Beer: Peanut Butter Chocolate Milk Stout
Brewery: Lost Coast Brewery (Eureka, CA)
Style: Stout – Milk/ Sweet
5.6% ABV / 21 IBU

You put your chocolate in my peanut butter. You put your peanut butter in my chocolate. Two great tastes that – hey, wait a second. Why are peanut butter flavored stouts and porters becoming so ubiquitous? Peanut butter is a pretty strange ingredient for any beverage, but it’s a mainstream ingredient in candy, and stouts tend to be trending in the candy and “pastry” flavored direction, so here we are, wondering whether to welcome our new peanut butter overlords.

I’ve sampled a number of peanut butter flavored beers, and Lost Coast’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Milk Stout is definitely worthy of your attention. Within the field, I give Belching Beaver Brewery the edge because their peanut butter chocolate milk stout features the aroma of roasted peanuts. But Lost Coast delivers on all of the elements it advertises, and boasts a creamy mouthfeel from the lactose, a hint of chocolate to balance out the stout base and a similarly subtle peanut butter element that recalls the taste of Nutter Butter cookies.

If anything, the milk stout part is muted; it is a beautifully-colored beer but not an especially toothsome one. The label—which describes this as a “malt beverage with natural flavors and caramel color”—may explain why. Lost Coast’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Milk Stout would benefit from more body. Most stouts are very malt-forwarded, but the flavor of the lactose here dominates. Still, this is so easy-drinking for a beer of this style that it’s bound to turn some heads among stout skeptics.

For more info, check out Lost Coast Brewery here.