Unifying Concept
Annex Ale Project

1L howler from Sherbrooke Liquor store - a 'Haitian Cocoa Stout', made in collaboration with fellow Calgarians McGuire Chocolate (meaning that's where they obtained the guest ingredient).

This beer pours a fairly solid black, with subtle amber basal edges, and a teeming tower of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly brown head, which leaves some decent drooping webbed lace around the glass as it rather lazily subsides.

It smells of gritty milk chocolate, wan cafe-au-lait, bready and crackery caramel malt, some free-range ashiness, faint dark fruity notes, and some plain earthy, musty, and floral hop bitters. The taste is grainy and bready caramel malt, fairly acrid cocoa powder, ethereal coffee grounds, some still muddled black stone fruitiness, a bit of damp char, and more understated earthy, leafy, and gently soused-up floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is average in is palate-satisfying frothiness, the body a solid medium weight, and mostly smooth, but for a touch of smoky mocha making a few unwelcome undulations here. It finishes trending dry, the cocoa and coffee essences pulling the lingering malt right down with them.

Overall - well, I'm generally certain that I've never partaken in Haitian chocolate before, so I'm guessing that it is more of a bitter variety than my kid's recent Easter bunny (milk chocolate is simply the best, I don't fucking care what you hippies think). Yeah, this is good, but I feel like I need to stir some sugar into it, in the manner of my generic, and over-steeped morning tea.