I am not a big fan of flavoured beers. As my old buddy JT said, “how about a beer flavoured beer?” But this cacao and candy cane stout came in my beer of the month club selection so it was sitting in the beer fridge challenging me to shed my reluctance and indulge in another beer modeled after dessert. I had recent positive experiences with two flavoured beers, Mill Street’s Vanilla Porter and Kensington’s Salted Carmel Red Ale, an excellent ale by the way. So perhaps Kensington has another winner in this peppermint pint? Or perhaps not.
Popped the top and all I smell is peppermint. No cacao, no beer. Poured a full to overflow head, light tan and bubbly, peppermint aroma front and center, all I can smell is peppermint. First swig pepperminty strong, I was hoping it would settle down a bit. Nice stout body, nice mouth feel, but the peppermint is too much. I get an occasional taste of the stout this beer could have been, if the peppermint wasn’t hogging the limelight. Add to this a bit of a nasty finish in my books. The peppermint doesn’t combine well with the bitters, resulting in an unpleasant aftertaste.
Including this sentence I have used the word peppermint ten times in this review which gives you some indication of how prominent the peppermint (that’s eleven) is in this stout. They needed just a touch but they added a tad more than a touch too much. Too bad, so sad, but this beer only bolsters my apprehension regarding flavoured beers. Brewed primarily for North Pole elves but not for the general beer drinking public.
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