Black Bart
Last Brewsday, I told you about a couple of beer/cola mixes: Black Bart and Diesel/Broadway. I struggled with what exact beers to mix with what cola. My gut told me to start with ingredients I would actually drink and combine those to make a drink that I could appreciate on more than just a gustatory level. However, my brain said that I should start this experiment using ingredients that everyone should be able to find easily.
The Black Bart (you will recall) is stout mixed with cola — simple enough. I could get all fancy and recommend that you mix Blue Point Oatmeal Stout and an organic cola manufactured by a worked owned commune located in the Brazilian rain forest, but you might not have access to either of those beverages. However, if you don’t start with good ingredients, don’t expect the resulting drink to be any better (sometimes you get a better drink, but my beer mixing experience so far has taught me that the beer cocktail only improves in the mix if I like the constituent ingredients on their own).
By deduction I reasoned that most people who will be inclined to try a Black Bart will have ready access to Guinness Stout and to Coke-a-Cola. So I filled a glass half full of Coke and topped it with Guinness. The result was not an improvement on either drink.
The aroma was dominated by the Coke. The flavor was out of balance and made the characteristic sourness of the Guinness just come off as stall tasting. An interesting effect of mixing these two beverages was that the typical soft velvety head of the Guinness became stiff and gloopy (a technical term meaning sludge-like) — almost like a thick coat of moss on top of swamp water.
I’ll keep experimenting and see if I can come up with a Black Bart I like. Next time I’ll probably cut back on the cola and use a stout that isn’t nitrogenated.
