What am I to do with something calling itself an Irish cream Stout? The labels I'm going to add are Irish stout and stout. What about the cream in the middle? I'm going to ignore it as far as labels are concerned. I certainly won't try to ignore it when tasting it, however. Southern Tier has put out a lot of enjoyable beers, and I fully expect that this one will be no different. I briefly thought the possibility that they had added some Irish cream to a stout to produce something potentially magical, but the 5.8% ABV is so low for a cream that it's only 1.5% higher than a regular Guinness Stout. What I'm trying to say is: I don't know how this beverage was made. I'm just going to drink it.
I would normally start off by saying that this was a black beer, but the caramel color is quite evident at the fringes of the beer. The off-white head sprouts more than your average stout, but it fizzles down to a much more manageable and thin island in the middle of the beer with a strong ring around the sides leaving some lacing in its wake. The aroma does not put me in mind of cream, but cocoa nibs, vanilla, earth, and maybe even a light mint let me know that this is complex and going to be an enjoyable beverage.First sip is nutty, dark roast, and may be some white chocolate. If there's cream in here, it is covered pretty solidly by the stout. That said, the stout does not seem particularly robust. This may just be from the sip, but the experience is a little watery for having so many flavors trying to jump in. I'm not sure what's watering it down, but I could certainly use more stout in my stout.
Tip-in is mild carbonation tingle with dark roast, white chocolate, cocoa, and nuts. The middle turns up the carbonation as bubbles move to the roof of the mouth while the creamy texture flows effortlessly through the center of the mouth without any notion of being watery in the slightest. The finish is nuts, earth, and the chocolate turns to an echo of coffee before the trail off.
Bottom Line: It's certainly not bad, but I'm not sure I'm getting what they're going for.
2.5/5