Stone: Coffee Milk Stout (USA: Sweet Stout: 4.2% ABV)
Visual: Black still body. Moderate coffee froth coloured head.
Nose: Milky coffee and roasted nuts. Lactose.
Body: Bitter cocoa and chocolate. Roasted coffee bitterness. Hazelnut. Slight chalk feel. Lactose. Slight sour dough touch. Heavy roasted character.
Finish: Roasted touch. Bitter coffee. Bitter chocolate. Sour dough touch.
Conclusion: This is a shockingly traditional interpretation of a style for a beer from Stone. Not what you would expect from them at all. Maybe that is the twist. Anyway, traditional is neither good nor bad in itself, here it is only unusual. So let us look deeper.
So, a heavily roasted feel and taste, slight sour dough undertones. While I say it is traditional, it is more a traditional standard stout than a sweet stout. The level of bitterness especially means that it is not as sweet as many of the style, or even what you would expect from the style’s name. It lays on a huge cocoa and coffee feel which is the mainstay of the beer. Lactose? yes there is a definite lactose touch to it, as you would expect from a milk stout – you don’t get it so much in the coffee, which is very robust,but it is there. In fact, like Beer Weak Brunch Weasel, the coffee is very robust and rounded, though here I would say it is more within the standard expected variation.
Oft the mouth feel is a bit lighter than expect – looking at Stone’s description it seems this is an expected feature – but even for a sweet stout this does not seem super dense. With the rougher flavours the base body seems to give way a bit too easily to reveal the rougher character underneath.
Overall it is ok, but does neither the sweetness the milk stout is known for, or the out there character expected from a Stone beer. Again, looking at the description this is expected behavior from their point of view, but it doesn’t seem to have quite enough to stand out for me. It definitely isn’t bad, the best way to describe it, I would say, is that it is like the craft beer coffee stout obsession has come together here to create a comparatively low abv traditional stout with a bit of extra umph.
So, a decent stout, but not really anything stand out in the style.
Background: Stone have pretty good hit rate with me, though they are probably better known for their hop hits. Anyway, grabbed this from Brewdog’s guest beer section. Erm, not much to say, been playing a pretty hard shooter platformer called Bleed before this, pretty cool in a Gunstar Heroes kind of way once you get used to the twin stick and buttons controls.