A white stout is a stout with the color taken out and the flavor left in: pale malt in the grist, and the roast, chocolate and coffee character brought in some other way. Slack Tide Brewing Co. brings it in with coffee, specifically Pecan Sticky Bun beans from Cape May Coffee Roasters, another Cape May County operation.

Dry Dock goes on Thursday at 6.7 percent ABV, tasting room only. The brewery describes it as decadent and dessert-like, layering caramel and chocolate sweetness over what it calls a gentle coffee finish.

The coffee is the choice worth noting. Beer-and-coffee collaborations usually reach for a single-origin roast and let the bean's own character carry through. A flavored coffee is a different proposition, since the pecan and pastry notes are already in the beans before they meet the beer. That stacks a second layer of dessert flavoring on top of whatever the malt bill is doing. For a beer whose entire premise is dessert without the darkness, that is at least internally consistent.

The can carries the rest of the theme. It shows a fishing boat, the Miss Slacktide, sitting up on keel blocks with her hull clear of the water. Slack Tide names a good deal of its lineup off the water, from Kingfish to the Flounder Pounder pints it runs on Sunday game days. A dry dock is where a boat goes to be looked at properly.

Dry Dock is available Thursday, August 27, in the tasting room only at Slack Tide's Route 9 location in Clermont.

Editor’s Take

The can shows the Miss Slacktide hauled out on blocks with her hull in the air, which is what a dry dock is for: you take the boat out of the water so you can finally look at the parts of it that are normally underneath. Then you look at what is in the glass - a stout with the black taken off it, the roast and chocolate and coffee all standing there in plain view with nothing to hide behind - and it turns out the label is not decoration, it is a diagram.

I would also like to salute the coffee. Not a single origin with a tasting card. Not a natural process Ethiopian with notes of jasmine and a farm name longer than the beer's. Pecan Sticky Bun, from the roaster down the county. Somewhere a very serious coffee person is having a quiet moment about this, and they are wrong, because a beer that has already committed to being dessert should absolutely go and get the dessert coffee.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Dry Dock Takes the Color Out and Adds Sticky Bun Coffee

Slack Tide's white stout keeps the dessert and drops the darkness. Pecan Sticky Bun beans from Cape May Coffee Roasters do the coffee work. 6.7 percent, tasting room only from Thursday.

Source & Editorial