My test to see if someone would drink porter or stout is to ask them if they like chocolate. Why? Because the dark roasted malts used for those styles of beer often give them a discernible chocolate flavour. As chocolate is a favourite ingredient in desserts, it should come as no surprise that stout is a beer suitable with, or as, dessert. It could be as simple as adding a scoop of vanilla ice cream to an Old Yale Sasquatch Stout or using a North Coast Old Rasputin in a Russian Imperial Stout Cheesecake.
The chocolate flavour of some stouts and porters is underlined with the addition of real chocolate. Phillips Longboat Double Chocolate Porter, Rogue Chocolate Stout, and Young’s Double Chocolate Stout are examples that would go well with fruit tarts, pecan pie, and soufflé.
Porters and stouts can also have a pronounced coffee flavour that some brewers will purposefully enhance with the addition of actual coffee. Steamworks brews a rich espresso stout in winter made with hand-pulled shots of JJ Bean’s Espresso Palomino. This is ideal with their hedgehog ice cream pie or tiramisu. Too bad they don’t point it out on their menu; patrons are missing out on a fabulous finish to their meal. Canoe’s Habit Espresso Stout and Mill Street Coffee Porter represent similar collaborations between brewer and roaster.
Chocolate and berries are a match made in heaven; so are chocolate desserts with sweet fruit beers, like Kaeko Kanno’s Raspberry Ganache cake with a Lindemans Framboise pictured above. The Lindemans is a very fruity, lightly acidic lambic that is not cloyingly sweet, like many of the commercial, non-traditional brands. A traditional Framboise, however, can be very tart with a very slight fruit flavour, so it wouldn’t really work. Nevertheless, it could still be used for dessert, such as when The Whip used Storm Brewing’s sharply acidic 10-year-old black currant lambic to make a special gelato for their Feast of Five Firkins dinner in January.
Strong, sweet beers are naturals with dessert. A Belgian-style golden ale, such as Duvel, is an ideal ingredient for a tarte à la bière. Barley wine and Doppelbock are fine complements to crème brûlée, while the caramel flavour of an Eisbock, like Schneider Aventinus or Vancouver Island Hermannator, matches nicely with deep fried banana and tarte tatin.
While I always seem to find room for dessert, some may be in the mood for a less substantial postprandial conclusion. That needn’t be a deterrence. A snifter of strong Scotch ale (Traquair House Ale) with Scottish shortbread cookies melt into each other. Simple, yet elegant, is barley wine and Stilton which smooth their respective edges in fine synergy. Central City Thor’s Hammer, Fat Cat Old Bad Cat, Longwood Barley Wine, Phillips The Grand, and Whistler Brewhouse Bare Arse are all local examples of the style that are released in the fall, but will keep for years and improve with age if cellared properly. Better private beer & wine stores, such as Brewery Creek, Firefly, and Viti carry imports from the UK and US.
As you can see, you don’t have to move to dessert when you expect to finish drinking beer; just be sure you have the appropriate beer on hand.
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