This was the first beer I grabbed off Más Que Cerveza’s shelf, with that luscious cake on the can and the promise of a dessert stout in the name. It certainly looks promising, this Black Forest Gateau. It’s an imperial milk stout with cherry puree and aged on oak chips, which makes it sound all fancy. I assumed Soul Fire was an English brewery, but the price should have tipped me off; you don’t often find big cans under €5 anymore, and an imported one would be absolutely unheard of. It is, in fact, a Spanish brewery, based in Jerez de la Frontera. The contact with wine-making was a benefit for a lot of the early craft breweries in the center of Spain, so maybe sherry will have a similar effect.
Finally a blacker stout, not so heady as recent ones though. There’s chocolate in the aroma, but with some kind of rubber. It smells more like a chocolate toy than real chocolate. Keep sniffing and the cherries will also come out to greet you shyly. Not as sweet as the name implies, and a little rubbery in flavor too. I wonder if it’s some reaction in the oak that brings that out. Eventually the fruit essence goes more banana than cherry but it never really gets sweeter. The woodiness comes out more and gets a little rougher, which is something different. Although the flavor is unignorable, the beer itself has a very light feel and a certain smoothness in spite of the up-front oak presence. I think this one would really benefit from some dessert along with it, just so you don’t feel like you’re chewing on wood chips through the whole can. It starts to pick up some smokiness after a while, is the wood doing something special in there? I can’t say that this is my favorite of any recent beers, or even one I would recommend. Somebody probably likes it, but I wouldn’t want to presume.
Supplier: Más Que Cervezas
Price: €4.89
Spanish 
English