Stone Coffee Milk Stout

Stone Brewing Company debuted this new beer over the summer.  It is a cream/milk stout, a type of stout to which lactose is added to attain additional sweetness, since unlike most sugars, brewer's yeast won't ferment lactose.  So it just sits there, functioning like an artificial sweetener, except it's natural dairy sugar.  This particular one has coffee added to it.  A local place has it on draft.

Coffee Milk Stout's aroma contains a hefty bit of coffee grounds and a touch of some cream.  There really isn't much else.  I'm not surprised; at 4.2% alcohol, this is the weakest beer Stone has brewed since 1999.   Overall, it smells mild but it smells like the name.

The taste starts with char and roasted barley flavor.  This best resembles a dry Irish stout (a la Guinness) with more char.  Coffee doesn't come around until the finish.  Aftertaste is largely coffee grounds and what I think is black patent malt.  There is a far more subtle hint of dark baker's chocolate.

Now we come to this beer's great failing.  There is almost no discernible cream stout flavor to this.  No , scratch that: nothing about this is a cream stout.  No lactose flavor whatsoever.  Moreover, the texture is unlike any cream stout I have ever had.  It is highly carbonated, light, and dry. 

I did not expect---nor did I want---a powerhouse from this beer.  At 4.2% alcohol, this is not only the weakest Stone beer I have ever had but it is also the weakest cream stout I have ever seen.  Stone openly advertises this as the least alcoholic beer they have brewed in 15 years.  So I went in fully expecting and indeed hoping for a light cream stout with a bit of coffee.    But this is pretty much false advertising.  I can neither taste nor feel the presence of unfermented lactose.  A cream/milk stout is defined by that.  Because it lacks it, this is just too dry and utterly lacks the creamy texture essential to the style.

Stone Coffee Milk Stout simply does not come close to achieving what its name implies.  As a light, dry, session stout, it's good. As a light, dry, session coffee stout, it's serviceable. As any kind of cream/milk stout, however, it is self-evidently a miserable failure. This beer could probably be consumed with ease by the lactose intolerant. Great for them.  However, a cream stout is defined by the addition of large amounts of lactose; therefore, a successful cream stout is defined (in part) by its ability to leave the lactose intolerant clutching their stomachs in agony, cursing fate for robbing them of ice cream and milk 'n' cookies.  Stone Coffee Milk Stout fails that test. 

Founders Dark Penance

The latest addition to the lineup of these Michigan beer gurus is a "black IPA."  For those not up to date on craft trends, the paradoxically named "black IPA" (short for "black India pale ale") is essentially they a stout-black beer as hoppy as an IPA.  Many are impossible to tell apart from IPA's when blindfolded and most in my experience have no stout/porter flavors at all, appearance be damned.  Sometimes they are called black IPA's, sometimes they are called "American black ales" and originally they were called "Cascadian dark ales;" This particular AmeriCascadian dark black IPA ale is close to 9% alcohol and brewed with a touch of mildly roasted wheat.

Dark Penance pours a dark ominous hue that is only barely transparent.  Foam is off-white, with only moderate retention.  However, the foam has excellent lacing.

The aroma contains huge pine resin, bordering on pungent.  It is very reminiscent of a Chinook dry-hopped IPA but not quite as earthy or dirty.  Only a hint of malt peeks through the hop assault, not enough to really specify the type.  I can comfortably say this doesn't smell like a stout.

The flavor profile explodes with the pungency of Chinook and a dash of hop resin.  Although there is a hint of dark malt flavor, nothing about this approaches the roasted flavors of a stout.  Dark Penance very much tastes like an IPA that happens to be dark.  Pretty intensely bitter, and not in a clean way.  The aftertaste is all IBU all the time, lingering for quite a while.  The texture is appropriately dry for a style of beer which zeroes in on hop flavors.



Overall, Dark Penance is one of the more brutally bitter beers I have had.  Pine resin and Chinook coat the mouth and decimate any hint of malt flavor, including sugar.  This one's only for the hardcore hophead, and the old-school kind of hophead to boot.  You won't find any of the tropical fruit flavors increasingly present in modern IPA.