Mother’s Milk

Keegan Ales
Kingston, NY

Available: NY

Located in historic Midtown Kingston, NY, Keegan Ales calls a 250 year-old brick foundry building home.

ABV: 6.7
ABW: 5.3
Color: 50
Bitterness: 25
Gravity: 1062

A neat name, echoing a notion that dark beers are for nursing mothers. This brew is subtitled “a robust, full-bodied, stout.” It is certainly full in color: somewhere between a rich ruby and a more masculine mahogany. The aroma has roasted coffee beans, figs, prunes and toasted almonds. The body is firmly fleshy, rounded and hugging. This is such an assertive beer that I can scarcely believe I’m asking for more. It’s that dryness that does the trick: sufficient to demand another glass, but with enough sweetness to suggest that the night is young. Motherhood may come much later.
- Michael Jackson

There’s something appealingly basic about this brewery, sticking to just three beers, each quite different than the others. This bottle poured a tad fizzy, but it might have been its hard journey to New Mexico, because the beer traveled smoothly—call it creamy rather than milky—from the tip of my tongue to the back of my throat. Roasty at the start, roasty and almost coffee-like at the finish, with rich chocolate and dark fruit (perhaps prunes) flavors through the middle.
- Stan Hieronymus

Michael Jackson
Author of Ultimate Beer, the Simon & Schuster Guide to Beer and numerous other works on drinks, Jackson has created legions of converts to fine beer.

Stan Hieronymus
Editor at Realbeer.com, a professional journalist for 40 years and amateur brewer for 15, Hieronymus is the author of four beer books, including Brew Like a Monk.

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