If you like your beer sweet, with little bitterness, and maybe some subtle (or not so subtle) hints of coffee and chocolate, you’ll find a perfect companion in a sweet stout. Also called a “milk” or “cream” stout, this beer is a traditional English style. The sweet stout originated in Europe in the 1800s. The style emphasizes a malty sweetness with hints of chocolate and caramel. They are sometimes called cream stouts or milk stouts. Brewers intensified the dark, chocolaty malt body with lactose, and the sugar in cow’s milk, hence why they’re more often called milk stouts. Brewer’s yeast can’t ferment lactose into alcohol, so it hangs around to give you a rich mouthfeel and a soft, creamy sweetness, balancing out the bitter and roasted qualities typical of its cousin stouts. Makes sense. Heating milk to very high temperatures, which also has the effect of caramelizing some of the milk’s sugar, makes evaporated milk. That sugar is the same lactose found in milk stout, and is subjected to similarly high temperatures during the brewing process. We also detected an interesting tang, and we can’t help but wonder if this is attributable to the lactose as well, as lactose will ferment into lactic acid in the right conditions. Whatever. Done right, you can be extraordinary, like the five sweet stouts in today’s beer flight, Craft Beer Crosscut 7.21.18: A Flight of Sweet Stout.

Left Hand Brewing Nitro Milk Stout

6% ABV, 25 IBU

Without going into the chemical physics of solubility and gas diffusion, let’s just say that nitrogen has a silkifying effect on beer. Nitrogenated brews, as opposed to carbonated ones, have a softer mouthfeel, taste less acidic and boast a creamier, more stable head. Left Hand’s Milk Stout was no bore before, and on nitro, it’s even better. Cocoa and burnt flavors from its dark roasted grains come forward first, followed by a wave of sweet cream thanks to the use of lactose sugar. Magnum hops help give the 6 percent-alcohol brew a bitter finish that entices the next sip. Throughout, the beer’s ultra-smooth texture inches it closer to chocolate milk than you thought a beer could get.

Against The Grain 35K

7% ABV, 26 IBU

Against the Grain‘s bottles are full of attitude that jumps out at you on the shelf. Located in a former train station on Main Street in Louisville, Kentucky, this rapidly expanding brewery and restaurant brews on a 15-barrel system, in addition to brewing at Pub Dog Brewery in Maryland. It’s 35K is a sweet stout brewed with Nugget and Crystal hops, the beer pours an inky black with slight red hues when held up to the light. Roasty and rich in the nose with a mildly sour and musty aroma, 35k Stout is sweet but finished dry with a lactose flavor.

Paradise Creek MooJoe Coffee Milk Stout

5% ABV, 30 IBU

The milk stout, also known as an English sweet stout, emphasizes a malty sweetness with hints of chocolate and caramel. Some versions, like Paradise Creek Brewing’s MooJoe, add lactose for more body and softness. The Pullman, Washington brewery takes its beer one step further by cold conditioning it with fresh ground coffee from Bucer’s Coffee House across the border in Moscow, Idaho. The result is a smooth, light stout with coffee and chocolate notes and slightly bitter on the end.

Elysian Split Shot Espresso Milk Stout

5.6% ABV

Ultracreamy and dangerously drinkable, Elysian Brewing’s Split Shot Espresso Milk Stout adds a pound per barrel of cold-infused, Seattle-produced Lighthouse coffee to the mix. Having the honor of being the official 2012 Seattle Beer Week beer, it pours dark black (but not opaque) with a thick creamy tan head and a pretty freaking amazing nose of coffee grinds and, well, more coffee grinds. Split Shot is thinner in body than we expected, but it’s anything but thin on flavor. Roasted malt that takes on a slightly bitter edge, mild carbonation, and then the addition of coffee with cream and brown sugar that turns back toward bitter in a long, satisfying finish.

Puyallup River Mud Mountain Milk Stout

7% ABV

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 make this milk stout one of the easiest drinking dark beers on the planet.