Cerealiously (Count Chocula)
Black Bottle Brewery

L:. Pours a dark black with a medium tan head and nice lacing on the glass

S:. Sweet milk sugar, chocolate and marshmallow, not complex but smells like cereal.

T:. Sweet milk sugar, mixes with chocolate and marshmallow, quite reminiscent of cereal and milk.

F:. Slick body, medium body.

O:. A pretty solid if gimmicky stout.

 

 

 

 

 

Selling high, the playful brewers at Black Bottle quickly gobble up all the Count Chocula cereal to build a beer that celebrates the taste that we've all loved, whether you're a child, a mid-life crisis, or an old fart- this taste is as classic as it gets. But does the beer measure up?

Like any stout would, the pour is reasonably black with an opaque but onyx-like sheen, a creamy and mocha-stained head forms, and starts to weave those cereal webbings. As the nose hovers, the common stout character emerges with burnt bread and dark-roast coffee, but there's always that cocoa and cream character that suggests something else. Likewise its early taste is robust with burnt caramel and toast, french-press coffee and roasting walnut.

But as those dominant stout footprints embed on the palate, the tastebuds acclimate and those childhood flavors begin to emerge. Chocolate, grain and starch align on the tongue with a light cake batter character and a flare of whipping cream, vanilla and yogurt with a modest nod to residual milkshake sweetness. Though trending bitter and coffee-like the cereal's candy-like friendliness proves highly seductive.

Full, but suggesting a drier, sensible and more bitter finish than usual, the American-style stout relies on creaminess from cereal grain, added milk sugars and milk chocolate impressions to round out its aggressive tendencies. A finish and aftertaste of bittersweet chocolate and sweet cream win out and sell those Count Chocula flavors reasonably well.

 

this is delicious and inventive beer, part of the cereal series. a big milk stout here loaded with something like 50 pounds of count chocula for a 7 barrel batch. has to be good right? well it is. the base stout is really full bodied and pretty sweet from the milk sugar. nice roast though, and very smooth. the cereal is immediately apparent in the aroma, you get that dusty crackery cocoa thing right up front, sweet and artificial smelling, but pleasant in this context. the flavor is the cereal all the way, takes me back to my youth a bit, and the milk stout part of the stout is very interesting, almost like a bowl of cereal proper, creamy and sweet and very very chocolatey. not sure i would want to drink more than one of these, or if i even could, but its pretty cool how up front this awesome cereal is, and the fact that this is just one in a series. not sure which others they have done, but fruity pebbles, reeses puffs, and honeycomb all come to mind as potential additions to the series. well worth trying this one if you see it around.