Epic Brainless on Cherries

Okay, so here goes my third beer from Epic Brewing Company.  It is called Brainless on Cherries, a Belgian pale aged in oak barrels with cherry puree (I don't know why Beer Advocate classes it as a dark ale).  Lots of cherry puree, I guess, judging by the beer’s color:

According to their website, this release (#16) was brewed on October 26, 2012; then aged in Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon French oak barrels with Champagne yeast and cherry puree before being released in March 2013.  Previous releases have had varying ratios of sweet cherry to tart cherry as well as different types of wine barrels.

My first thought upon taking a whiff of Brainless is that it smells a bit like cherry-flavored bubblegum.  A big blast of cherry coupled with an aroma of rock candy make this one intriguing.  Saccharine without being sickly, like a good candy.  There is a subtle hint of oak tannin.  The aroma is ultimately the highlight of this beer.

The wine barrel characteristics taste more potent than they smelled.  Definitely some wood tannins here which don’t mingle very well with the cherry flavor, which unfortunately takes on a cherry soda-level of fakeness here (still not as bad as cough syrup though).  Red wine flavors are here too, and they work sort of well.  Like a lot of Belgian beers, the base beer is pretty dry for the 10% alcohol content (which I can’t taste at all by the way), and it seems like most of the sweetness ultimately comes from the cherry puree.  Which might be why the cherry flavor starts to resemble a soda after a while, as it wears the palate down.

This strikes me as a beer that would work a lot better paired with food.  I eat to live, not live to eat, so I generally have no idea how to pair beer and food.  I imagine this would probably work well with chocolate though.