Explicit Emphasis from Wilde Child Beer Review

I seem to be reviewing a  lot of beers from around Leeds lately and I can assure you that's entirely coincidental. Wilde Child Brewing Co are another Leeds based brewery with only about 5 years experience but a pretty impressive selection on offer including 6 stouts, one of which is Explicit Emphasis and 5 porters, so they seem like a good brewery if you like your dark beers as much as I do. Don't worry though if you're a lighter drinker they also have a bunch of pale ales, IPA's and DIPA's for you to experiment with. I'm pretty sure I got this beer from Morrison's as part of a 4 for £6 deal so that's not bad.

Explicit Emphasis comes in a cool, colourful 440ml can which looks like it wouldn't be out of place in a modern art gallery. The beer is described as having 'more salted caramel than you can shake a stick at' with 'dark and roasted malts & a touch of lactose to create a truly thick and creamy beverage.' All of this sounds pretty good and at 5.9% alcohol Wilde Child are certainly putting together a beer that could pack a punch. I've decided to have this as a dessert on a Friday night as it has all the markings of a proper rich beer.

Explicit Emphasis pours a seriously dark black with a decent head. If the head lasted just a bit longer before fading to lacing I'd be really impressed but regardless it's a fairly good looking pint. The aroma is pretty impressive too. This certainly smells like a strong beer with lots of chocolate and caramel scents so I think I made the right choice having this as a dessert rather than as part of a session. What I would say though is that to me it smells much more of chocolate than salted caramel which is a bit of a surpise.

The beers texture is somewhere between medium and full bodied, I was expecting thicker if I'm honest but it's quite pleasant. Meanwhile the taste matches the aroma. It's a bit strange to be honest I love chocolate beers, but I'm slightly disappointed by how much chocolate is in Explicit Emphasis. Sure there's some salted caramel, but I really wanted that to be the driving force as lets face it there's dozens of good chocolate beers out there and it feels like this had a chance to stand out. Explicit Emphasis from Wilde Childe is a good tasty beer, but it doesn't do enough to stand out from the other chocolate beers out there. I'm going to give Explicit Emphasis 7.5 out of 10. It's a very good beer, it's just not an outstanding one.