Hunter Cherry
18th Street Brewery - Gary Taproom

 

 

EBF Last Saturday Dark black with an off white head that shows great retention. Rich roast and chocolate aroma and flavor with a bit of sweetness. Cherry could really be a bit more forward.

 

 

 

 

I have enjoyed all the variants of Hunter that I've had the chance to try (BBA, vanilla, coconut) but sometimes I feel they could be more forward on the stated adjunct. Either way they work for me, because I love the Hunter base. Well see how this one goes. Pouring from a 16 oz. can into a pint glass this beer pours out pitch black and forms an amazingly dense pinky worth of dark caramel colored crown. The smell is sweet, roasty & chocolately with a slight cherry tartness smell to it. I always love Hunter because of how huge it is for a milk stout. Even the smell is huge for one. The taste comes in with slight cherry mixing through the chocolate sweetness. The cherries are really balanced, which is a good thing. In most stouts with cherries I've had it seems to be too cloying. Either way too sweet or too tart for the stout. In this one the cherry is just slightly tangling with a great milk stout base. Wildly creamy, even for a milk stout, with a dry, warm finish.

 

 

 

 

Appearance: This is a bottle from a trade a while back so might be upwards of two years old; I say that as it was a slow gusher - of course, the flip side is that the head was huge and the lacing was copious; the liquid was the expected fudge brown color

Smell: Black cherry dominates; milk chocolate underneath

Taste: Black cherry flavors dominate the taste buds, too; the milk chocolate emerges in the middle and there is a touch of tartness in the finish; mostly sweet, however

Mouthfeel: Medium to full body; overcarbonated

Overall: This might have been a bit better when fresher and I know lactose can be volatile so I should have consumed this earlier; still, the flavor profile was maintained, even if the carbonation was a bit much; fun to drink for the first glass but after a while the sweetness became too much

Thanks, FlandersNed, for the opportunity