Got Milk Stout?

Why is it that some beer styles suffer from an image problem? I have mentioned this before but when I was younger, brown ale was considered a old man's drink. Now that I am approaching the half way point of my allotted three score years and ten, I enjoy brown ale muchly and have started brewing my own - a northern style brown ale so far, and planning a recreation of Mann's Brown Ale.

Another beer which suffered an image problem when I was young was milk stout. Milk stout suffered the same kind of image problem as dark lager in the Czech Republic, it was a woman's drink. Czech tradition says that dark lager is for women because it gives a girl bigger breasts, milk stout was likewise recommended to nursing mothers for its nutritious value. Just a quick aside, there may be some scientific backing for these traditions as darker beer is apparently higher in oestrogen.

Anyway, I was in Beer Run on Friday because the Downtown Mall was preparing for the visit of Barack Obama to rally the troops for Tom Perriello (political note: if I could vote here, Tom would get my vote, if you can vote in the 5th District, please get out and vote for Tom), and I didn't want to deal with the guaranteed travel nightmare. Beer Run had a special on Friday night, where all the taps, and the handpull, were taken over by Terrapin Beer and Left Hand Brewing. Most of the 14 beers available were still there on Saturday when I met up with James from A Homebrew Log to trade beers and collect his entries for the upcoming Palmetto State Brewers' Open. Looking at the beer list, the only beer, other than the cask, that really took my fancy was Left Hand's Milk Stout.

What a nice pint that was! We were sat out on the patio, the sun was shining and the temperature was just about what you would expect, apparently, for a Virginia autumn day - not too cool, but fresh. What then could top an imperial pint of a rich, creamy milk stout that was insanely easy to drink? To be honest nothing could have topped that, it was the perfect beer for the time and place, so I had another, interjected though with a pint of the Left Hand Black Jack Porter, which was also very nice.

So yes, I will be hunting out more of the Left Hand Milk Stout, as well as whatever other milk stouts I can find, maybe I will brew one as well. One thing that came to mind over the weekend was how many more beer styles are there which I dismissed in my youthful ignorance that will loom over the horizon to steal a little corner of my zythophilic heart?