The PastryArchy Edition #27: Cookies And Cream White Stout
DuClaw Brewing Co.

 

 

 

The PastryArchy Cookies & Cream has a very thick, off-white head and a clear, brown appearance, with lots of lacing. The aroma is of toasted malt and cookies. The flavor is similar, with cream and moderate sweetness and bitterness. Medium-roast coffee is detected. The PastryArchy Cookies & Cream has a somewhat heavy body and a dry finish.

RJT

16 oz can acclimated to 50°F and poured into a stout glass.

Pours a clear, beautiful orange color, with a little gold strewn through it, has a little light sediment floating around. Produces a 2.5 finger foamy, off white head, retreating to a few lumps of foam and leaving a thick ring of splotched lacing.

Initial aroma is like cocoa seltzer. Unsurprising, I get specifically that black cocoa Oreo cookie chocolate smell. A sweet cream smell is present, feels thick and lingering, yest still seems to be in the background. I smell vanilla, though not strong and it isn't accompanied by any specific smells like any quality vanilla would be. While a little wheat/graininess appears, it's mostly dominated by that cocoa cookie smell.

After agitating, it's a funk, with cocoa in the background.

Initial taste before swallowing is sweet malt like a pancake, plus the chocolate and vanilla cream I've been smelling. A faint hint of coffee that I don't think I'd pick up if I didn't know it were there as well.

After swallowing it's sweet, not dessert sweet but beer sweet, feeling mostly like malty and cereal grainy sweetness, plus chocolate cookie. After, it's bitter, growing in strength and becoming hoppy and cocoa bitterness. This lingers into the aftertaste where it takes on a dry and light grassy note. Drinking more, there's a strong nutty taste that sticks around the entire time.

Mouthfeel is full, definitely smooth, which is helped along further by a frothy carbonation, which can be revived through agitating. It isn't super thick but it still has the benefit of feeling thicker than average. Maybe a little bit sticky?

Overall, I quite like it, some good things going on in here. Pleasantly surprised by tasting different things than anticipated. While it doesn't exactly taste like Oreos, I really really love what I do taste. This feels like 1: exactly what I think of when I think "what would a golden stout taste like?" And 2: a very good stout. It balances sweet, bitter, and specific flavors very well to my taste, and it's just a pleasant experience from start to finish. I was surprised initially by the level of bitterness in the middle and aftertaste, but drinking more, and finishing it, I'm really loving the contrast with to sweetness. I didn't expect to taste hops this strong, but again I'm really enjoying it. I loved the taste of sweet grains as well.

I would like to buy this one again, and I will recommend it, with an explanation of how it has a complicated tasting process, but I would definitely buy again and recommend.

 

Just a shade lighter in color than an amber. Smell and taste match up; sweet, like honey grahams soaked in apricot brandy, perhaps. Feel is thick, which is okay, but sticky. Just enough cocoa to keep it from being cloying. Not bad for what it's supposed to be.