BEAR-ly Getting Started 10.4 - Chocolate & Milk Stout

Closing out Series 10 begins with a review of the previous episodes as well as the ABC's of the Principles of Pairing. What is a milk stout? After a thorough tasting session, Jason and Craig talk food pairings. Traditionally we close out a series by talking about Magic Bear Beer Cellar and what's coming up for them. Featuring Eric More Cowbell from SingleCut Beersmiths of Astoria, NY.

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Transcript

Jason:

The Buffalo Brews podcast. All right. I think this episode of barely getting started 10.4 should be dedicated to Gina who works at the diner all day. Little call back there. When Jenny works at the docks.

Craig:

I like it. I like it. No.

Yeah, it's, you know, 10-4. We're going to be over and out with this series.

Jason:

10-4, good buddy.

Craig:

I say, yeah, 10-4, good buddy. We were doing perfect pairings and the perfect pairings were looking at the actual beer itself, you know, a base style with one addition to it where that addition is very complimentary. If not perfect pairing for the beer that it's in and then we've been talking about the principles of pairing all of which I will kind of recap.

So first let's recap what you know, we've seen so far in this series and it kind of leads its way up to where we are now. So we started off with a raspberry wheat, which was very very good. The raspberry was front and center and we had a nice base wheat to carry that raspberry to us.

Then we tried a maple brown ale and that brown ale, you know, base brown is kind of like chocolatey, caramel, slight vanilla, definitely some nuttiness with some hints of roast and that was a roastier beer. I think we wanted a little bit more maple, but a very good beer nonetheless, but it was one of those, you know, when we talk about the principles and aligning intensities, could have used a little bit more maple. It needed to step up its maple game.

And then we were given our intensity matching principle with the vanilla porter, which we just did last episode. A classic. It was a classic and it was good.

We just both kind of said that was, you know, there we go. That was a nice indicative perfect pairing to match the namesake of this series. We just had a beer where the vanilla started and finished but did not overpower and that's some of the things that we are looking for in our principles of pairing food and beverage.

So to do a quick recap on that because we just went over all the beers that we did. First thing we want to do is think about a beer holistically. Okay, all the components that go in it and we'll do that when we talk about this stout and then you want to think of the three main principles of pairing food and beverage and I call them the three pronged approach.

You'll see ABC's and it's kind of both because the first is to align intensities. So you don't want one thing blowing the other one out of the water and then B or the second prong is to bridge the gap where similar flavors in both or you find a flavor affinity or something that doesn't taste the same but goes together. Okay, our peanut butter jelly, our chocolate graham cracker and marshmallow schmores nothing tasting the same but together harmonious and tells our brain yum.

And then finally the last prong or sometimes the most difficult to make sure that we address is the cutting and contrasting the C of our ABC's. So we do have carbonation and typically we have some sort of bitterness whether from roast or from hops that can be used as well as alcohol alcohol like higher ABV can really cut and contrast some rich foods, whether it's a rich piece of cheese or a fatty piece of you know, prime rib or anything. That's super sweet.

We need to kind of cut through that in order to enjoy it on a larger scale. If not, you might just need a bite and it's too rich for my blood. But if you had something to kind of just cut through it, you might be like I can I can take another bite of that because I know I've got this in my pocket to fight it match its intensity as well as cut it and then hopefully you're doing all three and have some sort of affinity or flavor bridge.

And now you have a nice well-rounded pairing. So now that we're all caught up and up to snuff. Let's divulge the beer.

We're drinking. We're going to kind of I remember when single cut so single cut kind of came out and it was one of those breweries. I was like man, they're making good beer.

Okay, and what did I say Astoria Astoria, New York?

Jason:

So yeah, it's in Queens, right?

Craig:

Yeah, so downstate Queens. We were talking about Jesse of Queen City quality. She used to work from a single cut.

She was a part of their quality assurance team. I think so single cut would come out really good beers really good IPAs really good sours. Just one of those breweries where you trusted anything that came out and then unfortunately, I do feel it's one of those that have been out a while and the beers that they make aren't so far-fetched that kind of like the Rohrbach vanilla porter that we just enjoyed we forget how good they are.

Because there has been such a us just just tons of new stuff coming out within the last 10 or so years and the craft scene, but we're going to be enjoying Eric more cowbell exclamation point. It's a chocolate milk stout. So the perfect pairing being a chocolate with a milk stout thinking, you know milk chocolate and we are going to try to divulge or not dissect the different prongs of pairing within this beer when we sample it.

So let's get us kind of caught up with what a milk stout is. There's plenty different stouts and if you want to learn more about it, please scroll and find our shout for stout series and there's a bunch of different stouts you can enjoy but we did try a porter. Porter was kind of the founding father of stout as there were stout borders, which were just a little bit roastier a little bit bigger and alcohol and body so much so that eventually they broke off and create their own branch called stouts.

So to me you have the brown ale which is chocolatey little vanilla and nutty nose nutty notes and some beginning roasty notes of like coffee and definitely a brown in color if not leaning towards dark brown black Porter you would still have the chocolate hint of vanilla not as much definitely lose a little bit of that caramel kind of toffee like note touch of nuttiness not as much as the brown ale and some of that is because the roast has picked up a notch not a ton. That's more of like a light roast where to me stout is now a darker roast not quite an espresso like an imperial stout.

But again that is for you to go take a listen at the shop for stouts because we're just going to stick with milk stout here. So milk stout usually the difference between a stout and a Porter is roasted barley. So not even a malted barley just roasted barley gives it that like super roasty vibe where you know, you've got some coffee notes in there and the chocolate kind of falls to the wayside in lieu of that roasty note.

So to me adding chocolate back into a stout is nice because it's got, you know, subtle notes of chocolate, but this helps to amplify it now a milk stout means that there's some residual sugar because lactose or milk sugar is not fermentable by traditional ale yeasts. So it stays in the beer and that residual sugar creates kind of like a creamy mouthfeel. So when you have a milk stout your you should know that you're going to have a sweeter beer.

You should know that it's going to be a little creamier and to me knowing that I'm having a milk stout with chocolate again, we're bringing back those subtle chocolate notes and kind of bringing it to the forefront and having that hopefully match the level of roastiness and coffee kind of like notes, but then the fact that it's a milk stout that creamy sweetness, you know, it's going to kind of just lend itself flavor affinity. It's now kind of like milk chocolate not so much and we'll see we'll have to see when we try it but not so much a dark bitter chocolate to me. There's going to you know, with it being the stout there should be some bitter roast notes, but the fact that it's a milk stout a little less intense and the fact that we're adding chocolate to it should hopefully mellow it out and go from a dark chocolate to perfect pairing of milk and chocolate.

Jason:

Okay now to settle a conversation that goes on between Bree and I on the Buffalo Brews podcast. We're talking about milk stouts. Is there such thing as a drier milk stout versus a sweeter?

Craig:

Yeah, you know, I might not say there's a dry milk stout but the way you phrase it a drier than your yeah, you know, there's there's going to be a varying level of residual sugar and that's really up to the brewer to decide what they want the final product to be gotcha. So some milk stouts might be intensely sweet and there is a lot of milk sugar left and you know, you have what's called original gravity and then you know your final gravity and if the beer still has a lot of sugar in it at the end and a higher gravity than it's just going to be a thicker sweeter beer. Whereas, you know, just like I said where brown ales porters and even some stouts blend the lines and some people's brown ale tastes more like others as porters and vice versa and so on and so forth the varying levels of sweetness to a milk stout is dependent on what they they went in and sought to do.

So yes, I do think in comparison some will be drier than others if they make it, you know, well balanced it should be a nice balance without even adding chocolate just that roastiness and the base grains that are in what make a stout that gets balanced by some of that milk sugar residual sweetness. So you kind of have like, you know, your sweetened coffee, you know, you're if we didn't add the chocolate or we didn't add the word milk to it, you know, you're thinking like creamy but not necessarily. It's just kind of like a sweeter black coffee.

It's it's it's the sugar no cream type of coffee when it comes to a milk stout, but now when we add these chocolate flavors to it, I'm hoping that we're going to have kind of like the the mocha and you know, good old coffee and chocolate. Another thing we you know, we talked about vanilla going into baked goods. I've also seen anything with chocolate.

If you put like a little pinch of coffee into it, you know that kind of adds a little bit more of that edgy chocolatey kind of roasty chocolatey flavor to it. So whether or not it comes across as coffee and mocha or it just helps the chocolate taste more chocolatey. I have seen recipes that call for you know, some espresso like crystals or whatnot or just some chocolate in it or sorry just some coffee in the chocolate aspect to to just make it a little bit more pronounced.

Jason:

We switch the the normal coffee that they would use in their stouts with dark sparkling Folgers crystals.

Craig:

Let's see if they notice and you know, we'll see if it's good till the last drop but I think we're well caught up to what we've been doing where we're at now the base style. Now, we just got to see the execution, right? So everything is in theory.

We've been talking in theory, but now with this crack we are going to put theory into practice and see, you know, what's interesting to see is back-to-back a vanilla porter now a chocolate milk stout. So we're going chocolate and vanilla two basic flavors that we see in ice cream and that you know, call it the yin and the yang but it's it's your dark chocolate flavor and then your light vanilla creamy flavor. Those are going back-to-back and in this case, we are trying to add some of the chocolate back into the roastiness of a stout and the fact that it's a milk stout should already be on the sweeter side and now we are going to add that chocolate to make it a mocha.

Mocha. We shall see.

Jason:

Yeah.

Craig:

So looks almost identical to the porter that we just poured. I mean, it's black. It's opaque.

Jason:

This is opaque.

Craig:

And then, you know, hold it to the light little less brown notes a touch there, but not much difference between that porter. That was a dark porter. Definitely a nice head on there.

Similar to the maple brown like I don't get a lot of wafting chocolate notes. We had tons of raspberry on the aroma and tons of vanilla on the aroma when we had those two beers not a ton of maple here.

Jason:

I mean, I'm not getting very subtle creamy chocolate on the nose.

Craig:

Yeah, I mean, it's not there's not a ton of coffee either. So it's not like it's taking a backseat to a heavy, you know, waking up in the morning and smelling the coffee type vibe. It just kind of has this subtle.

Slight just, you know, coffee vibe, but nothing overly chocolatey on the aroma in my opinion.

Jason:

Yeah, we'll see what you know, see if the taste is any different and we'll see if we need even more cowbell. That's right.

Craig:

Cheers. Cheers to 10-4. So good beer.

But difference between this and we'll just compare it to the last two because a raspberry wheat's a little too far off. But I have one thing that I definitely noticed that's indicative of the style and I want to see if you notice it. So what are your initial thoughts on this first take of this?

Jason:

Well, so they talk about balance, you know, a well-balanced beer. This is balanced for sure. Now, I said creamy chocolate real faint on the nose.

I'm actually going to go in for a second sip.

Craig:

And usually as we enjoy our fourth beer, I bring out something to eat. So I got a little bowl of mixed nuts. So I do apologize.

I'm turning away from the microphone when I chew, but if you hear me, that's okay. Chewing my, you know, I mean, this is, you know, respectful.

Jason:

It's more cowbell.

Craig:

Yeah, it's more cowbell. So if it's more cowbell, I don't mean to be the cow, but yeah.

Jason:

Yeah. I mean, it's a little, you know, I mean, I would say, I would say this is a little dry.

Craig:

I mean, tell me about mouthfeel versus the Porter and Brown Ale. I think this is smooth.

Jason:

Well, not as smooth as that Porter. Now, let's not get crazy here. You know, the Brown Ale, I mean, I mean, you know, we already talked at length about that, but compared to the Porter, it's probably less than the Porter.

I like how even the flavor is in this. Obviously, the vanilla Porter is vanilla forward because that's the way it's supposed to be. So this one here is a little, it's a little sweeter than some of the recent milk stouts I've had.

I like that. This is like very even keeled.

Craig:

Yeah, it's not punch you in the face sweet. I, you know, it's not a pastry stout level. It's not, what I was trying to edge you towards is I get a little bit, it's definitely a little bit more fuller bodied.

It's a little thicker on the take than the Porter was.

Jason:

It is.

Craig:

So, and that's, that's indicative of milk stouts, right? That's that residual sugar. Not only is it lends some sweetness, which we have, but that vanilla Porter had a lot of sweetness.

This to me is a little bit more body. It's not super thick, like some really decadent stouts that are out there, but to me, it has a fuller mouth feel. And as you kind of swish it around your palate, you can, you can feel it a slightly thicker.

Jason:

Milk stouts typically for me. I like, I like the creamy aspect. I mean, when you give that a swirl, you get, again, like you said, it's like almost a pinky width there.

I mean, that really fluffs up nice.

Craig:

Yeah, to me, that's just indicative of a well-brewed beer. You know, this on the chemistry level, it's well-brewed, even with the additions of chocolate.

Jason:

It's, I'm not, I'm not particularly fond of milk stouts that are on the drier side because I feel that they're bland.

Craig:

Yeah, it's like why make a milk stout?

Jason:

This is not bland. It's a little bit off, like off dry, but no, this is, this is really nice. I actually like this because I like how even, like how even the flavor is across the board.

Nothing overpowers the other, but you can get it all.

Craig:

My only, I don't want to say concern, my only, I don't get milkshaky. Yeah, it's, if you gave me this beer and I didn't know what this beer was, would I say it was a chocolate milk stout or would I just think maybe milk stout?

Jason:

I would say milk stout.

Craig:

It is a milk stout. This is a very, very good milk stout, but when I'm looking for a chocolate milk stout, I would want, where I think this, and this is maybe again, where it's kind of a perfect pairing because maybe it tones down the roastiness. Like this isn't a super roasty beer, but that's also what the milk stout aspect of it does.

It, you know, smooths it out, and as you said, a very smooth beer, and that's some of it is from the sweetness, but I don't get a ton of cocoa or chocolate notes. To me, if I hear chocolate milk stout, I'm thinking, you know, milk chocolate, if we just write it backwards, a stout with milk chocolate. I don't get a ton of chocolate outside of the chocolate I would normally get from having a stout.

Okay, and I would agree. It is not as roasty though either. So to me, maybe that roasty at all.

Yeah, I think that chocolate is cutting and contrasting that roast, but in its efforts to do that in its head-to-head battle, you know, it has lost some of its chocolatiness. So to me, yeah, I like that. Yeah, it's just like the maple where it's there, but I would have told you that was a brown ale and I taste like some notes of maple.

I would say, yeah, this is definitely a good milk stout and I could taste some notes of chocolate, but usually I taste notes of chocolate in a stout.

Jason:

It's probably in the same category as the Four Mile. It's where you're drinking this going, I expect a milk stout and I expect chocolate, but that's not exactly what we're getting.

Craig:

Yeah, you're delivering on the milk stout. That's not the primary. Very well-made milk stout.

Jason:

It's a great milk stout. Better than some of the ones I've had recently.

Craig:

Perfect. Yeah. But if you're going to tell me it's a chocolate milk stout, give me a little more cowbell.

Give me a little more, Eric. It is good. It's one of those that I would enjoy.

But on the other side of things, that vanilla porter with it finishing as sweet as it did, to me, that was more of a dessert-y chocolate chip cookie pairing beer. Whereas I look at this and I'm like, okay, this could pair more with meals because it's got a full body so it can stand up to some stuff and chocolate does go into some savory dishes. Can we go spicy here?

Can we go some Szechuan?

Jason:

Asian Szechuan?

Craig:

There you go. Like I'm thinking Mole. We just got there together.

Yeah, you think I mean a lot of people that I've heard that join like chili competitions and stuff. They're like the secret is I put a whole bar of chocolate and I was like, okay, thank you for your secret. But you know, some of those like Baker's chocolates.

It's like what it does is it balances that heat a little bit. Have you ever heard of like Mexican hot chocolate? And then there's a lot of stouts that do a take on that.

That adds a cinnamon element as well, but it's mainly, hey, we've got some ancho or some sort of chili in there. And then that little bit of spice pairs, you know, or you know, cuts and contrasts with a little bit of that sweet chocolate note and then that cinnamon just kind of adds that tertiary element to it. So to me, since it's not super chocolatey and it's not super roasty, it is well balanced and you know, to me that does make it a good candidate for a good pairing because they're kind of cutting and contrasting.

I just think I would like the intensity of the chocolate to be a little bit more. But I can see this being, you know, and to be honest now as I have it warm up a little bit and it's a little bit lower volume of my glass. I'm getting some more residual chocolate.

So to pair this I can see this with, you know, it's got sweet notes. So something slightly spicy. I don't want something super spicy because the intensity of it's too high is going to blow this out of the park.

I do see it with some sort of like chili or like you said and we came together like mole or these like simple spices that there's a lot going on. It's not just like hey, we're trying to just kill you with spice here. It's not a suicide hot wing or you know, one chip challenge.

It's more of that layered flavor.

Jason:

They don't do that anymore.

Craig:

Yeah, not without at least a couple of waivers and that's right. No, so it's it's definitely one of those builds upon flavors and in this case if I were to try pairing something the other thing I can see is, you know, some steaks on the grill like the rubs might have like a Rocky Mountain rub, which usually has like coffee in it or a little coffee and cocoa. I've had some cheeses that are dusted in cocoa so I can see this going real well with some of the cheeses more so than that vanilla Porter just because the vanilla was so prevalent.

It kind of took front stage and to me that that lent itself more to a dessert or some sort of sweet pairing. This could go with something that's not super savory, but enough where you know, a pinch of coffee would help and a pinch of cocoa helps not to bring out the sweet or rich aspect on the like dessert front, but the chocolate cocoa vibe of like a sauce or a mole or something that is accompanying a bunch of other things.

Jason:

I've had a lot of fun researching perfect pairings when it came to the food aspect of this because that was one of the things I want to really want to launch myself into and see if I can start picking up on profiles. So the one thing I wrote down was cream puffs like I wanted something a little crusty. You know, just yeah, just say cream puff, you know something that would complement the chocolate that was here and then you still get an additional creamy aspect to it.

So that was one things I put down and then I was talking about espresso cake, which I mean who makes an espresso cake? I don't think I've seen one in a bakery and in forever. So but I mean if it was something that I would do I probably make cake instead of you know, the water aspect or maybe substitute it in mix it in with the oil.

Maybe a shot, you know, I don't know maybe a tablespoon of espresso.

Craig:

Yeah, something like that. No, I think both of those would be fantastic. I mean, they're both going after the sweeter side and that's what this is, you know, because coffee goes well with dessert chocolate is obviously, you know, a major component of a lot of desserts and sweets.

So it's an easy pairing for something like that to me a little bit more of a interesting or unique would be something like even a prime rib that has been rubbed with some coffee and or a little bit of cocoa powder within its rub that might be a very interesting pairing. You know that the sweetness in this is not, you know, so much that it would be out of place, but it's enough where it can kind of contrast with some savory notes. It would be interesting to try.

I mean, it's another one of those in theory. It sounds like it works but in practice would it be, you know, an atrocity? Yeah, but then again some spice to this might be some a nice welcome addition, but it goes to show you that, you know, single cut with this beer is making a quality beer because we're talking about it pairing with both a, you know, espresso cake and all sorts of desserts as well as potentially a steak or a mole or going in, you know, to me it's much more beef than anything else.

Okay, right. If we had a taco or something, I feel like a shredded beef taco takes to this much more than like a chicken and if we were doing a cheese, I think it needs to be a slightly subtle cheese so that you know, there's not too much funk or too much buttery nuttiness in the cheese, but something that's like a definite like creamy to go along with this, you know, milk stout creamy texture and then the chocolate and cocoa aspect of it just adding to it versus, you know, trying to fight against any sort of funkiness of a blue cheese or like a cave ripened cheese and, you know, the really sharp cheeses. I think this might not be the greatest thing for but I can see like a like a softer just semi-soft cheese.

Jason:

Yeah, we got a few minutes left on this episode and in turn this series as well. It's been really fun learning about perfect pairings going from raspberry to maple to vanilla to to chocolate, but I like to reserve the last couple of minutes of the last episode to talk about Magic Bear and the things that are going on. I believe this episode would air on April 29th, April 29th.

Yeah, so I mean something in that neighborhood that you know, that's going on a little, you know, a little pre-mayday action and get the crystal ball out here.

Craig:

I'm just going over the calendar in my mind. I mean April spoiler. I do believe we're right now.

We're slotted to have a collaborative release with Brewery Ardenne again and you know interested in how that's going to come out or we're looking at taking a beer to Mars or a bear to Mars and adding a couple of flavors to it. Nice. I don't want to give too much away, but you'll be able to you know, you always each month.

I always have a collaboration release and that is the one I think we're doing it second or third week in April. So that'll definitely still be on tap. So that's something to look forward to, you know, we're always ramping up for warmer weather.

So we'll most likely be getting our patio set up at some point early to mid May getting ready for food truck Tuesdays down here. We always allow outside food. So it's perfect time to grab something from your favorite food truck or try something new bring it on over to Magic Bear.

We'll help you pair a beer with it and enjoy. I'm trying to think of any events the events off the top of my head not too many in April around that time. We'll have some DIY courses from our friends from Create Flow and that's early April though.

So always stuff to make sure you're checking out our Instagram at Magic Bear Beer or Magic Bear Beer Cellar on Facebook so you can see what we're doing. End of April is always, you know, right now that is a almost two months out. So to me, I'm just trying to be two weeks ahead and I'll probably start thinking about Advent calendars, unfortunately at that time because that is a year-long kind of thing in my head of just thinking of what I can put in there new and just getting ready for Christmas time.

Like, you know, we're getting close to halfway there at that point in time.

Jason:

So I can't believe that that would when these episodes release. We're still we're now starting to talk about halfway to Christmas season.

Craig:

It's just that's how fast it goes. And I think Western New York, you know, we look forward to it so much but Easter's late this year. So, you know, maybe some Easter style events or we'll we got something up our sleeve always.

Jason:

All right. Well, you know as this is this is 42 episodes in for barely getting started. It's almost a third of our almost a third of our library.

So it has been a pleasure ever since you sent me that initial text of like, hey, what do you think about dot dot dot and it's been a it's been a journey. So we've got you know, we have some things that are that were tossing around for series 11 and 12 and I don't think we're going to be I don't think we're going to be stopping anytime soon because I feel like we're still barely getting started.

Craig:

Oh, yeah, there's a lot to do with beer, but we we have I mean.