Chocolate Vanilla Cherry Stout
Bell's Brewery - Eccentric Café & General Store

 

Had a sampler of this on tap at Bell's All Stouts Day. The cherry character is tart, otherwise imagine a chocolate covered cherry bonbon and that's what you taste in this beer. It's spot-on to what I suspect the brewer was aiming for.

Where one sees complexity another sees conflict. That's how balance works especially when combining two very polarizing favors in equal proportions into a beer. Bell's brewers chooses roast and tartness on a bed of sweet, creamy stout for one such culinary dialogues.

Very dark brown, even flirting with black, Chocolate Vanilla Cherry Stout pours with a dense sandy stained blanket of froth. As its dark roast coffee influence rises to greet the nose, a quick follow up of tart dark cherries adds complexity to the nose before both aromas are brought together with chocolate undertones. Sweet on the tongue, a medium weight measure of caramel, cream and chocolate frame an early taste for the malt.

As the dark and decadent ale rolls along the middle palate, the sweetness dissolves away methodically and leaving behind the cocoa, coffee and walnut earthy roast. A certain soilish quality pulls from the roast and awaits the bright tang of cherries. Deep, dark and robust in their taste, their accompanying tartness rides alongside of the roast for a bitter and tart interplay in a late palate of chocolate covered cherries.

Vanilla softness keeps the cocoa character of roast seeming sweeter and softer like milk chocolate as it helps to pull together the flavors of cherry tartness and grain roast to keep those impressions of chocolate covered cherries seeming dessert-like and appealing to the sweet tooth.

 

 

 

 

Pours black, mahogany color on the edges, with a tan head. Dark chocolate and cherry aromas, the vanilla comes through on the taste to complement the dark chocolate and tart cherry flavors. A nice dessert stout, I’d like to try this again as just that.