Pipeworks Game of Jones

Pipeworks pretty much exploded in Illinois over the last year and the more Pipeworks beer I try the more I understand why (and the more I wish they distributed out east).  This particular beer is a big, beefed-up cream stout (a stout made with lactose) to which the brewers added coco and vanilla beans. I was excited to find this; compared to coffee and coco/chocolate beers, there aren't very many beers made with vanilla.  Pipeworks is a rare exception; by my count, they make six beers with vanilla beans.

True to form, it is as night black as a stout can be.  The slow, steady carbonation cannot muster more than a fingernail's worth of foam, probably from the fairly high alcohol content (10% is about twice the usual strength of a cream stout).

Game of Jones gets off to a great start with a rich nose of vanilla and dairy sugar.  With the exception of Southern Tier Creme Brulee, I have never smelled this much vanilla in a vanilla stout before.  It stands in complete contrast to the coco, which I don't smell at all.  Roasted barley (in the form of mild coffee-like acridity) makes its presence known as well.

The chocolate flavors come out much more in the flavor.  The coco takes on a dark chocolate flavor here, not the sweet milk chocolate most people enjoy.  That being said, Game of Jones has more than enough sweetness to go around without milk chocolate thrown into the mix.  That powerful aroma of vanilla transplants itself well to the taste buds, and there is a hefty dose of lactose as well.  While there aren't any hop flavors to speak of, the bitterness of the coco combined with the roasted barley---which again takes on a coffee bitterness, with a suggestion of licorice---provides enough balance to prevent this from being cloying. 

Per their batch log, this was bottled January 31, 2014.

This is the second stout I've had from Pipeworks and like the last one they pretty much knocked it out of the park.  This is much more balanced than that one was, and therefore I could see myself splitting a bottle of this at just about any time of the year.