Whether you’re a skim, two percent, or whole milk drinker, Jan. 11 is a day to celebrate anything and everything milk. It’s National Milk Day and, of course, Peaks & Pints celebrates with a flight of milk stouts, which we call Peaks and Pints Beer Flight: Milk Stout.
Milk stouts originated in Europe in the 1800s. The style emphasizes a malty sweetness with hints of chocolate and caramel. They are sometimes called cream stouts or sweet stouts. Brewers intensified the dark, chocolaty malt body with lactose, the sugar in cow’s milk, hence why they’re more often called milk stouts. Brewer’s yeast can’t ferment lactose into alcohol, so it hangs around to give you a rich mouthfeel and a soft, creamy sweetness, balancing out the bitter and roasted qualities typical of its cousin stouts. It makes sense. Heating milk to very high temperatures, which also has the effect of caramelizing some of the milk’s sugar, makes evaporated milk. That sugar is the same lactose found in milk stout and is subjected to similarly high temperatures during the brewing process. We also detected an interesting tang, and we can’t help but wonder if this is attributable to the lactose as well, as lactose will ferment into lactic acid in the right conditions. Whatever. Done right, you can be extraordinary, like the five milk stouts in today’s beer.
Peaks and Pints Beer Flight: Milk Stout
Belching Beaver Peanut Butter Milk Stout Nitro
5.3% ABV
This San Diego-brewed, 2014 World Beer Championships silver medalist Belching Beaver Brewery milk stout hits a nostalgic note: Peaks & Pints remembers how good a creamy peanut butter sandwich tastes with a glass of milk. That same luscious, nutty peanut butter flavor flows alongside coffee creamer richness; slight coffee roast and peanut butter on our noses before a lightly roasted, bitter but creamy finish.
Mother Earth Milk Truck
5.8% ABV
Opaque in appearance, but with a marshmallow softness, Mother Earth Brewing uses specially chosen roasted malts to impart a non-astringent, darkness that laces the glass and our mouths from first sip. Accentuated using vanilla, lactose, and a heavy dose of oats, this big-bodied milk stout further impresses by finishing with a rich coffee aroma.
Lucky Envelope Peanut Butter Cream Stout
6% ABV
Lucky Envelope Brewing‘s Peanut Butter Cream Stout contains real peanut butter infused with the cocoa, coffee, and light roast flavors of our cream stout. Aromas of peanut butter and milk chocolate with light roast hit the nose, followed by chocolate, roast, and peanut butter. Lactose and flaked oats add a smooth creaminess to balance out bold dark malts.
Left Hand Coconut Milk Stout
6% ABV
A decadent twist on Left Hand Brewing’s award-winning Milk Stout with notes of milk chocolate and roasted coffee plus a burst of coconut.
Wiley Roots Breakfast At Wiley’s – Fluffer Nutter Latte
7.5% ABV
Ah, that heavenly, sweet combination of white bread, peanut butter, and marshmallow creme so beloved by Yankee children that it’s been known to stick around on lunch menus well into adulthood — and by “stick” we mean a vigorous face-scrub after finishing the Marshmallow Fluff. Wiley Roots Brewing’s version, Breakfast At Wiley’s – Fluffer Nutter Latte, is an oatmeal milk stout brewed with toasted marshmallow, peanut flour, and dark roast coffee.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
