Stone Brewing Co. / Abnormal Beer Co. - "Neapolitan Dynamite" imperial stout

Here's a funky collaboration from Stone and Abnormal Brewing Co. - it's an 8.50% ABV imperial stout brewed with chocolate, vanilla, strawberries, and coffee. Sounds great, right?

This beer, born from a partnership with the American Homebrew Association, is the 2017 winner of Stone's homebrew competition. Homebrewers from around San Diego get to pitch their ideas, make a beer at home, then offer it up to Stone's experts for judging. The grand prize in this contest is a limited production run of the winning beer by Stone. Chris Banker, of Cervezeria Insurgente, won a few years ago with his now-famous "Xocoveza."

According to the bottle, this beer was inspired by "...that humble box of striped ice cream from our childhoods." The bottle also suggests that this beer be paired with liger meat, which is a nice reference to the Napoleon Dynamite-inspired name of the beer.

It pours silky black and generates a dark brown head - very stout-like.

There's a nose of sweet malts, but not much else. To be honest I sometimes have trouble detecting aromas in stouts. It's easier as it warms up. In the glass, it's an inky black, and has some dark brown bubbles.Some of the bubbles stick to the glass, which is cool.

Since it's a Stone stout that's super heavy and strong, as expected it initially presented some dark, burnt cocoa / coffee bean flavors. As the beer warms up, and after a few sips, an interesting parade of flavors come through. The coffee makes the first appearance, and while it's strong, it's not dominant. The chocolate comes up - competing for the star role - and delivers nicely. If you like chocolate in beer, this is the stout for you. Interestingly, there's strawberry on the finish and aftertaste for sure. That's a neat flavor and definitely one I don't encounter too often in a beer, and it lingers for quite a long time.

Overall, this was a fun idea, as the stout is a perfect vehicle for these dessert flavors, but trying to cram so many competing flavors into one beer is a tall order. Although the beer delivered the flavors in "steps", I feel like at times they blended together and weren't as distinctive as they could have been. Personally, I'd prefer this beer to be parsed out into two or three versions, such as chocolate/coffee, vanilla/strawberry, and coffee/vanilla versions. That might make the beer less "crowded". 

Napoleon Dynamite GIF courtesy of Fox Searchlight pictures. GIF grabbed from the web at IndieWire.com