“What is a pastry stout you ask? Most of the time if you were to ask a pastry what a stout is, the stout would answer, what’s a pastry? After a lot of to and fro-ing, we realised we should probably just describe what our pastry stout is all about. Think of a spiced dark fruit custard pie dropped into a pint of coffee liqueur. Do we have your attention?”

Glassware: Snifter.

Appearance: Light black with a hint of dark brown at the foot of the glass. The head swells to a thumb in height and holds its shape pretty well. Excellent lacing as we go.

Aroma: Straight away we’re getting heady wafts of Cola/Sarsaparilla. As it settles it reveals deeper layers of mixed spice i.e clove, nutmeg, star anise etc, orange peel, vanilla, dark fruits like cherry, golden raisins and fig. The base Stout is very light…we pick up super mild hints of coffee and chocolate but that’s where it ends. We kinda like it but it could hardly be called a Stout.

Flavour: Similar to the nose in that it’s more like a pastry Brown Ale or a Belgian Dubbel than a Stout. There’s hardly any bottom end to it. The coffee and chocolate that was obscure on the nose is totally MIA here. The positives are this Candi sugar-like sweetness, mixed spice, vanilla and sticky dark fruits which all come together to finish with a bit of a boozy sting in the tail.

Mouthfeel: A tad too thin for our liking. A little slippery as well. Mild-medium body, flat-ish Co2. The 7% ABV is well enough buried.

Overall: Not phased by it to be brutally honest. Needs a bigger injection of malt to fill it out…roasted malts in particular. It just seems a bit cheap and nasty in our opinion. We’ve had far better from Murray’s.