The Crew went and made another collaboration beer with one of our local breweries. The twist? Well, this one is going in cans, and we finally made use of Derek’s professional filming skills to shoot this full video.

Pastry Slayer Imperial Stout: A collaboration with Bow and Arrow Brewing and Dark Side Brew Crew

The genesis of this beer began with a conversation between Erin and Franz Solo about their favorite German-style desserts. Marzipan came up, and inevitably that led to the idea of making a stout, which should come as no surprise because we have been around for eight-plus years and our M.O. is pretty well established by now.

Enter Bow & Arrow Brewing and head brewer Ted O’Hanlan, who had been preparing to launch a series of imperial stouts in cans over the colder months. We brought up the idea of a marzipan stout to Ted, he liked it, and the process of creating a suitable recipe soon began. At the time, we had no idea it was going to be canned, which we have to admit is a huge honor to trust us to come up with something in package form.

Derek, who like most film industry professionals has been idle for months, then told us he would like to start filming some of our various adventures out in the wild. We figured this was the perfect situation to be filmed, and, well, as one can see from the video, it is really, really nice to have an actual pro do the filming.

The stout itself is a monster, weighing in at 12.8-percent ABV. We used 1,600 pounds of grain, which turned out to be the limit of the Bow & Arrow mash tun. Ted threw in some Madagascar vanilla beans, cacao nibs, and nine pounds of roasted almonds per barrel.

“If you can’t taste (nine) pounds per barrel of almonds, then I don’t know if that’s an ingredient that needs to go into beer,” he said during the brew day.

Well, having tasted a small amount of the beer during the canning day, you can taste those wonderful roasty almonds, along with the chocolate and vanilla. The stout pours thick, so it is definitely a slow slipper. The vanilla even gives off the types of hints you might get if this beer were barrel aged, but it does not have that level of heat you would get from the bourbon and oak.

Bow & Arrow already has a presale going at its online site. As Ted told us during canning day, this is the most expensive beer the brewery has ever made, so it is priced accordingly. All pick-ups will be Wednesday after the brewery opens at 3 p.m.

Since winter is no longer coming, it is quite clearly here (step outside if you have not already), this is just the beer to kick off big stout season. But hey, we will admit we are quite biased about this brew.

Here are a few more photos of our brew day.

Until our next brewing adventure …

Keep supporting local!

— Stoutmeister