Soft Xmas
Evil Twin Brewing

500 ml bottle, Cardinal’s great Yule beer tasting. ABV is 10.9%. Pitch black colour, moderate to low brown head. Strong aroma of roasted malts, chocolate, vanilla, mild coffee and sour cherries. The flavour has a distinct sourish fruity acidity from the cherries, also smooth chocolate. Some bitterness and wood in the finish. Maybe not well balanced, but interesting and fun to drink.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bottle pour at mrbubbler's tasting.

Pours an opaque black with a foamy dark khaki head that settles to wisps of film on top of the beer. Small dots of lace form around the glass on the drink down. Smell is of dark roasted malt, cocoa, and cherry aromas. Taste is much the same with chocolate covered cherry flavors on the finish. There is a mild amount of roasty bitterness on the palate with each sip. This beer has a lower level of carbonation with a slightly crisp mouthfeel. Overall, this is a good beer with some very tasty chocolate and cherry flavors.

 

 

 

Poured from a 16.9 oz bottle into a tulip glass. I decided to finally have this on my birthday to justify the $17 I paid for it.

Appearance: It's dark. The sizable head is dark tan, and the body is brown-black. The head retains pretty well. I notice after the pour it left a bit of sediment in the bottle, and much more suspended throughout the beer in the glass. That's a unique look.

Smell: I get some cherry pretty easily, a pleasant fruity smell. There's a mix of booze and chococlatey semi-sweet malt. Not bad.

Taste: It's a pretty complex flavor palette ... there's roasty, dry malt anchoring with "cherry on top," as the label promises. The booze becomes a kinda evident on the finish, in the process adding a kind of metallic flavor, but it's "warm" rather than "hot." There's a little bit of milk chocolate in there, too. Pretty nice.

Mouthfeel: Medium-bodied. Sweet and sugary up front, boozy in back. Modest carbonation.

Overall: Listen, it's a good beer -- but it's not worth the price. Bell's Cherry Stout is a much better value if you want a cherry-flavored stout.

 

 

 

 

Pours a very, very dark brown. Gorgeous ochre head, bubbly that settles out to a nice mottled crown. Decent lace. Colour is really quite gorgeous though.

Smells intense. Rich chocolatey aroma but a wood smoke note, loads of dark fruit reduction, raisins and prunes and a big pie spice note with traces of nutmeg and vanilla. Sweet; brooding and beautiful.

Taste is far more roasty, with bitter charry notes giving oak as well as some sour cherry character. Slight vinous, bit of smoke and some spicy prune as well. Plummy, cocoa notes and some pepper on the back. Dark and fruity; very interesting drop.

Slightly bitty feel and quite dry. Otherwise nice and fluid.

Lots of heavily-nuanced, variegated flavours here. Brooding, complicated beer that makes you want to love it, and maybe heal its pain a little.