Boy Meets Barrel Vol 1: Breakfast Stout
Outcast Brewing

 

 

1L howler from Sherbrooke Liquor store - this is Outcast's recent breakfast stout, put to a Bourbon barrel for an allegedly wee spell.

This beer pours a pretty solid black, with some loose amber basal edges, and three fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and bubbly beige head, which leaves some decent defrosting back windshield lace around the glass as it slowly and evenly subsides.

It smells of semi-sweet, artisanal cafe-au-lait, gritty and grainy caramel malt, a lesser biscuity toffee thing, Mars Bar nougat, bittersweet cocoa powder, faint vanilla-accented woody notes, a hint of anise spice, and some understated earthy, leafy, and floral green hops. The taste is bready and doughy caramel malt, toffee squares, medium chocolate, brown sugar, a still very subtle soused-up woodiness, milky coffee, black Twizzlers, and more tame earthy, weedy, and gently perfumed floral verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly low-key in its innocuous frothiness, the body a decent medium weight, and generally smooth, with a simple airy creaminess evolving as things warm up a smidge around here. It finishes off-dry, the robust malt, chocolate, and cuppa Joe essences politely escorting us on out the door.

Overall - this is by no means a bad brew, as all of the killer flavours from the base offering are there, fully intact, which is sort of the problem. If the titular boy actually met any wood, it surely wasn't for very long, as the latter's effect on the whole is minimal, at best, and not really worth the huge spike in retail cost (or so I've heard).