Pastry club

Amazing! Mikkeller's Beer Geek Food Thing series is still running. They're imperial stouts, built sweet, with lots of adjuncts and pastry-type ingredients. I've consumed the ones I've had too far apart to say for sure that they all taste the same, but they all taste the same.

Today we have Beer Geek Dessert, a full-on 11% ABV, brewed at Lervig in Norway. Well, it's black, with a deep brown head hinting at the density to come. And dense it is: downright syrupy, the bubbles trudging their way up through the quagmire. And sweet? Yes, it's sweet: like doughnut glaze or cake icing, the pink sort. There's a hint of bitter espresso at the back of this, coming across as more of an acrid bum note than real balance. The finish is a long and cloying sugary buzz.

This beer has no chill; none of the rich and genteel smoothness I want from an 11% ABV stout. Is it good beer? Maybe, but only just. There's much better out there though.

Compare and contrast with an English pastry stout: Heaven, by Northern Monk. This is the same strength and includes vanilla, chocolate, maple syrup and two types of dark sugar, before ageing in bourbon barrels. Surprisingly, and happily, the sweeter elements aren't as clanging and obvious here: you're having a boozy coffee instead of dessert. Tia Maria and espresso martini both spring to mind from the aroma.

There's a dark chocolate churro-sauce effect in the flavour, as well as wafer biscuit and ripe strawberry. A lacing of harder roast around the edges keeps it honest, adding a dryness that helps balance the main hot-and-silky performance. This is how I like my pastry stouts: barely pastried but all stout.

We dial things back further with the finisher: No/Country from Barcelona's Garage Brewing. The brewery describes this as a "coffee crema Catalana imperial stout" from which I'm inferring the presence of coffee and vanilla. The ABV is 9.6%.

Bitterness features big in this, happily, and is of the dark roast, espresso-ristretto sort, with some high-cocoa dark chocolate too, plus a herbal pinch of liquorice. It's thickly textured, of course, but not sticky and quite light on the alcoholic heat. Something this serious and grown-up doesn't really deserve the pastry label. That said, despite its serious nature, part of me felt something was missing; that a little lightening silliness might have impoved it, or at least rendered it more interesting to drink. Still: no/country, no/complaints.

Given the infinity of possible variants and continued popularity of pastry stouts, I think they'll be with us for some time to come. If I have a piece of advice (and I try to avoid those on here) it's to not revile or adore all of them equally as there's quite a lot of variation on show within the sub-genre. Just like with hazy IPAs, really.