Just Desserts: Six Rich, Dark Beers for Winter

presents…

JAK’S picks a selection of Winter-ready rich, dark beers

Every three months, What’s Brewing gets together with JAK’S Beer Wine Spirits to create a new installment of our Tasting Panel series. This episode, for the first time ever, we reviewed a class of tasty treats sometimes called ‘dessert beers’!

Bad Tattoo
Peanut Butter Chocolate Porter

ABV: 6.0%

Moody Ales
Lusty Chocolate Stout

ABV: 5.8%

Old Yale
Himalayan Salted Caramel Porter

ABV: 6.0%

Parallel 49
Salty Scot Caramel Scotch Ale

ABV: 7.5%

Twin Sails
Cookie Jar Oatmeal Fudge Stout

ABV: 6.0%

Vancouver Island Brewing
Nanaimo Bar Porter

ABV: 6.2%

OUR LIVE PANEL GOES VIRTUAL!

Check out this special Winter Tasting Panel episode on one of BC’s top beer podcasts, Pacific Beer Chat. The editor of What’s Brewing joins the Panel as they Zoom in on our six-pack of “dessert beers”. They share some opinions, some insights and some laughs. @pacificbeerchat | pacificbeerchat.com

Note: neither What’s Brewing nor JAK’S Beer Wine Spirits bear responsibility for the opinions expressed within, which are solely those of the individual panelists.

WHAT IS A DESSERT BEER?

Well, there’s no such thing. That is, you won’t find this category in any official list of beer styles. Because it’s not a style per se, but rather a broad class with some commonalities.

Think pastry stouts, salted caramel porters, flavours like coconut, peanut butter, Mexican chocolate, doughnuts, fudge and anything you’d associate with an after-dinner treat. If you count coffee, oatmeal and milk stouts, then you might want to have them with breakfast again the next morning (see our Winter 2017 panel episode for more on that).

With the onset of winter, it’s a great time to look for these darker, heavier beers with slightly above-average ABV, and save your sweet tooth from doing any of that inconvenient chewing.

HOW JUDGING IS DONE

Our unsanctioned competition uses a Zagat-like 30-point rating with a weighted scale based loosely on the BJCP Scoresheet. One of the great things about this format, as opposed to a simple 5-star blogger rating, is that it forces panellists to put more work into evaluating details of the flavour, balance and overall impression before scoring each category.

Panellists are instructed to give an honest rating, not a sugar-coating. As reflected in their scores, some panelists will love a particular beer and others will truly dislike it. Sometimes that’s influenced by factors that aren’t completely within a brewery’s contrul, such as freshness, or just a bad product sample. This is one of the reasons we have a panel rather than just one reviewer: it helps reduce the impact of factors like packaging flaws and personal tastes.

AND THE WINNER IS...

Bad Tattoo’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Porter. Check out the podcast episode to hear grown adults going gaga over its amazing aroma. Definitely use a tulip glass or similar vessel to capture its nose. As one of the reviewers said, it would be worth just inhaling this beer all night.

Moody and Old Yale were right behind, but realistically none of the beers got a bad score; they’re all great for a sweet treat after dinner.