Bells Cherry Stout

Brewed by Bells Brewery
Style: Sweet Stout
Kalamazoo, Michigan USA

12oz. Pours dark brown with a minuscule tan head. Nose is fairly subdued, even after it warms. Flavor profile is extremely interesting, and if nothing else fairly original. Getting a fair amount of tart cherry (think unflavored lambic) with some wood and smoke. Mouthfeel is a bit thin, but there’s some crazy lactic acid action that keeps the palate coated for a long finish. I love Michigan cherries and the idea of using a product local to the beer’s production.

after letting this beer breath for a minute it turned out to be an exceptional beer with tart cherry juice with a mild smoked stout flavor. Yummy

The aroma is toasted with coffee, malt, chocolate, cherries, and caramel. The appearance is dark brown with a tan head. The flavor is like the aroma but I wish it had more cherry. The palate is smooth. Overall it’s good.

Aroma is of roasted nuts, cherries, and molasses. It appears to be a typical sweet stout- very dark brown in color and think... it’s got legs! The flavor is slightly bitter and reminiscent of a charred hickory... very strong and not very sweet. I’m not tasting any cherry... if anything it’s BURNT cherries. Too oily on the palate. I don’t like this at all...

Pours a slightly tinged reddish black with a minor rich brown ring of a head, and some minute lacing. Not too much cherry on the nose, more roasted, wheaty chocolate and coffee notes similar to the kalamazoo stout as well as a suggestion of liqueur alcohol. Cherries hit you front and center on the oily, somewhat thin palate, and are quickly followed up and tempered by a massive tar-like roasted malt character; the beer finishes a bit like a cherry cordial, sweet and with some warmth. Hops are restrained to a strange remote vegetable-like quality in the finish. An interesting and appealing brew, particularly if you’re a fan of krieks and flemish sours.

Pours nice and dark with thin mocha head and just a little bit of spotty lacing. The aroma is nice and roasty along with burnt malts and chocolate. To go along with the malts is a fruity cherry sourness. The taste starts with a rich roasted maltiness medley of malts like sweet malts, chocolate malts and roasty malts. Before the maltiness can be reconciled cherry fruitiness joins the fray with sort of a sour tart cherriness that becomes less sweet and more and more tart as the taste progresses toward midway where it levels off. Into the finish the maltiness overtakes the fruity tartness with roastiness, hints burnt malts, chocolate malts and coffee.

If you have read my Sam Adams Cream Stout review, consider that I ran out and bought this the next day. Needless to say, I have emotional ties to this one as well. My first stout I ever had in a glass. Not too fruity, great character and fullness. Not too smokey with just enough coffe taste to go great with a slice of Black Forest Cheesecake. (try drinking a bud lite with cheescake and see why most of us spend what we do on GOOD beer)

good stout. an interesting blend with the cherry juice...i liked it. a little sweet which i also like in a stout. another good bells beer