New Holland Brewings Dragons Milk Reserve - Review by @Robyn_Seto

Happy New Year! And happy new BEER! For my first review of 2021 I present to you New Holland Brewing Company’s Dragon's Milk Reserve: 2020-2, a Scotch Barrel-Aged With Marshmallow & Dark Chocolate. That’s a mouthful! New Holland is known for their bourbon barrel-aged stouts under the name “Dragon’s Milk”. Their Dragon’s Milk Reserve series features limited release beers with slight variations on their base stout. 

Since I have introduced the concept of aging to my readers, I felt it was appropriate to continue that trend. The beer I had was bottled on 5/15/2020, so it has a little over 7 months of age on it. I usually like to age stouts over 10% ABV a minimum of 6 months, just so the alcohol has some time to cool down. That way the booziness doesn’t get in the way of subtle flavors derived from the various combinations of ingredients. Dragon’s Milk 2020-2 is 11% ABV, so 7 months is just enough time for this beer to have settled a bit.

This is a very smooth beer at 7 months old. There’s a heaviness to it, but it doesn’t have a thick viscosity. The marshmallow is right upfront with a very bright and sweet candy-like flavor. This is followed by roasty dark chocolate notes, and ends with that leathery hint of scotch. As the beer warms, the scotch becomes more pronounced but never becomes too boozy. The sweetness from the marshmallow is strong at first, but your palette seems to become acclimated to the sugar and it never becomes too cloying.

There are two other Dragon’s Milk Reserve releases from 2020 (2020-1 and 2020-3) that you still may be able to find in the wild as well. I highly recommend any one you can find!

4/5 Burps

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