Foothills Barrel Aged Total Eclipse Stout with Cocoa and Cayenne

Brewed by Foothills Brewing
Style: Stout
Winston-Salem, North Carolina USA

Serve in English pint

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Cask at Barley’s in Asheville. Pours a fairly still amber black. The aroma is packed with chocolate and good roasty notes; also some prune, wood, and vanilla. The flavor is smooth and roasty with some woody tones. There’s a hint of hop bitterness in a very subtle amount. The bitter cocoa dries out the finish. There is a very distant capsaicin warmth, but I probably wouldn’t notice it if I didn’t know it was there. There are some faint oxidized notes, presumably from being in the cask. The cocoa aspect is nice and dry, but far outweighs the cayenne. Pretty good stuff, still, though.

Served from a cask at Barley’s Asheville. This is a very dark beer, slick and fairly heavy on the palate. This is one chocolaty beer. I could use more heat or pepper flavor. The aroma is straight up cocoa with distant bitterness. I get some oak in the flavor with more than enough cocoa, though it never becomes excessive. If I take a few quick sips I can feel some slight residual burn in the back of the throat which disappears quickly. This is a good chocolate stout.