I will be reviewing ALL 13 of the special Sierra Nevada Beer Camp collaborations this month. I had my non-drinking wife randomly select the order and the third beer is from Ninkasi Brewing, Double Latte.
“Double Latte combines two of the greatest things in life: good coffee and great beer. Oregon’s Ninkasi Brewing knows their way around a good cup of joe. Featuring cold-press coffee from the legendary Stumptown Coffee Roasters and a dose of milk sugar, this coffee milk stout is a rich and roasty treat.”
When scanning the list of beers, this was the one that made me nervous. See L.A. has a premier example of a coffee milk stout. It is Naughty Sauce from Noble Ale Works. Even with Stumptown Coffee, how could this beer compare.
Time to find out.
This Double Latte of a beer pours with a big, foamy espresso colored head to it. That foam recedes fairly quickly leaving a ring around the glass and plenty of lacing. The aroma is straight up coffee though milder than I expected. The taste is a blend of coffee and a chocolate chip sweetness. There is a sense of cream taste from the lactose but it isn’t pervasive. It is almost a milk chocolate covered coffee bean flavor. The coffee is certainly bitter. There is also a bit of carbonated zing in the middle of each sip as well. All of the flavors that I taste are fantastic but I don’t know if they blend into one beer that rivals the Naughty Sauce. That is a tough goal and one that the Double Latte valiantly fights but doesn’t quite win.
