FIBbernutter
Prairie Artisan Ales

12oz bottle poured into a goblet

A- pours jet black in color with a one-finger foamy dark khaki head that reduces to a ring

S- brownie batter, chocolate fudge, mocha cream, peanut butter, marshmallow cream. Undertones of vanilla wafers, caramel and oaky bourbon

T- super sweet chocolate brownie batter notes up front, along with chocolate fudge and caramel. MId-palate brings out the barrel, adding bourbon, oak, vanilla and coconut. The finish brings out undertones of peanut butter, as well as a super sweet fudgey chocolate note that lingers

M- medium-heavy body with moderate carbonation leads to a foamy mouthfeel that turns creamy into a warming finish

O- checks all of the boxes of a pastry stout, but does get a bit cloying about midway through the bottle

This is a tasty candy-ass stout but far from the best from Prairie. I recently had a mostly flat Fibadise which was still a clear level up from this offering. The issue is the sweetness here kind of just obliterates any nuance or balance, and it’s kind of an amorphous sweetness in nature - you can’t really pick out any peanut butter or other individual additions and even the barrel notes seem subdued and generally just smooshed by sugars. Very slightly under carbed and it’s detrimental with this degree of sweetness. As the beer warms and opens some welcome and necessary bourbon notes make themselves known but it’s a little late, failing to pull this beer from the novel and “good” to the truly memorable and exceptional.