Night Owl
Grain & Grit

This one's an odd one, a sour stout with Cherry.

Appearance: Poured with a finger of head that retained well enough but didn't produce any lace. The body is a dark opaque black.

Smell: Mild chocolate malt with a light maraschino cherry scent (the cocktail kind, not the sundae kind). Needed warming to come out, but didn't really get to great potency.

Taste: This beer is a weird one, it starts with a mild dry stout with well roasted chocolate malt in parallel to a sweet cherry taste. It's odd, it's like the two flavors are present and have equal weight but seem to be complete separate entities coming forward at the same time. Then a switch gets flipped and like night and day as it turns to sour lemon with maybe a slight touch of cherry. The other notes are completely swept away.

Mouthfeel: The carbonation was a bit low, which I think was intended to try to limit the sour and let the stout come out which I think had limited success, because the transitioning is such a night and day affair. I've never quite had a beer make such a dramatic flavor shift and leave nothing to linger. The aftertaste is that mild sour lemon note, and you certainly wouldn't think you just had a stout.

Drinkability: Medium bodied, which given in my view stouts should be thick and sours light, makes sense I suppose. It leans more towards the sour end of things as far as what you get out of it. Settles down well enough, but kind of of leaving me wish there was more stout here.

Final Thoughts: This beer was odd, and was certainly a good experiment, but the chocolate is really out of place here. I mean, I get lemon and cherry work together, and cherry and chocolate work together, but the cherry bridge isn't strong enough here, nor is the chocolate. I think this is a case where the execution was done as well as a could have been, but really this isn't a common mix that works.