Ah, childhood. Remember playing outside all morning with your friends (kids don’t that these days, do they?), working up a big appetite and then enjoying a Fluffernutter for lunch with, on special days, a dollop of Rocky Road Ice Cream for dessert? I sure do, and even more so after sipping a bottle of Smuttynose Rocky Road, part of their big beer series.

Smuttynose describes this as Stout brewed with cacao nibs & marshmallow crème and aged on oak chips.  The oak chips, I can only imagine, are there to add a reminder of adulthood to your childhood reminiscence in a bottle.

From the website:

Remember when you were first introduced to Rocky Road ice cream? Remember how you couldn’t believe some magical genius had mixed those amazing flavors into one ice cream? We sure do. That’s the feeling we’ve recreated with Rocky Road, Smutty’s first dessert stout. An indulgent blend of ooey-gooey Fluff™ amazingness and the rich goodness of cacao nibs are blended into a full bodied sweet, stout beer. Before bottling, we age this elixir on amaretto-soaked oak chips to impart an amazing flavor harmony. Don’t worry if you spill a drop of Rocky Road – we know you’ll lick it right up. Cheers!

Ingredients from the website:

Malt Bill: North American 2-Row, Munich 10L, Carahell, C-120, Carastan, Brown Malt, Chocolate Malt, Roasted Barley

Hops

Bittering: Magnum

Flavor: Bravo, Sterling

Yeast: American Ale

Other: Cacao Nibs, Fluff, Amaretto-soaked Oak Chips

Smuttynose Rocky Road Stout has an alcohol content of 7.5% by volume with 25 IBUs. It runs $8.99 a bottle here in Georgia, and Smuttynose describes availability as Now & Then. My bottle is stamped as packages in 2016.

Smuttynose Rocky Road pours to a jet-black color with a thick creamy (fluffy?) tan head with a robust nose of light chocolate and toasted nuts. Taking a sip, the beer is full and rich in body with the whole rocky road experience: you get the rich chocolate, the nuts, the smooth creamy marshmallow fluff vanilla (I ran my bottle through my Fizzics system and that really brought out the creaminess) a touch of oak and a the last some balancing roast in the finish.

I was very, very impressed with Smuttynose Rocky Road. They call it their first dessert stout, and what a success they have on their hands. Tom J. Mulvihill sagely (and perhaps only slightly with tongue in cheek) calls such brews “gimmick beers”, and to me the key is to hit the theme of the gimmick. Smuttynose certainly does that here. Can I please have another scoop?



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