Gun Hill: Snickerdoodle Coconut – Void Of Light (USA: Foreign Stout: 7.9% ABV)
Visual: Black. Still. Very large mounded bubbled head of coffee froth brown color.
Nose: Cinnamon. Coconut. Coconut Macaroons. Mocha. Dry roasted peanuts. Cake sponge.
Body: Savoury chocolate (is that a thing?). Bitter cocoa. Light greenery. Subtle cinnamon. Slight cream. Dry coconut. White chocolate. Slight soap.
Finish: Bitter cocoa. Ovaltine. Dry coconut. Milk chocolate. White chocolate. Light charring. Bitter. Peppery. Bitter coffee.
Conclusion: This is more restrained than I imagined from either the description or the aroma. You can read the description easy enough for yourself in the background, so I’m going to jump straight into the aroma.
The aroma is coconut macaroons drenched in cinnamon over mocha style sweet coffee. Impressive first impressions, but feels at risk of becoming sickly later on. Still I was interested, nay, enthralled.
The body is a lot more restrained after that. The coconut is very present but also drier. The cinnamon is there to a moderate degree, but also in a less sweet way, which can sometimes make it seem peppery, while also being cinnamon? Yes I know that makes little sense, but I used the worlds “savoury chocolate” in these notes, very little about this makes sense.
As a beer it doesn’t 100% work, along with the peppery character there is also a slight soap element to the beer, which makes me think of how coriander is meant to taste soapy to some people. Not a huge element, only comes out occasionally but is there. However, in general, the mix of sweeter notes to a savoury, peppery backing has managed to make a beer that is more drinkable over its lifetimes and also quite intriguing.
It feels like the anti dessert stout, which is odd considering that I’m fairly sure snickerdoodle refers to a dessert cookie. It has lots of bitter cocoa, drier and more savoury notes there while still letting the cinnamon and coconut shine through.
By which I means lots of coconut, I love coconut in beer as has been well established many times.
It isn’t 100% solid, but I’m impressed with what they have done, and would probably return to it again.
Background: Another one of the USA beers I picked up from Beer Bruvs, this is one of the older dated ones – 24/08/20 (as always switched to UK style dates), however with it being a stout I am less worried for this one, so just putting the info up for reference. Wasn’t sure how to list this as I have seen it labelled a few ways online, so I just put as much of the words on the can up as possible – it seemed only fair. This is a stout made with cinnamon and coconut. Which I presume relates to the snickerdoodle thing, they seem to be some kind of biscuit. They look tasty. Went with Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! Again for music, as I was still feeling the need for some more of that.
