Stout – Imperial / Double Milk

Beer Review: Hardywood Park’s Gingerbread Stout

Name: Gingerbread Stout
Brewing Company: Hardywood Park Craft Brewery
Location: Richmond, VA
Style: Stout – Imperial / Double Milk | Imperial Milk Stout with Ginger and Honey
ABV: 9.2%

Christmas in a Glass – it has been said about this beer by others, but it is no less true. A delicious, iconic stout that is a must have during the Yuletide season.

From the Hardywood’s landing page for the beer:

Made with baby ginger from Casselmonte Farm and wildflower honey from Bearer Farms, Hardywood Gingerbread Stout captures the terroir of Central Virginia in a rich, creamy libation with a velvety mouthfeel and an intriguing evolution of notes from milk chocolate and vanilla, to honeycomb and cinnamon, to a snap of ginger in the finish. We hope Hardywood Gingerbread Stout contributes to your merriment this season.

I’ve been circling around this beer for a few years now, going back to 2019 when I featured the beer in that year’s Christmas Six Pack before Hardywood began sending their beers into New Jersey. Just a year later, that changed when Hardywood beers begain appearing on NJ shelves. Since then, I’ve had a few variants: Christmas Morning, Barrel-Aged/Kentucky Christmas Morning, and last year, the Barrel-Aged version of this beer. Now, at last I finally picked up a four-pack of a beer many people put on the “Mount Rushmore” of Christmas Beers.

That’s quite a bit of preamble with perhaps some unfair expectations set on the beer, I realize. Be that as it may, I’ll dive into the beer…

Pop of the can and the beer pours jet black into my Delirium Noël glass. I get strong aroma of ginger coming off the beer, along with cinnamon. In other words, the beer very much smells like gingerbread cookies and Christmas.

I take a sip and gingerbread is the most prominent element of the beer. Shocking, I know. The same is true for the beer itself, very heavy on the ginger, which is to be expected. If you have the least bit of a problem with ginger or gingerbread, don’t go near this beer. Me? I like ginger (the tea I drink has ginger in it) and gingerbread cookies so this is all fine by me. There’s also a prominent cinnamon element to the beer, which nicely compliments the ginger.

My wife leaves out Gingerbread cookies for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve so the aroma and flavor of Gingerbread cookies is one of the elements I most associate with Christmas. As I tasted and enjoyed more of the beer, that Christmas in a Glass theme really hits home. An element of the beer that stands out as the beer warms and I get beyond that wonderful gingerbread element is the honey. Ginger is a potent spice/root that can be quite aggressive, fortunately, isn’t overly aggressive here and that may be due to the generous amount of honey in the beer. That natural sweetness that pleasantly balances out the ginger.

The milk sugar further brings the sweet balance to the beer, plus the lactose adds a silky smooth feel to the beer. The combination of flavors also evokes hints of chocolate and vanilla for a perfect Christmas dessert beer. Bottom Line: The beer lived up to be what I hoped it would be.

Highly Recommended, link to 4.25 bottle cap untappd rating check in.

Beer Review: Flying Monkeys The Chocolate Manifesto

Beer Review

Name: The Chocolate Manifesto – Triple Chocolate Milk Stout
Brewing Company: Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery
Location: Barrie, ON, Canada
Style: Stout – Imperial / Double Milk
ABV: 10%

A decadent, dessert sipper that will delight chocolate lover’s taste buds. A top-level Chocolate Milk Stout.

From Flying Monkey’s landing page for the beer:

For those seeking decadence and transcendence in a craft beer, we bring you The Chocolate Manifesto Triple Chocolate Milk Stout, a luxurious beer that demands to be shared among friends. With 3 kinds of chocolate, this beer is a euphoric detour from the mundane. Life is too short to brew beer that doesn’t matter to you.

With International Stout Day falling on the first Thursday in November, I knew I wanted to try a new Stout. I’ve been seeing this particular Canadian brew on shelves for a couple of years now, it has some good ratings, so I figured, let’s get chocolatey for Stout Day.

I had a taster of one beer from Flying Monkeys (love the name) at a beer fest a couple of years ago, so this is my first full beer from the brewery.

Into the glass the beer goes…out of the can it looks like liquid dark chocolate – a brown that is almost black – with a thin khaki/light brown head. Visually, a very appealing beer. I take a whiff of the beer and I smell malts and chocolate…again, so far, so good.

The first sip of The Chocolate Manifesto puts a smile on my face. I get a lot of chocolate up front, which is what I expected. There’s more chocolate, a layered and leveled chocolate, if you will. Imagine a lovely piece of chocolate, wrapped in another kind of chocolate, and a third kind of chocolate surrounds all of it. I didn’t have to imagine that, because that’s what I tasted in this beer.

From the initial sweet chocolate, there’s a slightly bittersweet finish on the beer which I welcomed and enjoyed. The people of Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery have managed to coax a breadth of chocolate flavors from multiple ingredients in this beer. It is a pleasant, warming spectrum of flavors

At 10% ABV, this is a big Imperial stout, but the booziness is minimal. You know it is a beer, but you aren’t hit over the head with the alcohol, which I appreciated. As I will always say with higher ABV beers, the flavors of The Chocolate Manifesto open up and breathe as the beer warms. The balance of sweet and bittersweet is a little more nuanced when the temperature of the beer rises and it just tastes a little bit better once it warms to room temperature.

I’m reminded, a bit, of River Horse Brewing’s Chocolate Porter with how balanced the chocolate component of this beer is. I’ve had just over a 100 Milk Stouts and this one is comfortably in the top half of that list and it ranks as one of the best Chocolate Milk stouts I’ve had. This one is worth seeking out and given that Flying Monkey’s is a decent-sized Canadian brewery, it shouldn’t be too much of a challenge to track down.

Recommended, link to 4.25 bottle cap untappd rating check in.

Untapped badges earned with this beer:

Stout Day (2022)

Let’s give a big shout out to the stout. Whether with coffee, barrel-aged or chock full of candy bars, stouts are seriously delicious. Pick your favorite and toast to International Stout Day 2022!

The Great White North (Level 4)

Out on the pond for some ice fishing, or perhaps watching some hockey, eh? That’s 20 beers from a brewery in Canada!

2X (Level 76)

When a single isn’t enough, make it a double. Doubling the hops and malts in a recipe results in a higher ABV and can pack quite a boozey punch. That’s 380 different beers with the style that contains Imperial / Double in its style name.

Beer Review: Magnify Brewing’s Banana Bread Mind over Matter

Beer Review

Name: Banana Bread Mind over Matter
Brewing Company: Magnify Brewing Company
Location: Fairfield, NJ
Style: Stout – Imperial / Double Milk
ABV: 8%

“A balanced and flavorful dessert stout from popular North Jersey brewery.”

From the description of the beer onuntappd:

Banana Bread Mind Over Matter is a new variant in our series of double chocolate milk stouts featuring a new, refreshed label design. We set out to brew a double chocolate Milk Stout with as much flavor as our 10+% stouts a more manageable ABV. Banana Bread Mind Over Matter is brewed with lactose and conditioned on cocoa nibs, walnuts, wild Thai banana, cinnamon and vanilla.

Magnify has been one of the hottest New Jersey / Northeast breweries over the past few years, with about three new beer releases per week, their IPAs and other flavorful ales are highly sought by craft beer drinkers in the area. I personally haven’t had very many beers from them, so I was looking forward to giving something from them a try for the blog.

”Mind over Matter” is a series of Imperial Milk Stouts Magnify brews with various adjuncts, there’s a “S’Mores” version, a Pancake version (which I’ve had) made with maple syrup, a “Candy Cane” version, and so forth. This version looks to emulate banana bread, obviously, and is brewed with walnuts, “wild Thai banana,” cinnamon, and vanilla. I really enjoy banana bread and beer with most of these adjuncts, but I was admittedly a little wary of what the walnuts would bring.

The pop of the can is nice and the beer that pours into my glass is dark and thick. It definitely has the appearance I’d expect at the outset. The strongest element in the aroma for me was the cinnamon, which is quite welcome. I give the glass a little swirl and there’s a nice reddish/burgundy tint to the edges from the foam from the cinnamon.

First sip test….the beer easily passes that test. There’s a lot going on with this beer, just look at all those adjuncts I mentioned! I enjoy the taste quite a bit and I want to drink more to really figure out if the flavors I’ve tasted match up with the description

As I enjoy the pint over the course of about an hour, I begin to get a nice feel for this beer and what works for me. The sweetness is incredibly potent, but it isn’t overpowering and cloying. The cinnamon is the most prevalent additive I taste, which works for me, it is ever present. There’s a soft creaminess to the beer, too. I’m not sure how much of the banana is coming through, but on the finish, the walnuts assert themselves and I’m pleased. I suppose I like the flavor of walnuts, but I loathe having any kind of nut in my baked goods probably because of the texture. I just hate the way the hard crunchiness ruins the softness of say, a brownie or banana bread.

Banana Bread Mind over Matter is a damned good “beer interpretation” of banana bread. The cinnamon is wonderful, the hints of walnut give the beer a nice finish. If I can knock the beer for anything it is that the bananas themselves aren’t quite as present in the overall flavor profile of the beer compared to the other elements. However, of the 10 beers I’ve had from Magnify Brewing over the years, this beer is hands down the best beer I’ve had from them.

Recommended, link to Untappd 4.25-bottle cap rating.