“Our Golden Ratio series features a rotating coffee highlight on a silky Golden Milk Stout base. This second entry showcases Stereoscope Coffee’s El Paraiso beans from Finca El Paraiso in Colombia. The lactic fermentation this coffee undergoes fosters a dense layering of aromas and flavors of blueberry preserves, sweet mint, and bittersweet cocoa. Medium-full body with a subtly sweet finish, brewed with lactose.”

Glassware: Snifter.

Appearance: Pours like a classic pale ale – deep golden hue and a thumb of off white head which is retained reasonably well. Decent lace trailing it down as we go.

Aroma: Mostly sweet and chewy caramels, creamy vanilla, lactose, cookie dough, light tangy notes and cocoa powder. The coffee is very subtle…too subtle actually. In our opinion they need to dial it up a lot more considering its labelled as a Golden Stout with coffee. There’s some very interesting back notes to it; the main ones being the mint tea and the fresh blueberry notes. Not bad so far.

Flavour: Not getting as much of the caramel sweetness here. Still picking up plenty of the sweet vanilla and lactose, macerated blueberries, cookie dough and white sugar. Again, the coffee is extremely delicate and truncated for a beer featuring coffee. A very faint hint of those candied mint/tea-like herbals before a sweet and sugary finish rounds it out.

Mouthfeel: Fairly smooth and silky. A very mild bitterness comes into play with a nice and effervescent Co2. The 9% ABV is really well concealed.

Overall: We really like the edgy-ness of Golden Stouts and we thought BL being the world class masters they are would have smashed this outta the park. Not to be. It’s missing the coffee big time and just lacking a bit in other areas. Good but not great.