Perennial "17 Mint" Chocolate Stout

Mint chocolate in a stout? I mean, chocolate has been proven to be excellent in the right beer, but mint is questionable. I figure this beer is supposed to be a dessert beer, but even those are probably better off not trying to add mint to the mixture. Well, these are artisan brewers (which I usually assume means hipster) so they must have had a plan going in.

The very, very, very, very dark brown beer has just a regular dark brown head. It's possibly one of the darkest heads that I've seen atop one of these dark stouts, and I'm intrigued. The aroma is muted mint with more vibrant chocolate - which is the right way to go, if the taste follows the nose. The pour was pretty unusual to me, as I really think this pours almost like a slightly runny syrup.

First sip is a heap of flavors all together. I taste the chocolate, but I don't really taste the mint. It's sweet like candy for a good portion of the beer, and I can definitely taste coffee and oak; it's not what I expected. I thought this would be a generic dessert beer like the Pinstripe Stout or that Ben & Jerry's beer (both of which I like quite a bit). No, this is something deeper.

Tip-in is bright and a kind of a dark chocolate version of those mints you get at Olive Garden. The texture is heavy like the syrup I noticed in the pour. The middle is almost sickly sweet with gentle oak and even some cherry lighting things up, but not enough. The syrup texture seems amplified by the intense sweetness, and it is not helping things out. The finish is a hot point of mint and flowers with soft chocolate and some earth under it.

Bottom Line: There are definitely better beers out there, even for this niche.

1.5/5