If you’ve read any of my latest Cellar Dweller posts, you know I’m cleaning out the proverbial beer closet. Anything from 2015 or earlier, has come home to roost. I’m starting to learn that most beers aged five years or more fall off, and lose most of their great qualities. There are some exceptions, like the 2015 Might Meets Right I just drank, and the 2015 Frosted Frog. But, this twelve once bottle of 2010 Milk Stout, from New Holland, isn’t one of them.

I like to experiment though, so I decided to push this 6-pack as far as I could, and this was the last bottle. That being said, let’s give credit to New Holland for brewing and bottling a beer that can stand up to a decade of time in a bottle. Was this what Jim Croche was writing about all those years ago?

After 10 long years of sitting on a shelf somewhere, bottled on November 24, 2010, the Milk Stout is still with head retention. There’s a whiff of smokiness in the first sip, uncharacteristic of this beer, at least in my experience.

As I delve into this beer with several more sips, I’m tasting a roasted chocolate maltball flavor, think Whoppers, that dissipates quickly, giving way to stale tobacco. That’s about the time I start thinking I don’t want to finish this beer, when it screams of being left uncovered, underneath a Chicago expressway.

The milky, cereal flavor can’t compete against the sands of time. But, I got a good 6 ounces out of a ten-year-old beer. For that, as Tosh says, “We thank you.”

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