Shasta Taffy is a blend that we put together with our friends from Salt & Straw Ice Cream. We have worked on numerous projects with Tyler and his crew at Salt & Straw over the years, but this was the first time that we had had the opportunity to work on a blended stout together. What’s even more fun is that this beer is really a two-stage collab: the first is the beer itself. The second will be an ice cream based on the flavor profile of our barrel-aged stouts with each component of Shasta Taffy being used in a mix-in or chocolate element in the ice cream.

When we sat down to blend this stout, we let the Salt & Straw crew drive the bus in terms of flavor profile, and not surprisingly, they wanted to create a beer heavy on classic chocolate and vanilla notes but without using either of those ingredients. How much choco-vanilla could we drive from the beer and casks alone? We began with a blend of roughly equal parts of two-year old Chocolate Stout, two-year old Export Stout, and one year-old Imperial Stout. We selected casks that were heavy on notes of caramel, ganache, and cacao nib, leaving roast and char to take a background role. These weren’t casks that were overly sweet: in fact, we found that some of our favorite barrels were relatively dry, allowing malt and oak artifacts to express more clearly. After an initial round of blending, we wanted to make some subtle touch ups to the perception of wood and spirit without compromising the choco-vanilla balance that we had found. Ultimately, this led us to skewing the blend a little more heavily in favor of the older Chocolate Stout and selecting some additional casks with prominent clove and vanillin notes on the palate. The result is a beer that is decadent and dessert-like but drying and lighter than you might guess.

We love creating these blends, and it is even more fun to go through these creative processes with our friends. Enjoy this beer and go try some of Salt & Straw’s ice cream made with it too!