White Wedding White Pastry Stout
Town Square Brewing Co.

 

Who knew I'd do two white stout reviews in a row!......

A- This one pours a fairly heavily hazy deep yellow, leaning towards but not quite there amber color, and contains plenty of debris that floats and eventually settles in the bottom of my glass....no big deal really. The head is soapy in texture, is eggshell coloured and seems to show decent retention, eventually settling into a sticky, patchy half finger of foam. This leads me to the lacing, which speaks for itself....it clings to the inside of the glass like it is hanging on for its' life! I can see through the cloudiness enough, to see many columns of bubbly carbonation rising like a ginger ale. Overall I think this looks swell!

S- I definitely get hints of vanilla cake, along with sweet buttercream icing, muted vanlilla bean, yeasty fresh bread/biscuit, white chocolate, and soft caramel richness on the finish. Also noted are hints of leafy bitterness, chocolate and caramel malts, and an ever so slight creamy cappuccino aroma.....nice!

T- This has an overall sweetness that lingers during the taste, as well as long afterwards...guessing this is due to the usage of icing sugar in the mash. Lingering milk and white chocolate, and a certain spiciness that I am digging....cinnamon is what I'm thinking here.....faint mocha and/or cappuccino. The finish becomes very vanilla cake like and i truly feel like I've just finished off a big hunk of the stuff! Lovely!

M/O- Medium bodied and the carbonation is mellow smooth....awesome! This is a very flavorful white stout and I find the drinkability again to be very high....as it warms though it becomes quite robust and one pint may very well be enough for this guy over a session. Pair this with a birthday cake or with something rich in flavor to help balance everything out. Definite buy in the future!

 

Appearance - Pours a warm gold with three fingers of foamy white head.

Smell - Roasted malts, chocolate, vanilla sugar, hint of coffee, vanilla cake, icing sugar, earthy/leafy hops, earthy yeast.

Taste - Strong notes of vanilla in the form of cake and icing. Roasted malts provide an earthy coffee flavour. Hint of chocolate.

Mouthfeel - Medium bodied with light-to-moderate carbonation. Very smooth, velvety texture.

Overall - A very unique style of stout, my very first pastry stout. I love the concept of throwing in an entire wedding cake into the brew.

8oz glass at Beer Revolution YEG Oliver Square - a combination of a White Stout and a Pastry Stout, according to the brewery.

This beer appears a murky, medium apricot yellow colour, with a thin cap of nothing in terms of head, which leaves a little bit of streaky cirrus cloud form lace around the glass as things slowly abate.

It smells of bready and doughy caramel malt, a lesser biscuity toffee sweetness, toasted marshmallows, some wan nuttiness, faint cafe-au-lait, and some plain earthy, musty, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is grainy and bready caramel malt, simple syrup, subtle day-old coffee grounds, hints of cocoa powder, and more understated leafy, herbal, and musky floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is quite tame in its palate-disappointing frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and generally smooth, with nothing really causing any sort of ruckus at this point in time. It finishes off-dry, the malt, chocolate, and cotton candy essences presiding.

Overall - yep, it seems like they've nailed this heretofore unnecessary joining of outre 'styles'. I'm guessing that this might finally make the Don't Drink Beer guy's head explode, were he to ever actually find out about it.