Beer Review: Southern Tier Brewing Company Crème Brûlée

Brewery: Southern Tier Brewing Company
Beer: Crème brûlée
Style: Imperial Milk Stout
ABV: 9.5%
Character: Brewed with vanilla beans
Metal Connection: Green Jellö – Obey the Cowgod

Well God damn, Southern Tier Brewing Company did it again. They created one Hell of a wonderful monster with this beer. The first time they released Crème brûlée was in 2008, and it has been a hit ever since among most of the craft beer world. I see a lot of 5 star ratings, and high numbers on both beeradvocate and ratebeer. Of course, you can’t satisfy them all, and some people claim this beer to be too sweet This is definitely a dessert beer.

I used one of my favorite glasses for this session, a Satan snifter glass. Nothing says crème brûlée quite like Satan. The appearance of the beer is a very dark brown, that it is almost black. When the light hits the glass, you can see the proper color of this beer. Upon first glance though, it appears to be black in color. This beer is topped with a two finger wide frothy, beige colored head. Great head retention, as it stuck around the entire session, leaving wonderful sticky lacing down the glass.

The aroma has all the characters of a good dessert. So much sweetness coming through the nose. Aromas of vanilla, caramel, chocolate, milk, and sweet sugar are all present, making this beer smell like a custard, or even a butterscotch candy. There is a little roasted malt aroma peeking through all the sweetness, giving this that smell of the charred top of a crème brûlée dessert. Well played Southern Tier, well played.

The taste of this beer made me want to check my vital signs soon after. The overall taste is pure sweet goodness. This is definitely a beer that I will call a true dessert beverage. The sugary sweetness hits first, and pretty much overpowers the taste buds, but not before the barrage of other flavors attack the palate. Flavors of vanilla, cream, custard, caramel, chocolate, and roasted malts all hit the taste buds throughout each swill of this beer. It’s as if the brewers at Southern Tier took an actual crème brûlée dessert, and liquified it to give us this amazing brew.

The body is a medium thickness, even though the look of this beer would make you think it would be as thick as motor oil. The mouthfeel is very creamy, and silky. Feels like I just drank a glass of milk.

Overall, I highly enjoyed this beer and gave it my highest rating of 5 due to it’s uniqueness. It’s so crazy to believe that these brewers are pushing the boundaries so far now a days. This is in fact, a beer, yes a beer! Crazy to think that when we were growing up, beer was so light ad watered down, and so flavorless. Craft beer breweries are going way above and beyond the norm, and I love that. Yes, it’s getting crazy with the extra additions to a beer, but it’s fun to see who does it first, and who will do it better next. For that, I praise you Southern Tier, and the like for expanding all of our taste buds to places unknown before in a beer.

Metal Connection: As hard as you think this was could have been, it was rather easy for me. As soon as I saw the bottle of this beer, I immediately thought of the Sacred Cow from the band Green Jellö, so the chosen song is highly appropriate here for this pairing. The band now is known as Green Jellÿ because they were once sued by Kraft Foods, since their name was very similar and in reference to their product, Jell-O. They became well known for their strange stage antics, and costumes. If you ever saw them live, you not only saw a live band performance, you got a whole stage show complete with story lines and all. The song “Three Little Pigs”  really gave this band a push back in the early 90’s. Even if you don’t listen to Metal, you know this song! This song is the opening track from their 1993 album, Cerial Killer Soundtrack. Obey the Cowgod!!!!