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Easy Bake by Eighty-Eight Brewing Co. (with Pretty Sweet)

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I didn't start drinking craft beer until 2008, when a friend introduced me to Hop Head by Tree Brewing. And it took another year or two before I had my first craft stout: Shakespeare Stout by Rogue, which is in my mind the quintessential American Stout and still one of my top ten beers after all these years.

Stouts have seen a lot of change over the past decade. Brewers are adding all kinds of flavours to stouts: coffee, fruit, peanut butter, salted caramel and more. Easy Bake by Eighty-Eight Brewing Co. is an entry in to the sweet or dessert stout category, brewed in collaboration with Pretty Sweet, a Calgary bakeshop. The objective behind this beer was to replicate the flavours of Pretty Sweet's Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake.


  • Name: Easy Bake
  • Brewery: Eighty-Eight Brewing Co. (with Pretty Sweet)
  • Style: (Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake) Stout
  • Alc/vol: 8.5%
  • OG: unknown
  • FG: unknown
  • IBU: 35
  • Malt: Chocolate, Caramel, Demerara sugar
  • Hops: Unknown
  • Yeast: Unknown
Appearance: I'm not ashamed to admit I bought this because of the can—another great design from Eighty-Eight. This beer was poured from a 473mL can into a Spiegelau stout glass. It's dark, dark brown. Almost black. There was a nice strata of tan head that dissipated almost immediately, after which the beer looked almost still with just a few islands of small bubbles here and there.

Aroma: Predominantly black coffee. A bit of alcohol. Maybe a hint of chocolate—but mostly coffee.

Flavour: Surprisingly not as complex as the brewery's description would lead you to believe. Strong stouts tend to taste like coffee due to the use of dark roasted malts and this beer is no different. It's very sweet and there's definitely a layer of chocolate, but I had a hard time discerning the salted caramel. Somewhere, there's a touch of dried fruit flavour hiding, too—pretty common for strong stouts.

Mouthfeel: This is a thick beer with a slight oily quality that really coats your tongue and finishes with barely perceptible touch of alcohol burn. It's not unpleasant, to be clear.

Overall: This is a decent dessert stout and I was surprised to read that it didn't contain any lactose, which is often used to add sweetness to beers. They also employed real vanilla beans and cocoa nibs, rather than resorting to extracts. Technically, the beer is an achievement for the brewery and their commitment to quality ingredients is admirable. But for me, the beer is good but not an exceptional example of the dessert stout style.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

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