15/VII/22 - 33cl bottle from Geers (Oostakker), shared @ home, BB: 20/XII/24 (2022-882)

Clear dark brown beer, big creamy solid beige head, a bit irregular, stable, non adhesive. Aroma: floral touch, fruity, weird, this doesn’t smell like a stout? Quite some CO2, pretty malty, yeast touch. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: malty start, good roast, caramel, a bit sweet, some chocolate, a bit sourish, nice one. Aftertaste: bitter touch, good roast, caramel, malty backbone,yeasty, some mocha, dark chocolate, hoppy bitterness, decent milk stout, even if I don’t get a lot of lactose!

New milk stout by Broers in Wachtebeke, bought at the church of Overslag they currently hire as a marketing platform for their beers, with the intention of eventually actually brewing at the site as well – a site already worth a visit already now, and probably even more once the brewing installation is set up. Medium thick, yellowish pale beige, moussy, opening and eventually dissolving head on a very dark chocolate brown beer, nearly black, with burgundy edges. Aroma of coffee grounds, roasted pecan nuts, burnt toast, roasted chicory, pear, cola, marmite and indeed some milk powder as can be expected. Sweetish onset, dried elderberry and pear aspects but generally kept very clean, fizzily carbonated; vague sourish accent underneath, merging well with the lactose sweetness that ensues, albeit in a subdued way – clearly the brewer has veered away from pastry stout territory here. Rounded, walnutty and hard-caramelly malts with a chocolatey core and roasty, coffee-bitter tail, carrying this accent of milk sugar to a generally clean, bittersweet, medium long finish in which the alcohol, very high for the style, remains very well hidden, worth an extra point for me. As I already told the brewer who was eager to read my notes when he saw me writing them down, this is a very well-balanced, very classically styled, old-fashionedly English milk stout, of the kind one would have encountered back in the 20th century before all that craft beer ‘violence’ profoundly disrupted the beer world; and even though I am the first to defend modern American and Scandinavian style ‘show stouts’, it is equally satisfying for me to come across a modest, balanced, clean and dry old school stout like this one every now and then. Recommended, if you are into classic style stouts – in any case very well made and delivering exactly what it says: a milk stout the ‘old’ way, nothing more, nothing less, the only thing setting it apart from tradition being its strength, as typical 20th-century milk stouts were usually low in alcohol.

Black with thin creamy head. Aroma has caramelised sugars and dark malts. Flavour has some sweet berry notes and a touch of liquorice next to the caramel and roasted bitterness.