Beer Review
Butternuts Beer And Ale - Moo Thunder Stout 5.0%

Another canned craft beer!?!!
Indeed.
After the Brooklyn Brewery - Summer Ale I reviewed on Saturday, I had the opportunity to purchase some more tins of US craft ale from Utobeer in Borough market yesterday so I took the plunge. I'll be reviewing them all over the next few weeks, but today it's time for a drop of stout from Butternuts Beer And Ale.
The brewery is based in upstate New York on a converted dairy farm, and was started by Chuck Williamson who, in his own words, was "intent on creating a brewers utopia. And opening a can of whupass on the craft beer world."
Although it calls itself a stout on the can, the lactose sugar used in the brewing would make it more of a milk or sweet stout. It was created as a tribute to the brewerys former life.
It pours a beautifully opaque dark, dark brown, that's oh-so-nearly-but-not-quite black. The tan head flares and fades to a ring around the edge of the glass. A touch of coffee with a big milk-gum sweetness and a hint of vanilla in the aroma make for a wonderfully inviting smell. Some nice prickly carbonation over the tongue leads to a nice big flavour hit of those milk-gum sweeties that I used as my go-to during my A-level exams, some 24 years ago! This is nicely edged with milk chocolate and the merest notion of coffee and vanilla with some hazelnuts in there for good measure.
The finish has some wonderful dry and sweet lactose creaminess that lasts for a long, long time.
This is an incredibly easy-drinking milk stout from a brewery I had never even heard of before yesterday although they have been going for 5 years, such is the proliferation of up-and-coming craft brewers in the US. I try hard to keep up with as much as I can online and through 'Draft' and 'All About Beer' magazines that I get delivered to me but with 1,989 breweries operating in the US at the end of 2011 (statistic from The Brewers Association), it's practically impossible. That makes discoveries such as this one all the sweeter.
If you want a bit of a treat you could do a lot worse than visit their website which I have deliberately left until last so as not to spoil it for you. Alternatively try and get hold of some of their beer, I'm sure you won't be disappointed.