New Glarus Unplugged Cherry Stout

Formerly brewed at New Glarus Brewing Company
Style: Fruit Beer
New Glarus, Wisconsin USA

Drank this at a recent tasting with Perkeo and chriso420 and it was easily my favorite with the Eisphyre coming in a close second. I must admit I’m a sucker for brett beers, and this is no exception. I did wonder what exactly qualified this as a stout considering the color and body, but no matter. Sour cherries, brett funk, oak, a slight stale quality that reminded me of an old paperback, and a noticeable medicinal taste. Confounding and wonderful at the same time!

Bottle. Dusty cherry syrup nose with butter. Deep burgandy bosy with a lasting foamy head. Taste-buttery, maple, oaky, sour, smoky, light farmhouse, cherry. Has a kind of weird almost brett like funk to it that is noce, but it needs to have more presence if it is going to be in here at all. Good. Not excellent, but good.

Bottle at 2006 Chromefest: poured brown with ruby red notes. Smallish head. Light chocolate aroma with slight cherries. Flavor is mostly cherries but very little chocolate except in the finish. A nice beer definitely but it needs to be kicked up a notch.

Ruby red notes in a clear brown liquid. The cherry choclate flavors are there, but so are the smells like walking into a grocery store when I was a kid. Vegetable, woody and musty, candle wax, coconut. Honey, fruit, smoke note. A bit thin, not particularly stout-like.

I believe this one may have the bells cherry stout beat. A chocolate, cherry, and caramel aroma. A dark reddish brown appearance. The flavor is sweet and chocolately with some sour cherries. Good stuff.

(Bottle via trade with Degarth, thanks Joe!) Poured a dark cloudy sort of reddish iced-tea color with about 1/2" of biege head. I had a hard time figuring out the aroma - don’t know if I would have guessed cherry if I didn’t already know this had cherry in it, but I will go with sweet cherry cough syrup with sour wood mixed in, some chocolate and coffee way in the background. Nice rings of lacing don’t last. Mouthfeel soft, full, a little prickly. Flavor: took my palate a few sips to adjust because this had a pretty unique flavor but then I began to like it. Initially it was mostly sweet cherries, a little syrupy but balanced by stout flavors - by middle of bottle it was tasting like cherries followed by chocolate. Towards the end of the bottle and as it further warmed it was more a sour cherry taste with less chocolate in the finish. Unique stuff, I enjoyed it.

Huge, sweet cherries in the nose with plenty of chocolate. Wood and vanilla are very apparent. Clear ruby-brown coloured body is topped with a low white head that recedes slowly to a partial cover with some lace. Sweet cherries up front appear tart in the finish. Appearances are made by a mild, powdery cocoa flavour, light vinegary, balsamic character and some light, pleasant roastiness. Medium body with airy carbonation that overcomes a very light astringency. A nice fruit beer that could use a bit more stout character to really earn it’s moniker. Bottle sampled with MartinT, muzzlehatch and Rastacouere.

Dark brown color with red highlights. Very little head. A distinct sour cherry and very vinegar-y aroma. Flavor is quite diverse. A lot of cherry tartness, chocolate on the aftertaste, and some oak wood. In my opinion, this is inferior to the Belgian red.