Liquid Lunch: The Proper Way To Start Your Day

Chris Casci

It’s a perfect weekend morning, it’s been a long week and I’m going to need to have a beer for breakfast, and I want a beer that’s going to be great for the occasion. I want a beer to drink with breakfast. I’m having homemade Buttermilk pancakes, with bacon and home fries. I’m looking for a beer that will pair well with the sweetness of the pancakes and the savory bacon. I don’t want to open a bottle from the cellar. So Bell’s Special Double Cream Stout it will be.

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It’s Sunday morning, it’s been a long week and I’m going to need to have a beer for breakfast, and I want a beer that’s going to be great for a Sunday morn. I want a beer to drink with breakfast. I’m having homemade Buttermilk pancakes, with bacon and home fries. I’m looking for a beer that will pair well with the sweetness of the pancakes and the savory bacon. I don’t want to open a bottle from the cellar. So Bell’s Special Double Cream Stout it will be.


I know about Bell’s Brewery because I’ve been hearing about them for years. Bell’s Two Hearted Ale has been named the best IPA year after year, and it’s damn good. But I wanted a beer that would pair well with the applewood smoked St. Louis ribs that I’m grilling, so the stout seemed like the perfect pair. This is a beer that can easily be found on shelves now, and that’s why I wanted to review it. 


A six pack of twelve ounce bottles cost me about thirteen bucks. Not bad. And it’s super fresh. I like the label art, it’s a slick dark label, that has a what looks like a cyclone of grain plants in the middle. The label states that the beer is brewed with 10 different specialty roasted malts. 

This beer pours a super dark brown, near black with a two finger, lightly toasted marshmallow looking head. The head retention is beautiful, it stays for the whole time I drink the beer. The nose is cocoa, dark candy, coffee, and roasted malts. The taste follows, it’s sweet cocoa all upfront, dark roast coffee, and candy like, similar to one of those cold iced espresso drinks with cream that comes in a can. It finishes mildly bitter, but that goes away as it warms. I love the mouthfeel on this beer. It’s not watery, but not as chewy as some of the heavy hitters are in this style. Soft and fluffy, like the inside of a Milky Way. The carbonation is exactly what I’m looking for in a stout. At 6.1 abv, I’m putting these back like sodas. There is no hint of alcohol. I paired this beer with some applewood smoked dry rubbed St. Louis ribs that I smoked on the grill at 225 for a steady 4 hours. This beer pairs perfect with ribs, and I’d recommend it with any smoked meats on the grill. The savory/sweet, fall off the bone meat, and those burnt caramelized ends pair perfectly with this. Pork fat and a stout like this, it’s my idea of a perfect fall Sunday afternoon in the backyard, smoking and grilling, easing the pain of the Jets loss to Cleveland, and the Sox beating the Yankees to clinch the division. Look for this beer on the shelves of your local bottle shop, and give it a shot. At its price point of about 12.99 a six pack, it’s a standout shelfie in my book. 

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