Wildwood Black Forest Stout

Commercial Description:
The underpinning of the beer is Wildwood's stout, which was retired when Wildwood's former brewer, Jim Anderson, did likewise. For our purposes, the beer was brewed with eight different grains and two types of hops. This makes it a stout of exceptional complexity, featuring a gentle sweetness balanced against a subtle, smoky bitterness. The firm malt underlay of the beer and the subtle bitterness are necessary to form a solid foundation of flavour similar to that of chocolate cake. This stout is an English-style oatmeal stout, rather than the Irish-style stout with which most beer lovers are familiar. Guinness, an Irish-style stout, is dry, with a light acidity and a relatively thin presence in the mouth. English-style oatmeal stout, on the other hand, has a gentle sweetness and a light viscosity. This gives the beer presence in the mouth and, again, better imitates actual cake. To this recipe was added chocolate, in two additions during the brewing process, and two different varieties of cherries, both added during fermentation. In keeping with Wildwood's philosophy of brewing with only the best ingredients, real cocoa and actual cherries were used in the all-grain beer. No extracts or syrups ever see Wildwood's brewery. Because Wildwood's stout was itself perfectly balanced, it was important that the new ingredients not skew the balance. For this reason, a more bitter style of chocolate was selected, which balances its own sweetness, and both sweet and sour cherries were used, in equal quantities. While both the chocolate and cherry aromas and flavours should be easily detectable, they play only supporting roles, allowing Wildwood's stout star billing.