Foothills says:
“A cocoa infused Imperial Stout – Opaque black in color with a dark brown head. Big chocolate aroma with notes of espresso, blackstrap molasses, dark sweet toffee and dark fruit. Smooth dark chocolate backbone with complex notes of coffee, dark toffee and dark fruit.”
Foothills Sexual Chocolate
Russian Imperial Stout, 9.75% ABV
Karl: Let’s jump right into this one, shall we? Because holy crap, was this beer more bitter on first glance than I expected. I had to go back and check the bottle to find that it had a very surprising 85 IBUs packed into this Imperial Stout. It’s almost like a hefty black IPA, where something went wrong and got mutated and turned into a monster version of itself.
Give it a second though, sit back, take a deep breath, and relax. Come back to the Sexual Chocolate. You might just find, as I did, that your palate just had to adjust a little bit, to dial itself into the Sexual Chocolate, to find itself ready for its relative darkness, its chocolaty flavors, its maltyness, its slowly-receding hoppiness. It’s sultry, smoky and smooth, like jazz music on an old radio late at night, DJ’ed by an old guy with a raspy voice and a lot of smarmy character.
Take a bottle of this to a fondue restaurant and you’ll most certainly see some action.
Andrew: Dear Josh – Thanks again for delivering on a really fantastic beer.
The Sexual Chocolate is dealing with a bit of an identity crisis…it’s certainly not just an Imperial Stout, but then again it certainly isn’t an IPA (or Black IPA as it were)…so what is it? A damn fine beer.
The nose brought forth some smokiness and obviously some cocoa, and at that point I picked up on a little bitterness. On tasting it, it really was a smack-you-in-the-mouth bitter. Maybe in the grand scheme of things it was all THAT bitter, but man I wasn’t expecting it. Loved the dark, bitter chocolate notes, the smoke and the tobacco but I keep going back to the hoppy bitterness.
I need more of this beer. Josh?
Ryan: No pressure, Josh, but we really would like a few more bottles of this. We have some vintage Goose Island 312 we would happily trade you, bottle date pre-AB sale. I’m sure it’s a collectors item. Or not.
But seriously, Foothills Sexual Chocolate is a remarkably awesome beer that I wish I had one or two more bottles of to throw back in the cellar. I’d love to see how sexually chocolate this beer can get when those monstrous IBU’s fade in to the background and make way for, what I would expect to be, some delicious and creamy chocolate.
Maybe it was because we sampled a handful of barrel aged beers prior to this but it took me a few sips to adjust to the hoppiness of Sexual Chocolate. Despite the 85 IBU’s staring back at me from the glass the punch of piney, almost minty, hops in the taste caught me off guard. But once your palate adjusts a bit and gets over the initial hop-shock you can enjoy a velvety smooth beer that seamlessly blends together cocoa, a touch of smokiness, roasted coffee beans and bitter espresso.
Now THIS would be worth waiting in line for, as opposed to – say – the disastrously demonic beer we sampled for Tuesday’s review.