The pastry stout is a style more popular in the United States than Australia, where it started out as a bit of a derogatory term for sweeter dark beers. For Five Barrel, where they have a fondness for stouts, having a crack at a pastry stout was only a matter of time. They just needed to wait for the cooler weather to arrive.
For this beer, Phil O'Shea uses the base of the milk stout from his core range, adding more lactose, more malt and throwing in some vanilla to come up with some “super chocolaty, vanilla sweet goodness”. But don’t take it as being a dessert beer; for all the chocolate and vanilla it’s not really a sugar bomb. But it does make you think of a nice pastry from the local cake shop.
There may also be plans for an imperial version of the Five Barrel milk stout down the line but, for now, we can appease ourselves with this. Which won’t be a problem at all.
Glen Humphries
Published May 30, 2019 2019-05-30 00:00:00
