Brewdog: Ilkley: Westwood Stout (England: Stout: 6.5% ABV)
Visual: Banana gold. Small white head.
Nose: Tiramisu. Very milky coffee. Fudge. White chocolate. Toffee liquore.
Body: Tiramisu. Slight prickly spirit feel. White chocolate. Milky coffee.
Finish: White chocolate. Toffee liquore. Tiramisu. Light dry crushed digestives. Bitter coffee.
Conclusion: You know, people looking at the notes may come to the conclusion that this is a simple and one note beer. That would not be entirely correct. Basically it is very much tiramisu, in all that entails. Chocolate, spirit soaked sponge (well at least in my favorite Tiramisus), coffee, cream. Basically it is all that summed up in one word. Tiramisu. I’ve tried expanding out a bit, with exactly how the coffee is milky, the spirit touch, but frankly it is mainly padding. The one word describes so much.
This is kind of a spiritual successor to AB08 in that it is not a standard stout. For one think it is pale, paler than AB08. However it still has stouty feel, milky instead of bitter coffee, white instead of dark chocolate, tiramisu because, well tiramisu and fuck you if you have a problem with that – it is awesome.
This is just lovely, the spirity touch would normally seem a bit high, but feels perfectly integrated into the dessert styling here. It is thick, but smooth – such that it feels barrel aged in a lot of ways. In fact maybe there should be a barrel aged version, just because.
It is to tiramisu what AB14 was to banoffee pie, to me that is a heavenly beer, to you?- well that is your decision, but I would recommend at least giving it a try.
Background: Should I list this as stout? Erm, erm, ok yeah lets go with that. Anyway, third beer of COLLABFEST 2014! I was going to have this later, but on a recommendation I tried a sample and it instantly became the next review. It is a white chocolate stout. yep, white stout – I’m giving up on beer styles making sense. Again. I’ve forgotten to mention for the past few reviews – I am not an unbiased actor on Brewdog beers. I was keeping to thirds as there were 16 new beers to try, and I was going to try and get through them in the weekend (it ended up taking three days)
