Milk stout – Let's Learn Beer!

fifth

by Ceit
December 29, 2025December 14, 2025

On the fifth day of Beermas I went and got for me
Five gold nuts
Four obvious non-kiwis
A three-time remade masterpiece
Two guarding lions
And a crow glaring silently

While the birds are difficult due to their abundance, the rings are hard to match just because. You’d think there would be more references to gold, but maybe craft brewers are just too modest. With a little imagination, though, there’s enough out there to find something satisfying. I feel like I will be satisfied with Nuts & Crosses. It’s a stout, there’s peanut butter, I’m expecting some kind of liquid Reese’s. It’s a little bit of a surprise to see the name Buxton on the can, since I don’t associate England with peanut butter consumption, but there have been quite a few peanut butter stouts put out there from a number of European breweries, so I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising. Sometimes a liquid snack is a very different experience than a solid one anyway.

Somewhat sunny head, lighter than you expect to see. It’s a mocha with extra milk. The beer is good and dark, a well brewed coffee or dark chocolate. The aroma a vegetable tang, like the juice in canned green beans. It’s slightly metallic, slightly earthy. The flavor is deeper and richer than the smell, with a feeling of quality chocolate and a salty hint of peanut butter. It’s quite and armchair of a beer, an invitation to grab a fat book and invest some time in it. It’s a very light, maybe milked down, stout, at only 4.5%, but it has a power and presence and does not slip by unnoticed.

Supplier: La Buena Cerveza
Price: €5.90

carved out

by Ceit
August 29, 2025September 1, 2025

This was the first beer I grabbed off Más Que Cerveza’s shelf, with that luscious cake on the can and the promise of a dessert stout in the name. It certainly looks promising, this Black Forest Gateau. It’s an imperial milk stout with cherry puree and aged on oak chips, which makes it sound all fancy. I assumed Soul Fire was an English brewery, but the price should have tipped me off; you don’t often find big cans under €5 anymore, and an imported one would be absolutely unheard of. It is, in fact, a Spanish brewery, based in Jerez de la Frontera. The contact with wine-making was a benefit for a lot of the early craft breweries in the center of Spain, so maybe sherry will have a similar effect.

Finally a blacker stout, not so heady as recent ones though. There’s chocolate in the aroma, but with some kind of rubber. It smells more like a chocolate toy than real chocolate. Keep sniffing and the cherries will also come out to greet you shyly. Not as sweet as the name implies, and a little rubbery in flavor too. I wonder if it’s some reaction in the oak that brings that out. Eventually the fruit essence goes more banana than cherry but it never really gets sweeter. The woodiness comes out more and gets a little rougher, which is something different. Although the flavor is unignorable, the beer itself has a very light feel and a certain smoothness in spite of the up-front oak presence. I think this one would really benefit from some dessert along with it, just so you don’t feel like you’re chewing on wood chips through the whole can. It starts to pick up some smokiness after a while, is the wood doing something special in there? I can’t say that this is my favorite of any recent beers, or even one I would recommend. Somebody probably likes it, but I wouldn’t want to presume.

Supplier: Más Que Cervezas
Price: €4.89