It’s always good to finish on a high, and there's a good chance Trillion$ will deliver a sugar high at the very least. The barrel-aged pastry stout from Good Land follows on from their earlier Billion$ and was the final entry in the Carwyn Cellars’ Black Box 2024 series. Staff from the Thornbury haunt travelled to Traralgon for a full day of adjunct chopping, roasting, caramelising and everything in between to bring it to life, and it would have been quite the day too, with the beer featuring caramelised (and bourbon-soaked) bananas, roasted coconut, roasted macadamias and Tahitian vanilla beans.
So, it’s safe to there’s a bit going on; even before the adjuncts hit, there was already a whole load of richness at play: the beer is a combination of imperial stout aged in a BRIX rum barrel and a bourbon barrel-aged Belgian quad. It means Trillion$ is as close as you can get to luxury without the money to pay for it, with the incredibly full-bodied 14 percent ABV offering perfectly capturing the spirit of one of the world’s greatest cakes.
I'm not sure if it's a common cake, or indeed one that has a name and, rather than looking it up, I'm heading straight to the supermarket to recreate this beer in baked form. To do so, I assume I'd need plenty of dark and milk chocolate to make the base before turning it more into a banana cake that’s made with brown sugar-coated roasted macadamias, smothered in maple syrup, then topped with a vanilla icing that’s dusted with coconut. Dunk it in your glass of rum and you're living the life of a real trillionaire.
Will Ziebell
Published July 15, 2024 2024-07-15 00:00:00
