The novelty factor

It was dessert time after a big dinner. Down the street from the restaurant, we settled into UnderDog for a beer in lieu. The most appealing item on the menu for my sweet tooth was from Amundsen, delighting in the name Donut Series: Coconut Cronut with Dark Chocolate & Almond Glaze, a pastry stout, believe it or not.

Now, I have never eaten a cronut -- portmanteau words give me indigestion -- so I can't speak to how accurately this 10.5% ABV recreates the experience. To be honest, I didn't really get any sense of pastry from it, in the cake or bread sense: neither donut nor croissant. The coconut, though? Oh yes, in spades. I guess it doesn't take much of it to make a stout taste coconutty, because those that have it tend to absolutely honk of it, like this fellow. There's plenty of chocolate too: syrupy and thick, resembling more a sticky chocolate sauce than the real thing, and lacking the proper cocoa promised by the "dark" chocolate part of the beer's name. Beyond that, it's just sweetness, the lactose adding that particular vanilla quality that's common to lots of beers like this. And though it's heavy, it's not hot: the double-digit alcohol causing no unpleasantness.

While the name utterly overstates the case for what it is, it's a decent and fun beer, and was absolutely the afters I was after on the day. If you hate this sort of thing, whether the title, the concept or the taste, then it's best avoided. Me, I liked how simple it was in contrast to the very involved specification. I'd have been more inclined to buy it if they'd called it Big Chocolatey Stout and nothing else.