Mad Cow Stout
The Brew Keeper

Thanks (I think) to AltBock for a gift of this bottle.

Pours a large, deep, reddish mahogany with ruby highlights at the edges. The head is a very fluffy, pillowy tan color that has good retention and spotty lacing.
The smell is malty sweet with lactose. Sourness shows up as it warms.
The taste is similar to the aroma but with a strong dose of tangy sourness. A smaller amount of sour taste would have been OK but it wore me out pretty quickly. I enjoy sour beers but it just doesn't seem to fit well with a sweet stout. (This isn't like sweet & sour shrimp.)
Mouthfeel is fairly light with a moderate amount of carbonation.
Drinkability borders on drainpour,mostly because of the sourness, to it's not that bad . I kept at it while hoping for a positive change and did find that either the sour eased or I became inured to it.

"Do you know why they call it 'PMS'? Because 'Mad Cow Disease' was already taken."

--anonymous (for good reason)

Barely opaque black walnut with generous cherry and orange accents. The several finger lid of golden brown sugar colored foam has a semi-rocky surface that sports mulitple glassy bubbles. A generous amount of attractive lace makes it to the pint glass as well.

The nose is more sour dark fruity than roasted or chocolate malty. Milk stouts should have some lactic tang... but maybe not quite this much. Molasses is prominent. It looks like this pissed-off bovine could go either way on the palate.

Mad Cow Stout tastes pretty much like it smells. If you like your stouts on the puckery side then you'll feel right at home. Thankfully, there's enough sweetness (not much bitterness) to keep things from getting out of hand. Having said that, the sourness will probably wear out its welcome long before the end of the bomber.

Otherwise, we're dealing with a pretty decent stout that tastes and feels like the ABV is near 5.0%. The website claims 7.5% and the label reads 7.0%, so the actual number is anyone's guess (batch to batch variation probably). Regarding the flavor profile: unripe figs soaked in molasses, chocolate sauce and buttermilk gets it about right.

The body/mouthfeel isn't as bullish as it could be. Stouts should be at least a little bit stout, right? The beer is glassy smooth, however, and has a soft, gentle carbonation that works pretty well.

After roaring out of the gate with such excellent offerings as White Storm, Boo Beer, Hop Fusion, Mad-arillo IPA and RBI IPA, Mad Cow Stout is the second less than good TBK beer in a row. That's okay. Your odds of choosing something good from the cooler or the tap are still pretty high.

This is not a sweet stout, but it is a milk stout, with lactose. Dark with a with off-white head. Off-aroma, and initial very sour. The sourness wears down and lactose sugar accumulates over the bomber. Reasonably different milk stout, and you have to get over the sour milk taste.

This was on tap at the Brew Keeper around 12/19/2008. I decided to take this one home with me in one of their 64 oz. growlers. I saw that they did bottled this beer, so it's probably available at your local Cleveland beer store right now.

When poured into a mug, I really didn't expect for this beer to pour a solid ink black color. I held it up to the light to see it's a true black color and sure enough it was. Only a small trace of light could shine through at the bottom of the beer. It was there where I saw that this beer had dark ruby red highlights. On top of this pitch black beer was a self rising creamy 1 to 1 1/4 inch head of dark mocha colored foam. This head of foam had great slow retention that left behind a long lasting skim of mocha colored foam and a few spots of mocha lace around the glass.

The aroma was roasted with dark roasted malts, a touch of dark roasted coffee beans, and a pinch of dark chocolate. In front and in behind of all of these roasted aromas was a slight cooked vegetable/lactose aroma. It almost smelled like the milk in the aroma went sour, but instead of smelling like sour milk, it decided to smell like cooked vegetables. I don't know what to say about that, except for that it was very odd. It had the roasted aromas, but those cooked vegetables have to go!

Thank you Brew Keeper for not putting the cooked vegetables into the taste. Instead, the taste was creamy and roasted with plenty of dark roasted malts, a hint of dark roasted coffee beans, a pinch of dark chocolate, a subtle touch of sweet caramel, and then this roasted taste ends with a speck of milk. In the beginning, I did notice that the milk was turning into cooked vegetables, but after the beer really warmed up, the milk kicked out the vegetables entirely.

This beer was in between being a light to medium bodied of beer. It was hard to tell where this beer stood. Whatever line it was over, this beer featured a soft roasted aftertaste of roasted malts, a subtle hint of roasted coffee beans, and a quick splash of milk chocolate.

I usually don't drink Milk Stouts, but this beer made for a good change of pace. I enjoyed everything in this beer except for the cooked vegetable aroma. Please get rid of that Brew Keeper! If you're looking for something different drink than your regular Belgian style of Ales or IPA's, then you should give this lightly roasted Milk Stout a try.