Tip Tap draught, 1/31/25.
Dark. Little head.
Nose has plentiful, meaty cherry juice and skin notes with a lightly charred chocolate. No excess sugar or alcohol.
Wow this is shockingly dry. Maybe even too much so? Not all that much body though the flavors are authentic and the salt gives a little slickness and savoriness. Lots of tart cherry juice with dark chocolate and biscuit and toast lingering.

LCI from 8x8 18-20 October. I’m not getting the salinity, but a good beer as always in this series.

Can on the train from Bingohame to Tamworth, from an online peddler whom I can't recall, 06/09/24. Black with a big khaki head that stays for the show. Nose is dark chocolate, light spice, dark malts, cherry skins. Taste comprises chocolate, light roasted bite, salted caramel, cherry stone, spice balance. Medium bodied with bite, fine carbonation, semi drying close. Decent.

Can courtesy of Geraint and Helen (cheers you two!) had this, Tuesday 3rd December 2024 in the company of Dad and Pauline at Dad's Rawson Green, Kilburn, Derbyshire. Pours pitch large light beige head. It's both tart and sweet, roasty with bitter cocoa and tart fruitiness. Nice carbonation, nice mouthfeel, the saltiness is there but not hugely, cherries noted but well integrated. Good.

Growler fill from the Low Cost Beer online shop. Pours black with a thick beige head. Aromas of chocolate, cherry, light salt and wood. Taste has cakey coffee, salted chocolate, faint fruit and liquorice. There's a lot going on. Dry finish.

Kind of weird concept for me. But it’s interesting. Spicy, roasty, chocolate, touch of cherry. Salt. Not sure it’s the best combination but it’s nice.

Can at home in Hackney - picked up from HOTM. Pours black-brown with a dense, frothy mocha topping. Medium sweet flavour with decent roast, mellow berry notes, a little dry cocoa. Light to medium bodied with massaging carbonation. Pretty well balanced finish, more dry cocoa, aged berries, a little earth, dry roast. Very drinkable stuff.

One of a few dozens of variations on one of Siren's biggest hits, the Caribbean Chocolate Cake series of flavoured stouts, this time with three (!) varieties of cherries, sea salt, cocoa nibs and - oddly - cypress. Thick and creamy, membrane-lacing, dense, brownish mocha-beige, firm head on a black beer with burgundy tinge only visible at the edges. Aroma of dark chocolate, green coffee beans, salted caramel to even salmiak, concentrated cherry juice or ripe black cherries, plum wine, espresso, praliné, 'framboise' filling in a chocolate bar, ripe blue grapes, prunes, raisin bread, melting mocha ice cream, shoe polish, coffee grounds and indeed a volatile but very recognisable whiff of cypress. Sweet, dense onset with a clear sourish streak from the fruit, the whole combining lively sweet-sour black cherries with impressions of blackberries, figs and raisins, quite challenging early on; medium carb, very full and oily mouthfeel with soft velvety oats effect, thick layers of dark chocolate, toffee and walnut paste, sweet with a bitterish edge, but also showing the announced saltiness at its edges (fortunately not too strongly so) as in salmiak or salted caramel. Added cocoa does what it is supposed to do, namely deeping the chocolatey effect but taking it in a bittering kind of way, almost overpowering the sweetness from the lactose; above this all, this 'zingy' sourishness of actual dark fruit hovers, clashing a bit with the saltiness, sweetness and bitterness. The finish tries to tie everything together with moderate success, bringing forward a coffee-like roasted bitterness and warming gin-like alcohol effect along with peppery hop bitterness - but the cocoa reigns supreme, with the cypress being only a vague echo at this point. The cherries, meanwhile, still hold strong as well, continuing to effectuate their sourish, juicy fruitiness which, in the end, does indeed feel like a 'Black Forest gateau' when it finally fuses with the cocoa and toffee aspects, including the cocoa bitterishness. That pungent sourish fruitiness of the cherries in any case accompanies this odd and somewhat contrived beer's 'flavour parcours' from the first sip till the very end - but does so in an admittedly elegant way. Not the easiest one around - a lot is happening here, perhaps even a tad too much, but compared with the justly praised original, it does show the promised saltiness, cherry fruitiness (and tartness) and piney cypress aromas, though the latter are completely overshadowed by the other flavours. Too many things are happening here at the same time with unsurprisingly confusing effect, but it sure is an entertaining beer to drink. As for style designations: Siren calls this 'exotic' so I guess foreign stout is the obvious category springing to mind, but this concoction has very little or nothing to do with 'historical' foreign stout - this is, in fact, just another pastry stout trying to be original.