Looking For Owls
Battery Steele Brewing

 

 

 

 

 

16oz can.

Pours opaque black with a minimal head or retention. Dark chocolate, Kahlua in the nose. Full bodied with a oily mouthfeel. Chocolate cake batter, brownie bits, Hershey syrup on the palate. Finishes rich and chocolaty.

 

 

Another thank you to SawDog505 for this can.

A - Very dark brown pour that is borderline black.

S - Huge coffee aroma with roasted chocolate and char. As the beer warms the coconut aspect starts to surface.

T - Coffee roast, coconut, chocolate roast, chocolate char, cream, and finishes balanced with a mellow cookie and cocoa that lingers on the pallet.

M - Thick, viscous, silky soft, and borderline syrupy on the tongue.

O - Alot of chocolate and the cookies add an interesting aspect (and unusual flavor) to the beer.

Poured into a 16 oz Snulip glass canned on 12/28/2020. Pours a very attractive near pitch black with a 2 plus finger sticky brown head that leaves webs of lace as it slowly settles into a thin layer of bubbles. 4.75

Aroma is coffee beans, hazelnut, cocoa nibs, vanilla bean, and toffee and I will say this is as good a smelling stout as I have ever sniffed. Intoxicating..... 5

Taste follows expresso, hazelnut, vanilla, caramel, and toffee and really impressive. 4.75

Mouthfeel is bigger than medium, gentle creamy carbonation, not dry, and at 8.4% it drinks slightly bigger, but is so good it is a struggle to just sip. 4.75

Overall I am pretty damn blown away with this one. I am trying to slowly savor, but it is so amazingly tasty I can’t stop myself. 4.75

Mostly getting coffee but really good

So, this is my first canned stout from Battery Steele, a brewery I know mostly for hoppy beers (and a couple good sours, as well, to their credit). Their Flume NEDIPA is one of the absolute best hoppy, hazy beers when fresh, and so I was excited to see them branching out to the weird dessert/adjunct-heavy strong stout realm. When I went there a few months ago, I had a s'mores stout that was much more impressive than I thought it'd be, so I figured this one would be a safe bet. The label says that this is an "imperial chocolate crinkle + macaroon stout," which amuses me. It's not trying to be one kind of dessert, but two! In all honesty, I had no idea what a "chocolate crinkle" cookie was until looking it up, and I did discover that there are both "macarons" and "macaroons" and they're not similar at all. The world of baking is very weird, evidently. Let's see what this has in store for me.

The pour here doesn't have me super excited, I will say that. It's like a weird, thick brown liquid that builds up awkwardly in my glass with a chunky, strange foamy head that immediately dissipates to essentially nothing, leaving behind a weird... residue? It's not lacing as I typically think of it, and the bubbles that crowd around the edges of my glass are huge and unusually-shaped. It looks like some kind of science experiment, honestly. Not impressed by the way this one tumbles out of the can, that's for sure.

The nose has me shrugging a bit and saying to myself "alright, let's roll with the punches," because, honestly, it smells really good. This thing is dosed with a bunch of adjuncts (cookies, chocolate, coffee, coconut, brown sugar, and lactose), and I actually get a good amount of complexity in the first sniff. Dusty Belgian chocolate and superb espresso-type coffee notes with a helping of toasted coconut, molasses, and baking spice. Honestly, I am very much down with the scent of this beer. I'm into it, for sure... hope this continues.

The flavor profile is a little iffy, actually. However, I think some of my issues have to do with the odd mouthfeel and not necessarily the actual taste of the beer, to be fair. Up front, I get a big hit of chocolate chip cookies, brownie batter, and nuttiness punctuated by light, ephemeral elements of roasty espresso coffee, molasses, and toasted coconut. It all seems like it's coming together, yeah, but the feel here is just weird. It's kind of thin and watery despite being 8.4% ABV. It almost feels like this was a 9-10% beer that they watered down or something, because the flavors seem like what I'd expect and want from this type of thing, but the feel is bizarrely uncharacteristic. I dunno. I would like them to revisit this idea, but it needs a little work on the technical side of things. Great flavors overall (though not sure why you had to combine two totally different desserts in one beer; maybe make two versions?), but it's just not coming together like it should.

Draft at the brewery
Decent foamy head with good lacing, pitch black beer

Nose big coffee up front, roasted coffee and little roasted malt, a touch Smokey, toasted marshmallow, nutty coffee, hint of fudge, touch of coconut but barely

Taste rich marshmallow marzipan almond like, nutty coffee, little fruity coffee, light bitter roast and earthy coffee, light fudgey cocoa, coconut is also fairly light, medium to lighter bitterness

Mouth is med to fuller bod, medium carb

Overall ok but nothing special, very little coconut, base beer is a little sticky sweet weird bitter roasty

Enjoyed on tap at the brewery today.

A - Poured into a standard tulip a nice dark brown almost black with a thin off white head that fades to sticky lacing and thin wisps.

S - Big aromas of dark rich coffee, little bit of vanilla. Super faint coconut, the additives are pleasant but the stout is kind of lost.

T - Taste is similar to the nose with nice chocolate syrup and dark fudge. The vanilla is pleasant with good creamy coconut on the finish.

M - Mouthfeel is nicely carbonated, good silky mouthfeel, very creamy.

O - Overall this was a solid stout. The coffee is pleasant with the coconut coming through I the finish. I do wish there was more coconut though.

Serving Type: on tap