Nov. 10 has been designated Vanilla Cupcake Day by someone. Nobody knows exactly who, and who cares? The real question is why it’s not a national holiday. According to NationalDayCalendar.com, cupcakes can be traced back to 1796, when there was a recipe for “a cake to be baked in small cups” in American Cookery by Amelia, Simmons, a great woman. They were originally baked in heavy pottery cups — sounds like a messy cleanup. The paper cups are less fussy. Vanilla beans, like coffee and chocolate, only proliferate naturally in tropical latitudes, and, like wine grapes, the various strains reflect the qualities of the soil in which they are grown. This makes Mexican vanilla different from Madagascar vanilla, Tahitian different from Ugandan. For many years now, vanilla has been the adjunct that takes a craft beer’s status from gold to platinum, instantly raising its secondary value to ridiculous levels. Enough with the enough talk, let drink five craft beers with vanilla in their recipes. Enjoy Craft Beer Crosscut 11.10.17: A Flight of Vanilla Cupcake Day.
Iron Horse Cozy Sweater
4.5% ABV, 7 IBU
Some things you can never un-see, and a knitted reindeer sweater your grandma gave you is one of them. Iron Horse Brewery pokes fun at ugly holiday sweater with its delicious vanilla milk stout, Cozy Sweater. Full of holiday cheer but a little lighter on the alcohol this brew wears a dark and chocolatey beer foundation. Then comes the lactose adding a smooth and round mouthfeel, plus a touch of sweetness with vanilla beans. Expect a sweet latte flavor mixed with some other tastes of roasted malt and a little bit of vanilla.
Puyallup River Imperial Eggnog Mud Mountain Milk Stout
8.5% ABV, 20 IBU
Puyallup River Brewing Mud Mountain Milk Stout grabbed a silver medal at the 2015 Washington Beers Awards. It grabbed a bronze at the 2016 Washington Beer Awards. It grabs every drinker when they taste its smooth as chocolate silk self. Fresh vanilla beans, cocoa nibs, oats, and six different specialty malts, including Chocolate malt, make this milk stout one of the easiest drinking dark beers on the planet. Add cinnamon, nutmeg and other holiday spices and you have Imperial Eggnog Mud Mountain Milk Stout, with creamy flavors of eggnog, spice, coffee, roasted nuts and chocolate. Ends smooth and creamy.
Avery Vanilla Bean Stout
10.8% ABV, 29 IBU
Now a year-round release, Avery Brewing‘s bourbon barrel-aged blend of an imperial stout and a regular American stout flexes its decadent vanilla addition from the get-go, offering a big nose of warm, sticky vanilla, toasted coconut and a flit of whiskey. Vanilla dominates the front of the sip but gives way to smooth milk chocolate, coconut, caramelized marshmallow and hints of roast coffee, followed by coffee, dark cherry and dark chocolate lingering at the end. The barrel takes a supporting role, allowing the oak to just dry out the full swallow, leaving pleasant warmth in the throat.
Black Raven Kitty Kat Blues
5.8% ABV, 35 IBU
From Redmond, comes this Black Raven Brewing unassuming pale ale that has the screws turned a bit with additions of dried blueberries, vanilla bean and organic mountain-grown catnip. The result is an easy drinking pale ale that finishes like this morning’s blueberry muffin with, of course, vanilla, dry bittering hops and heard catnip, which is similar to hops in taste — in fact they are a relative, but the flavor is very dry, medium bitterness, drying in the mouthfeel.
Urban Family Mangosicle
6.8%
Even as recently as five years ago, it seemed everyone wanted the 100-IBU beer (almost like bragging rights, that “I drank a 100-IBU beer the other day”). Today, someone is more likely to boast that he had a Citra-hopped beer the other day. That’s right. It used to be that hoppiness was all bitter, assertive pine, spice and grapefruit. Now that’s changing to juicy tropical fruity character, such as Citra hop’s strong notes of grapefruit, melon, lime and lemon. Urban Family Brewing has released another fruity IPA in its “sicle” series, Mangosicle. The Seattle brewery loaded this beauty with delicious Alphonso mango, madagascan vanilla beans, and lactose, then unforgivingly dry-hopped many pounds of Citra for a thick, hazy IPA full of juicy goodness.
