Our usual pizza and craft beer place – Flinger’s Pizza Pub – closed down a few weeks ago and we were craving pizza and beer. We’d been told to try this place out – Firehouse Pizza. They had a decent beer list and a good variety of pizzas. The pizza sauce was pretty sweet, and while it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t our favorite pizza. This was the only beer they had on tap I hadn’t added to the list, so it made my beer choice easy.
Location: Poured into a Sam Adams perfect pint glass from the growler at my home in Bloomington, IL.
Numbers: 6% ABV, 25 IBUs, 16° Plato, ~ 200 Calories
Ingredients: Malts: Pale 2-row, Crystal, Munich, Roast Barley, Flaked Oats, Flaked Barley and Chocolate; Hops: Magnum and US Goldings
Appearance & Aroma: It’s dark black with ruby highlights when held up to the light. The head was huge and creamy, and stuck around for quite a bit. It was hard to pick up on much aroma through the huge head, but there was some light roastiness.
Taste & Feel: The mouthfeel is creamy, and the body is light-medium. Up front, it had a sweet roasty flavor. The roastiness grew in the middle with some coffee-like flavors. It finished with a good amount of coffee like flavor and bitterness and some residual sweetness. The coffee bittereness lasted for a few minutes in the aftertaste.
Food Pairing: This beer had a good amount of roasty and coffee flavors. It wasn’t a great choice with my pizza here, as the pizza had sauce that was very sweet, and the combination of sweet sauce and sweetness in the beer didn’t mix well. This beer would actually complement a chocolate dessert nicely with the sweetness and roasty flavors coming together nicely with chocolate or fudge flavors.
Overall Impression: I really like when beers are served on nitro, as it gives it a smooth creamy body, which makes it smooth and enjoyable. With the nitro, body, and roastiness in this beer, it’s pretty much an American version of Guiness. I felt like the roastiness carried a bit too much, becoming coffee-like in both flavor and bitterness. Overall, it was an enjoyable sweet stout.
My Rating: 
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