Beer: Piece By Piece Red Velvet Stout
Brewery: Spring House Brewing (Lancaster, PA)
Style: Stout – American
8.3% ABV / N/A IBU

If No Corporate Beer limited reviews to can art alone, Piece By Piece would get 100 fucking skulls. The Slayer-themed can art – which simultaneously references Show No Mercy and Reign in Blood – depicts a goat deity impaling a piece of red velvet cake with a pair of swords. It’s totally genius and blatantly Satanic, right down to the hidden pentagram behind the logo. Lancaster upstarts Spring House Brewing clearly have a little hesh in them.

As a slightly sweet stout, Piece By Piece is totally serviceable. Color-wise, it’s a very appealing black-as-you-soul onyx and it pours with a massive head. Both of these suggest Piece By Piece could be an alternate choice for next St. Patty’s Day, although I do think that a stout like this benefits greatly from a nitro pour, which accentuates all of the good qualities and masks deficiencies. In this case, Piece By Piece does not offer truth in advertising: there’s sweetness, but not reminiscent of cake batter, and the vanilla frosting flavor is conspicuously absent. Ballast Point comes a little closer to capturing the essence of red velvet cake with its Red Velvet beer, which sports the Depression-era coloring agent of beet juice to produce a red hue. Personally, I’d have gone in the other direction and suggested a red ale base with chocolate malt and vanilla – especially as pastry stouts near critical mass.

For more info, check out Spring House Brewing here.