long behind us now. this is a cherry bomb, but the base stout presents as vacuous and the lack of fruit authenticity is real obvious, the sugar is over the top, and we lose the depth, the barrel, and just about everything else but the cocoa element to the cherry. one of my least favorite variants ive ever had, as much for what it seems to signal than for how it actually drinks...

Look: It pours very dark brown with a tan head. It has low head retention.

Smell: Very strong cherry aroma up front. The cherry is so strong that it pretty much dominates the entire aroma.

Taste: Cherry is the strongest flavor with some roast and chocolate. There are some whiskey elements in the back ground with very low levels of dark fruit.

Feel: It has a full body with strong alcohol warming.

Overall, it's basically about the cherry for this beer. It is a bit too dominant in the flavors and overwhelming in the aroma. A little more balance could have made this be excellent.