Wig & Pen Velvet Cream Stout

Brewed by Wig & Pen Brewery
Style: Dry Stout
Canberra, ACT, Australia

Yep, king of the stouts and with good reason. Smooth and plenty creamy with so much chocolate and cream flavour that its like a meal all at once. Best Aussie stout by a considerable margin as most are watery and without flavour. Excellent

28 Mar 2006 - Nice swwet choc roated malt aroma. Black-dark brown colour with good lasting head and lacing. Sweet choc-coffee malt flavour. Choc roasted malt aftertaste. The best of the bunch in my tastings today at the W&P.

This delicious beer just had me thinking of tiramisu, which isn’t a bad thing. Lots of creamy coffee and dark chocolate, but could do better without the nitro IMHO, which instills a smoothness that seems to truncate the flavours a bit unfortunately.

Jet black with a perfectly formed coffee coloured head. Nose doesn’t give much away; faint chocolate roasted notes at best. Excellent texture. Dark chocolate notes, appropriately creamy, on a very low fizz palate. Easy to see why this is the top ranked beer from the house.

Malt aroma. Black coca cola colour with a very big thick foamy head. Malt roasted chocolate flavour with a dash of bitterness. Smooth palate.

Draught (nitro dispensed) at the brewpub. Really black, creamy beige head. Fruity licorice aroma. Intense ans soldly malty with soft, creamy mouthfeel. Tarry, bitter finish. Unlike most nitro dispensed beers it doesn’t feel dead and stale, but rather fresh and complex.

I missed this by minutes at a beer festival a few months back when it ran out while I paddled in a pool of mediocre-to-crap lagers and pale ales. I was naiively saving this for later while smarter drinkers hoovered it up. I’m not surprised it went quickly because it’s a bit special. At the brewpub, it’s served nitrogenated at 4-6C, which is an improvement on 99.99% of pub serving temps but still seemed a fraction too cold. It arrived looking as black as the hole in Canberra where our tax dollars disappear. It comes with the sort of faultless tight, thick head that is typical of nitro. Great head length. It may have been the serving temperature but the aroma took time to fully develop. Essentially sweet and chocolatey, with the intensity of a dark chocolate liqueur and a solid roasted malt backbone. Fabulous full and creamy mouthfeel, like whipped cream. Very integrated flavour profile - coffee cream chocolates, chocolate ice cream, sweet milky coffee. Very much at the sweeter end of the dry stout scale - there’s nothing sharp about the flavours here. For a nitro, this may be as good as it gets. (Draught at brewpub with omhper)

On tap at the Wig & Pen. Great, thick, creamy smooth stout with definite cream and coffee tones. Wicked head, thick as they get and oh so smooooth. Cracker palate, very creamy. Only problem is that it begins to taste a tad watery after a while, could use a bit more acohol perhaps.