Please Sir S’more Stout
Parallel 49 Brewing Company

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 19 of the Parallel 49/Central City advent calendar. 341ml bottle.

Pours totally black with a very thin head of loose brown foam that leaves a thin ring of melting glacier lace as it recedes.

Smells delicious. Chocolate and marshmallow. Lurking alcohol.

Tastes like s'mores, all right. Milk chocolate and roasted marshmallow, raisins dusted with brown sugar, faint licorice and detectable hops.

Feels thick, smooth and creamy. Heavy body with very soft carbonation. Finishes sweet.

Verdict: Highly recommended. Didn't get much graham cracker, but that's fine.

 

 

 

341ml bottle, day 19 of the 2015 Craft Crossing Calendar, a 'collaborative' effort once again between Parallel 49 and Central City brewing. Oliver Twist is not specifically a Christmas-themed story, but the marketing blurb on the label tries to link the eponymous summertime camping treat to the gifts of the biblical Magi - go figure.

This beer pours a solid black hole, with ever so slight basal mahogany edges, and two fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and fairly creamy brown head, which leaves some sparse and spindly skeletal lace around the glass as it slowly recedes.

It smells of melted marshmallows, subtle milk chocolate, grainy caramel malt, a bit of free-range lactose sugars, indistinct dark orchard fruit, and a strange hint of phenolic plastic. The taste is bready, doughy caramel malt, stale marshmallows, reduced brown sugar, bittersweet cocoa, a not so Graham-oriented wet crackery note, muddled black licorice, a touch of wet ash, and plain leafy, weedy, and slightly perfumed floral hop bitters.

The carbonation is quite light on its weakly frothy feet, the body a sturdy medium-heavy weight, and genuinely smooth, with a sense of creaminess to come as it verily warms. It finishes sweet, but not overly so, the creamed vanilla thing aiding and abetting the lingering caramel and cocoa mainstagers, sure, but the licorice and restrained booze do well in their off-setting stances.

Overall, not a bad flavoured stout, however, the exact combo they were going for here isn't quite a fait accompli - the faltering in the Graham Cracker phase means that I never get that particular sense of backyard fire-pit confection that we were only enjoying less than a couple months ago - damnnnnn. Anyways, the big ABV is sneakily integrated, and I shall have no problem enjoying the rest of this one.

 

A: black with small tan head, dissipates quickly
S: slight alcohol, roasted malts (like graham crackers?),slight smoke, lactic sweetness, as it warms-up sour cherry sweetness
T: follows nose, clean finish
F: heavy, sticky lips, moderate carbonation
O/H: Nice dessert beer, call it an Imperial Milk Stout