Cookies & Corpsepaint
New Level Brewing

473ml can - yes, an Imperial Stout, made with Girl Guide cookies, the 'thin mint' ones, according to the label imagery. Weirdly enough, the ingredients list has any reference to said youth group crudely redacted. WTF?

This beer pours a fairly solid black, with faint basal amber edges, and two fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly brown head, which leaves some decent coral atoll pattern lace around the glass as it evenly seeps out of sight.

It smells of gritty and grainy caramel malt, sort of acrid mint leaf, a hint of vanilla cream, dark cocoa powder, some earthy mustiness, and very tame leafy, herbal, and grassy green hop bitters. The taste is bready and doughy caramel malt, thin chocolate mints (from vague Christmas memories, and not any Girl Scouts promotion of note), some indistinct black stone fruitiness, more understated musty notes, and a further leafy, grassy, and floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is so-so in its palate-satiating frothiness, the body a solid medium weight, and mostly smooth, with a touch of minty acridity (ya wouldn't think, but sans the typical sugar, yuppers) making a few unwelcome waves here. It finishes off-dry, the candy confection essence really pushing the hard sale, which, given the real-world stories, is hardly a surprise.

Overall - this is indeed a genial version of the style, with a nice addition from the still-weird association here. Nice and robust, and worthy, I suppose, of the hard to explain naming convention - methinks I should ask the brewery about this, but they seem to rightly be preoccupied with other matters during this dark time and place of ours.

A big boy stout made with thin mint girlguide cookies, badass!