Sweet, Roasty, and Delicious (February-March 2017)

For an indulgent breakfast or brunch—after a big night out, perhaps?—coffee stout contributes some depth to this simple French toast preparation. You’ll only need a half-cup for the dish, though. (The rest is for you.)

For a hearty dish to warm these chilly days, grab your favorite roast-forward stout or porter and head for the kitchen to try the recipe for these short ribs.

A new wave of neo-traditionalist brewers is paying homage to a crucial brewing tradition by creating language descriptive of the process, not the product. Witness now, the birth of “méthode gueuze.”

Over the past three years, Cory King’s Side Project Brewing has gone from labor of love to the #3 rated brewery in the world on the social beer-sharing app Untappd. What’s in the 6-pack of his choice? Read on to find out.

Supported by sales of their polished and nuanced core beers but looking to a future of more mixed-culture stuff, barrel fermentations, and farmhouse styles, Three Weavers Brewing Company is building a reputation for award-winning, high-quality brews.

The “Love Handles” department in Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine® is devoted to great beer bars. Here are the three beer bars that we explored in Issue 17 (February/March 2017).

On the eastern edge of the North Carolina’s Blue Ridge mountains, Fonta Flora Brewery is pursuing a vision of honest and creative beer made with locally sourced ingredients that reflect both the terroir, and the pioneering spirit, of their locale.

In a mountain hamlet on the Tennessee side of the Great Smoky Mountains, Blackberry Farm Brewery is putting the “farm” back in “farmhouse” with their focus on seasonality, local ingredients, hospitality, culinary cross-polination, and native culture.

14 growlers tested and approved!

An electric brewery gives you the option of brewing inside year-round. If this is a road you want to go down, here are some of the things to consider when planning your electric system.

With just a bit of tweaking, you can produce a range of session stouts that preserve the complexity and interest of their full-strength cousins. Josh Weikert shows you how to maintain body and flavor in a session stout.

Josh Weikert takes you on a tour through three stout-centric areas—balance, mouthfeel, flavor profile—and explores the finer points of stout recipe design to help you get as much out of your stouts as possible.

Grab your favorite oatmeal stout and head for the kitchen to try this recipe for a rich and creamy cheesecake.

The tart apples, hint of cinnamon, and stout (pumpkin or tropical) in the chutney accentuate the rich, gamy taste of the duck.

A rich stout and honey reduction provides a great counterpoint to the spicy tuna, ginger, and Sriracha mixture in this elegant dish.

Geoff Coleman’s dark and ominous Russian imperial stout fills your senses with huge notes of coffee, chocolate, dark fruits, and rich roasted malts.

You’ll want to hoard this darker-than-dark oatmeal stout with a bit of sweet, a bit of roast, and a bit of cinnamon and gooey molasses all for yourself.

Brooklyn’s burgeoning beer scene has grown by leaps and bounds over the past four years and shows no sign of stopping.

Try Taylor Caron’s recipe for an American-style stout that includes a tiny bit of preboil sour wort similar to Old School Irish stouts.

This is a sweeter milk stout recipe that CBB staffer Libby Murphy has had fun experimenting with. Despite its name, there aren’t actual almonds in the recipe, but the flavor magically works itself into the mix.

Geoff Coleman’s award-winning oatmeal stout delivers a complex mouthfeel with flavors of coffee, roasted malts, and a balanced sweetness over a medium smooth body.

Despite the fact that we put no style restrictions on the five brewers we asked, every one came back with an imperial stout. Read on to see what these brewers are drinking when they’re not drinking the beer they make.

Josh Weikert runs through a real-life example to illustrate the overall method of “downsizing” a stout to sessionable.

Blackberry Farm Brewery Head Brewer Daniel Heisler’s saison recipe pays homage to the traditional beers of the Wallonia region of Belgium.

Fonta Flora’s mixed-culture wild ale recipe uses 40 percent local raw wheat and local fruit.

Here’s a recipe for Old Ale that includes flavors we often associate with aged beers but that can be developed without the risk of actually engaging in extended aging. Don’t let the name fool you.

With the right grist and careful fermenting, you can get the best of the malt flavors in this Munich Dunkel without leaving an impression of sweetness. But, there’s an important caveat to keep in mind: don’t go too far.