The Twelve Brewers of Christmas 8: Wicklow Wolf

On the winter solstice we are visited by two wolves. Big stout ones.

The first is from Wicklow Wolf's Crossbreeds Series, a collaboration with Lough Gill. It's the second stout with peanuts in this sequence, following Third Barrel's back on day one. There's also cocoa for a purported peanut butter cup effect, and Beanut Putter is the name they've given it. It looked OK on pouring but that big beige head faded to nothing in minutes. The aroma is sweet, and says nuts, chocolate and caramel to me, like a Snickers bar. I should confess at this point I have never eaten a peanut butter cup. Its texture is surprisingly heavy for a mere 8% ABV; it actually took effort to pull it from the glass. As with the Third Barrel one, the peanut flavour is perfectly distinct, arriving on the palate right at the start. Milk chocolate and soft caramel follow, per the aroma, but that's pretty much it. I guess it delivers on what it promises, and is perfectly tasty. There aren't any subtle extra flourishes, but nor is it a sticky mess of silliness. A look-you-in-the-eye honest sort of peanut-butter-cup stout, you might say.

Wicklow Wolf's other regular series is Endangered Species: all the silliness of collaboration but with only one brewery to hold responsible. The latest is called Mad Mex, based on Mexican chocolate cake, another confection I've never actually eaten. The necessary ingredients list for this is quite involved: cocoa, cinnamon, peppers, coffee, vanilla, nutmeg and lactose. Phew! Cinnamon is the one which breaks out most in the aroma, but the flavour is a melange. I don't actually know where to start unpicking it. There's a certain spice side, but it's not sharp or hot, more aftershave or similarly musky male grooming products. The vanilla is next, a blanketing sweetness which doesn't really match with the spice, though the floral side which comes after works fine with it. And then the finish is all of them together, loudly, for ages. I tried to enjoy this but it's just too busy, pulling in too many conflicting directions. One might expect that a 10.5% ABV imperial stout would be able to smother such imperfections in dark warming malt but this one is distressingly thin. It's a bust. If you're going to do cake beer, make it cakey, and this is not cakey enough, so there.

My feel that Wicklow Wolf makes some of Ireland's best stouts remains unshaken by these offerings, but I think I'll be happier once the pastry craze has ended.