Duck Rabbit Milk Stout
Rating: 8 out of 10
It's Thursday Beer Love time - which means Father and Son have a terrific excuse to drink a beer together in the name of Beer Love Science. We're fake doctors after all, lest we forget. This week we have the Duck Rabbit Milk Stout as our test subject. Past experience with Duck Rabbit beers have set the bar pretty damn high, with their Duck Rabbit Baltic Porter setting the benchmark. Can the Milk Stout compete? Yes it can, in it's own unique way.
All Duck Rabbit beers come to us from the Duck-Rabbit Brewery over in Farmville, NC, where Son Beer Love still says he's going to take a field trip one day. We served up the Milk Stout in a tulip glass and got an initial beer temperature of 52 F. The ABV is a little low on this one (compared to the Baltic Porter) at 5.7%, but that's okay.
Our initial pour gave us a generous 2" large foamy medium brown head that gave us a fair amount of head lacing as it dissipated slowly into the black opaque body below. It tends to foam up really well when you pour it. We noted a soft amount of carbonation around the head.
The aromas come in with chocolate, coffee, roasted malts, black licorice and a milky, lactose like smell. A very intriguing smell as neither Father nor Son Beer Love has ever had a Milk Stout before this one. The tastes are true to all the aromas and also add smoke and cream to to the mix. When you sip the beer through the head you get more cream than milk in the taste for a nice effect. The smokiness comes through in the finish.
Our initial flavor notes come in with a moderate sweet and light bitter. The finish flavor notes move to a light sweet and moderate bitter and add a light saltiness. The finish duration is about average and the mouthfeel is nice and creamy. The tongue hit is in the middle of the tongue and there is no body lacing to speak of as we drink it. On our patented malt to hop scale it comes in very malty - 3 clicks to the left of balanced on the malty side (which is right where we like 'em).
For our bottom line notes we got a yes for everything but wow factor. Yes to drinkable, repeatable, balance, harmony, memorable and we would definitely buy it again.
The fact is folks we love this beer. It reminds us a lot of a cafe au lait (French for "coffee with milk") and takes us back to our favorite place in the world - The Cafe Du Monde on Decatur Street in New Orleans. Tell me that a cafe au lait and a beignet (or 15) wouldn't hit the spot now. This beer takes us there.
We might enjoy this beer really warm, say room temperature. Heck, we might even enjoy this beer hot. This is Son Beer Love's third Duck Rabbit Milk Stout and he still loves it. Like we said folks, this is our first experience with any milk stout, so we're not saying Duck Rabbit makes the best milk stout in the world - they may in fact all be this good. What we are telling you is that we'll be buying milk stouts as quickly as we can find them in the near term future to put this to the test. If you can find the Duck Rabbit try it and let us know what you think about it compared to the other ones. And if you know of some good other ones (we've heard the Lancaster Milk Stout and the Left Hand Milk Stout are also great) please let us know. We're not lactose intolerant and we'll gladly try them on, you know, for science.
By John & Dad on August 21, 2008 @ 8 PM with 1 Comments
Comments (1):
We recently vacationed down south, and as we passed a restaurant I saw some guy drinking Milk Stout. Having to always try a beer I've never heard of, I bought one. IT WAS WORTH IT. Delicious! The bartender told me, many people who drink Guiness think this is better. It's not. But, it's still a stout I will search out here in New Jersey. We have a liquor store with a huge creepy clown out front, that's filled with imports and micro brewery beer. If they don't have it, I'll be sure to tell them about it.
Posted by
George on November 17, 2008
@ 12 AM
« Beer Etiquette Tips
Flying Dog Kerberos Tripel »
| 
