Campfire Song Builds Its S'more on Actual Smoked Malt

Most s'mores beers leave the campfire to the imagination. Bunnyman started this one with smoked malt instead, then layered marshmallow, chocolate, graham cracker and milk sugar over the top at a restrained 5.5 percent.

Style: Smoked Porter
Release Date: 2026-09-17
ABV: 5.5%
Bunnyman Brewing (Burke, VA)

Most beers that chase a s'more arrive as pastry stouts. Marshmallow, chocolate and graham cracker go into a big dark base, and the campfire itself is left to the imagination. Bunnyman Brewing has come at it from the other end.

Campfire Song is a smoked porter first. The Northern Virginia brewery lists it among its September releases and describes a s'mores-inspired smoked porter with toasted marshmallow, chocolate, graham cracker and milk sugar. It runs 5.5 percent ABV.

Smoked malt is the reason the order matters. Malt kilned over a wood fire carries that character straight into the finished beer, which means the char in Campfire Song is a real ingredient rather than a flavor the other three are asked to imply. Against chocolate and marshmallow it also has a job to do, cutting sweetness that would otherwise have nowhere to go. The milk sugar pushes in the opposite direction. Lactose does not ferment out, so it stays in the glass as body and residual sweetness, which is the usual way a brewery gets a dessert beer to feel like one.

The ABV is worth a second look. Bunnyman's imperial stout, Midst of Chaos, sits at 9.3 percent, so a big dark beer is well within the brewery's range. Campfire Song was built at roughly half that, closer in scale to Hare of the Dog, the 5.6 percent American porter the brewery keeps on as an everyday pour.

Bunnyman runs three Fairfax County taprooms, in Burke, Lorton and Chantilly, each with its own tap list. Campfire Song appears on the published Burke and Lorton beer lists, both dated September 17, alongside the brewery's Sonnenblume festbier as the fall lineup fills in.

Editor’s Take

The s'more is a campfire food, and most beers chasing it forget the fire. You get the marshmallow, you get the chocolate, you get the graham cracker, and what has actually been handed to you is a sweet dark beer in a scout uniform. Bunnyman started at the smoke and worked forwards, which is the right order of operations and the less comfortable one, because smoked malt is not a shy ingredient and it does not blend politely into whatever you put next to it.

Then they stopped at 5.5 percent. A brewery with a 9.3 percent imperial stout already on the board plainly knows how to make this enormous, and decided instead that a campfire beer should be one you can have twice while the fire is still going. That is the part nobody wrote into the description, and it may be the best decision in the recipe.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.