Looks:
Smell:
Taste:
Overall:
Description:
Roasted dark malts plus extra chocolate malts plus ancho chile plus cinnamon plus vanilla extract plus a chocolate loving, beer drinking, Clown Shoes wearing, multi-limbed, gorgeous and glorious Mexican wrestler on the label. That’s the recipe for a Chocolate Sombrero! (Description provided by company)
Brewer:
Beer Style:
ABV:
9.00% ABV
Availability Frequency:
year-round
Containers Available:
bottle
Locations Where Available:
Alabama
Colorado
Louisiana
East Coast (limited)
Great Lakes
New England
Southwest US
Store/Serve Temperature:
close to 60 degrees F
Comments
Too Spicy for Me
This was the third Mexican/Incan/Aztec-themed stout I've had that incorporates peppers into the brewing. I liked the kick the peppers provided the other two and was eager to try what Clown Shoes has made. It poured a deep, dark caramel brown that allowed hardly any light through. There was a thin tan head, but it quickly evaporated away.
Chocolate Sombrero smells of coffee and Oreos. The taste presents coffee, semisweet chocolate, with a spicy cinnamon/pepper finish. This feels thin on the tongue. Between the build-up on spice burn and the thin mouthfeel (where the few bubbles made my tongue sting all the more), I got turned off of this beer the more I drank. Very disappointed.
A Cinco de Mayo Flop-o
With heavy notes of malt and the occasional whiff of chocolate, Chocolate Sombrero doesn't seem to fit its name. This is a really beautiful deep red/brown beer with a thin creamy head that doesn't stick around for your first sip. From its looks, you'd expect this to be a thick, rich beer that you could almost make a meal out of, however it's much lighter, almost thin. There's more chocolate flavor than there is scent, but it's still not as chocolate as I'd hoped. The ancho chili in this beer doesn't have quite the same heat as I have come to expect from a chili beer. Overall, I'd have to say Clown Shoes Chocolate Sombrero was just OK. Not great, not bad, just meh.
Bit of a snoozesta for me
Clown Shoes Chocolate Sombrero is a Mexican style chocolate imperial stout. Goofy name, interesting beer. It pours like ever-so-slightly watered down motor oil and has almost no head to speak of. It smells primarily of malt, with a little bit of chocolate and coffee notes as well. The label says there is ancho chili and cinnamon in here too, but I’m not sure my palate is refined enough to really taste it. It’s a tasty beer, but I was hoping for some more complexity.