The Triangle

Issue date: 1/22/10 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: Duck photo Derek Neas Duluth News-Tribune/MCT Campus Beer photo and digital imaging Mike Arrison

It's January, and 2010 has been full of horrendous, gloomy weather … wait-it was recently 50 degrees and sunny? Huh? Weird. Well, to remedy this, I think it would be appropriate to completely disrupt our pleasantly tolerable weather with a nice, sullen beer from the self-proclaimed dark beer specialists. This week, I bring to you Duck-Rabbit's Milk Stout.

As a small, "packaging microbrewery" run out of Farmville, N.C., Duck-Rabbit is rather localized. By this, I mean that distribution runs to a grand total of five states: Tenn., Ga., Va., N.C., and, somehow, Pa.. These guys are into strictly dark styles; you won't find any Pales or Pilsners here. That isn't necessarily a bad thing either, since if you focus on what you are good at, you can make a fantastic product. For the past six years, Duck-Rabbit has been busy building a reputation on porters, ambers, and wee heavies, and employs eccentric brewing rituals to please the brewing gods. You may find these guys singing to their yeast, or dancing during the boil. Few people realize that these acts are really the key to the character of a superior beer.

Milk stout is a very simple style. A brewer takes a stout and balances some of the roasty bitterness with milk sugar, also known as lactose. This additional ingredient contributes to the beer's sweetness and thickness, since it is a sugar that is un-fermentable by brewing yeasts. Due to its association with dairy, it was a suggested beverage for nursing mothers in the eighteen and nineteen hundreds. During the early twentieth century, however, rationing concerns forced many brewers to drop the traditional "milk" moniker, and additional descriptive terms such as "cream" and "sweet" became more common. Today, milk stouts are often fused with coffee or oatmeal stouts, and are grouped into the breakfast stout style, a category that assumes the ingredients' healthier qualities.

I must comment on the label of the bottle. It is essentially barren. A simple, white backdrop with the philosophical icon of the "is it a duck or is it a rabbit?" image emblazoned in the top-center reminds you where the brewer came from-essentially, nowhere. The brewery is so small that the bottle "proudly" claims how the beer is hand-made. The brewmaster (whose name, despite all my research, remains shrouded in mystery), used to be a philosophy teacher. Again, these guys are "dark beer specialists" so don't forget that they aren't out to prove anything other than that they know their dark beers-nothing else seems to matter.

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