Being a Lefty myself, and also a lover of good Milk Stouts, I am really looking forward to trying this Milk Stout from Left hand Brewing Company out of Longmont, Colorado. This Milk Stout has some serious recognition for its goodness! It won the 2006 and 2008 World Beer Cup Gold Medal in the Sweet Stout category, and a Silver Medal at the 2008 GABF for Milk Stout. Not bad!

If you’ve been following The Brew Club for any time, you’ll know that I’ve really taken a liking to these Milk Stouts lately, and I hope that maybe you’ll give one a try as well. For some reason, every time I tell someone about a Milk Stout – they get the impression that there is literal milk mixed into the beer. That would be gross. This is not the case! With Milk Stouts, or Sweet Stouts, lactose is added to the mix to give the beer some sweetness. Lactose is milk sugar and it doesn’t ferment in the brewing process. People with lactose intolerance don’t know that they’re missing with these beers! So that’s the story, loosely, of what a Milk Stout is.

So far, I’ve tried four other milk stouts, and this Left Hand Milk Stout will be number 5. I’d also like to say Thanks! to The BeerFathers who are responsible for hooking me up with this beer to try for you! He’s another Milk Stout fan, and I hope to see what he thinks of the Keegan Ales Mother’s Milk and Lancaster Milk Stout soon! Let’s get on to the beer, shall we?

First, I apologize for the Ice Tea glass that I had to use for this tasting. Remember folks, its not about looks, and all my ‘real’ beer glasses are in the dishwasher so this vessel will have to do! Getting on to looks, this 5.8% ABV stout beer poured into my glass in the typical dark way expected form Milk Stouts. Dark, dark, dark. Let’s just say this beer is basically black, OK? It created a smallish head with a nice beige color, also typical, and in short order the head reduced to a thin beige coating on the beer. Swirling this milk stout in my glass a bit, there was a little bit of bubbly lacing – but it wasn’t clingy.

Smell. Well what can I say? The Left Hand Milk Stout smells like a Milk Stout should! Roasty malt flavors infused with the unmistakable sweetness of the lactose sugar. Nothing surprising here but I think the Left Hand might have a slightly stronger coffee or chocolate smell than the previous milk stouts I’ve had.

Let’s give this beer a taste now eh? It has a big roasted malt flavor, and much like the scent you can pick up on the sweetness in the taste quite easily, but it is not overdone. There is more of that coffee flavor in the taste, as there was in the smell, more so I think than the other milk stouts I’ve had. The body is medium to heavy – there’s some body to this beer! Still, this ale is very smooth, and very drinkable. There’s just the slightest hop bite and no alcohol sting – this beer could be the definition of smooth and creamy! I also found that as I sipped this Milk Stout, the flavors became even more pronounced, so I would suggest you let this one warm up a bit to get the fullness of the flavors.

There is a lightly bitter aftertaste that is agreeable, and the beer leaves a bit of a sticky coating in your mouth, but this isn’t a bad thing considering the type of beer it is.

Overall, I’m going to give the Left Hand Milk Stout a solid 4 star rating. I think as a Milk Stout, its one of the best I’ve had, but I still think the Lancaster Milk Stout is just a touch better overall. Still, if you are a fan of Milk Stouts, I don’t see how you can go wrong trying one of these from Left Hand Brewing.

Editor’s Note: TheBrewClub.com uses a five star rating system while The BeerFathers use a 10 point rating system. Their 4 turns into our 8, simple as that.

All Duck Rabbit beers come to us from the Duck-Rabbit Brewery over in Farmville, NC, where Son Beer Love still says he’s going to take a field trip one day. We served up the Milk Stout in a tulip glass and got an initial beer temperature of 52 F. The ABV is a little low on this one (compared to the Baltic Porter) at 5.7%, but that’s okay.

Our initial pour gave us a generous 2″ large foamy medium brown head that gave us a fair amount of head lacing as it dissipated slowly into the black opaque body below. It tends to foam up really well when you pour it. We noted a soft amount of carbonation around the head.

The aromas come in with chocolate, coffee, roasted malts, black licorice and a milky, lactose like smell. A very intriguing smell as neither Father nor Son Beer Love has ever had a Milk Stout before this one. The tastes are true to all the aromas and also add smoke and cream to to the mix. When you sip the beer through the head you get more cream than milk in the taste for a nice effect. The smokiness comes through in the finish.

Our initial flavor notes come in with a moderate sweet and light bitter. The finish flavor notes move to a light sweet and moderate bitter and add a light saltiness. The finish duration is about average and the mouthfeel is nice and creamy. The tongue hit is in the middle of the tongue and there is no body lacing to speak of as we drink it. On our patented malt to hop scale it comes in very malty – 3 clicks to the left of balanced on the malty side (which is right where we like ‘em).

For our bottom line notes we got a yes for everything but wow factor. Yes to drinkable, repeatable, balance, harmony, memorable and we would definitely buy it again.

The fact is folks we love this beer. It reminds us a lot of a cafe au lait (French for “coffee with milk”) and takes us back to our favorite place in the world – The Cafe Du Monde on Decatur Street in New Orleans. Tell me that a cafe au lait and a beignet (or 15) wouldn’t hit the spot now. This beer takes us there.

We might enjoy this beer really warm, say room temperature. Heck, we might even enjoy this beer hot. This is Son Beer Love’s third Duck Rabbit Milk Stout and he still loves it. Like we said folks, this is our first experience with any milk stout, so we’re not saying Duck Rabbit makes the best milk stout in the world – they may in fact all be this good. What we are telling you is that we’ll be buying milk stouts as quickly as we can find them in the near term future to put this to the test. If you can find the Duck Rabbit try it and let us know what you think about it compared to the other ones. And if you know of some good other ones (we’ve heard the Lancaster Milk Stout and the Left Hand Milk Stout are also great) please let us know. We’re not lactose intolerant and we’ll gladly try them on, you know, for science.