Dark Horse Tres Blueberry Stout

Pours black with a small tan/mocha head the disappates quickly leaving a small lacing. Blueberry and roasted malt aroma. Roasted malt, chocolate and blueberry flavor.

[994-20071223] Bottle (c/o GregClow, w/ him, jerc). Super blueberry chocolate malt aroma has a hint of raisin. Dark black brown body with a quick foamy red head. Dry malty blueberry flavour has some chocolate smoky alcohol notes. Full body has a dry finish. Very nice, plus eating chocolate actually brings out the blueberry fruit more.

(bottle) Pours black with a dark tan head that rings around the glass. Aroma initially is of blueberry muffin, mixed with some roasted malt. The aroma changes to more coffee upon warming, and then to more molasses/brown sugar. The taste is a nice mixture of blueberry and roasted malt with some coffee present too. Medium mouthfeel.

[Bottle, thanks Guerde] Pours dark brown with a small dark tan head. Aroma is blueberry, roasted malt, coffee, maple syrup and a little alcohol. Taste is blueberry up front which slowly transforms into a charred malt taste that then dominates. The charred taste got to be a little too much after awhile, but still pretty good. Medium-mouthfeel with a fairly long, dry finish. A good and unique beer, but the heavily charred taste just isn’t something I usually like much in my beers.

The blueberry in this stout, through and through, is just magical. It doesn’t just resemble a blueberry flavor, it tastes and smells like fresh freaking blueberry pie. Unreal. Hats off to Dark Horse for this wonderful beverage. Proof that a fruit beer can be much more than just a fruit beer. The blueberry, while unique, offers the perfect contrast to what is already a marvelous stout. The way the flavors bounce and play off each other is so interesting, so complex, yet so quaffable and so downright plain old fun to drink! An ingenious beer from an ingenious brewery. Fantastic.

What an interesting beer. While this was still cold my impression was that what you need to know about this beer in order to understand it is how big the underlying stout is: thick, black (yellow edging), opaque, rich, roasty, chocolately, just really deep with all of those big stout qualities. In that formation you get the blueberry from the nose and the finish, but are overwhelmed by "Imperial Stout" in the middle. As it warmed fully, you could get the blueberry all over, including the delightful swish that made for a subtle but elegantly fruity note. It is like an Impy that has that plum/port quality going, only...just a bit different. Thick, viscous, low alcohol but you want to assume it has to be big (it isn’t)...what a marvelous job of brewing. A real triumph for what it is.

Pours with a velvety texture to an oily, thick black body; a thin pond of tanned marshmallow foam rests easy. Blueberry aroma lunges out excitedly with the first crack of the cap and breathes more calmly with dark vinous depth once poured; ethereal, tangible sumatran dark roast, prunes, black licorice and moist earth lend a dense, approachable sophistication. Really a beautiful aroma. Damp and tannic flavor of blueberries lingers heavily on the astringency of black and roasted malt, warming steadily into a pleasant, delicate counterpoint of excessive bitterness and excessive fruitiness; hints of browned banana, french roast, vanilla cola, currant and maple wood. Smoky and wet, with a hint of steamed vegetable creeping in on the back. Detailed despite its understated character in terms of size, and even a bit tightly wound with fruit and sugar, so as to suggest that it might even age well for a year or two. Fluffy palate pushes the boundary of viscous; softly carbonated, and sweetly coating, giving way to a lightly acrid peaberry and tannin finish. Rich, lucid, and leaving a polished impression; well done.

Bottle shared with maxxdaddy. Pours a very dark brown/black with brown head. Taste is definitely creamy and chocolately, with a hint of blueberries. I’m not always a stout lover, but the aroma and flavor of blueberries really put this beer near the top of my stout list.