Dessert Storm
Gun Hill Brewing Company

Black with beige, quickly disappearing head. Coffee, roasted malt, smoke, vanilla, and dark fruits in aroma. Taste follows. Malty base and decent roasted bitterness at the end.

Poured into a tulip.
The appearance was a thick dark black color capped by a two fingers worth of off-white to tan foamy head. This slid off at a good pace. Slight messy lace ran here and there.
The aroma had a huge blend of thick sweet and roasty coffee beans with milk chocolate and cake-like notes. Good amount of dark fruits settle in on the background.
The flavor meshes wonderfully between the roast and milk chocolate. Not so cake-like here but the dark fruits show some strength. Mild aftertaste of milk and dark fruits.
The mouthfeel was about medium bodied with a fair sipping quality about it. ABV felt appropriate. Carbonation felt a bit under but I wasn't bothered. Finish had a good stable roastiness with sweetness from the dark fruits and milk chocolate
Overall, very nicely done American imperial stout.

The beer pours a Pitch Black with a large muddy brown head. It has medium low carbonation. The beer smells of baker’s chocolate, bark, molasseses, and wood. It is very dark and robust with baker’s chocolate, bark, molasses, wood, with a bitter bite. It’s full bodied but the adjuncts are getting lost. This beer didn’t work well for me, I didn’t get the dessert adjuncts of marshmallow and cinnamon it was very dark and bitter.

 

 

 

Ah, a new "kitchen sink" imperial stout by a small NY brewery I have had very few experiences with before... this should be quite the doozy! Dessert Storm is, according to Gun Hill's site, a "S'mores inspired imperial stout" brewed with cocoa powder, cinnamon, toasted marshmallows, lactose, oats and vanilla beans. You like adjuncts? This is your beer! What does cinnamon have to do with a s'mores? Who cares! Put it in!

The pour here is fairly intense with a dark motor-oil black liquid building up in my glass with full opacity. Yeah, this is very dark. Nothing gets through the body on this one, and the deep mocha head seems pretty impenetrable as well. Though it only really ever reaches about a finger-and-a-half, it still possesses an intensity that impresses quite handily. The surface is dotted by darker islands of foam and there seem to be some nice legs here. Overall, this is quite a nice looking beer, and one which definitely falls into the category of "scary stout" for me.

The nose here is pretty rich, with lots of deep dark fruit, roasted coffee and hearty, earthy cocoa wafting upwards. I'm surprised I don't get very much of the adjuncts here, but perhaps they were trying to be more subtle with them due to the sheer variety of additional ingredients present. Might be for the best, but the nose here doesn't come close to some other "s'mores stouts" I've had in terms of the overall composition. Definitely lots of cocoa with some light notes of the spicy cinnamon as I focus more on figuring out the separate components going on here. Interesting nose... I don't think it quite pushes what the brewery wanted to accomplish, but it also seems well-constructed; if I went into this just being told it was an "imperial stout," I'd be confused at some of the elements I'm picking up here, so the adjuncts must not be completely lose.

On the tongue, this has big flavors of roast and husky cacao married with some light sweetness toward the finish. At first, when I poured this from fridge temp, I pretty much tasted nothing but thick, roasty malt and chocolate/cocoa powder, but like most stouts worth their salt, this opens up a bit once it warms closer to room temp. As mentioned above, earthy cinnamon seems to be the most obvious element outside the norm that I can certainly ascertain on my tastebuds, but I think I'd have to be looking for it. The oats are more of a mouthfeel addition, it would seem, but I'd assume the lactose is as well. However, the feel here seems a bit sharper than expected. It's not bitter nor is the carbonation high for the style by any means, but there just isn't any "creaminess" that I'd expect from the combination of marshmallow, vanilla, lactose and oats. I suppose there's some sweetness toward the finish, but it feels somewhat vestigial and like it's not in perfect sync with the big, bold stout flavors.

What I guess I'm saying is this is a perfectly-good big, badass stout, but there's no reason aside from marketing to have all those crazy adjuncts in the mix. It reminds me a lot of Evil Twin's Even More Jesus, but slightly fruitier and a little less smooth-drinking. That's definitely not a bad beer to be compared to, and I think GH did a good job here, but I'd like to see the adjuncts pushed more next time around.