Southern Tier's Creme Brulee Imperial Milk Stout
The beer: Southern Tier Brewing Company from New York State created this monstrous imperial milk stout with dark caramel malt, a healthy dose of lactose sugar and vanilla bean. The resulting concoction is dark as night and as sweet as candy. It lands in at 10% ABV but you can barely taste any alcohol in this beast because it’s so sweet. The beer is one of the brewery’s summer seasonals and was released in June.
Tasting: When I ordered it I didn’t actually know much about the beer. I actually had no idea what the style was until later. Upon tasting it, the overpowering flavor was caramel and butterscotch. It is so sweet that if you wanted to serve it with desert, you’d have to go with salty oatmeal cookies because the beer itself is enough to satisfy any sweet tooth. It was certainly a beer worthy of being called Creme Brulee. As I drank it I partly wondered if they had put some sort of creme brulee flavoring in the beer.
As you can tell from the picture it pours pretty much black. I’ve heard that it has some ruby hues but I couldn’t find them. The head was tan. I couldn’t find much hop character or alcohol really in the beer. Don’t get me wrong though, after drinking the glass you notice the alcohol. This definitely struck me as a night ender and not something you’d want to have more then one of. I’d think some enterprising local chef could make a nice caramel syrup out of this to put on ice cream.
Find it at: As of this post you can get this beer at The Brickskeller on draft. It’ll come in a small glass, but that really is all you need of this brew.
Tags: Brickskeller, Southern Tier
