Food & Drink /Drink

Have Your Cake and Drink It Too

“Let them eat cake” may once have been an ill-fated cry but “let them drink cake” is rallying brewers across Canada as they turn to bakeries for inspiration in the ever-evolving search for esoteric suds.

Fruit flavours have been bringing sweetness to beer for years but now, like some teenaged fever-dream of delight, crazy concoctions of cookies, cake and pies are flavouring bitter and sweet blends of beer. Here are some of the best bakery brews in Canada.

By: Nicholas Sokić

Beer stein with cake in it

Birthday Cake

Spectrum Beer Company, Vancouver (5%)

This West Coast slice is a creamy turn of the bakers’ wheel with classic sprinkles adding to the birthday-cake cred. A limited-run beer.

Blueberry Pale Ale

Storm Brewing, Vancouver (5%)

Fresh blueberries fuel this amber ale with Madagascar vanilla extract adding a luscious flavour layer.

Town Square White Wedding Pastry Sttout

Alberta Beer Exchange, Calgary (6%)

Like a finely blended batter, a brewery and a bakery came together to produce this sturdy stout. In a partnership Billy Idol would approve of, Edmonton brewery Town Square joins Art of Cake bakery from the same city to blend the flavours of coffee, chocolate and icing sugar in a beer that’s not half-baked.

Cakeface Birthday Cake Ale

Cold Garden Beverage Company, Calgary (5.8%)

This Märzen-ish beer has a Bavarian influence but don’t go looking for Black Forest cake in this brew. A big blast of real vanilla beans gives Cakeface its birthday-cake base.

No Bake Imperial Stout

Eighty-Eight Brewing Company, Calgary (8.1%)

No Bake make no bones about claiming to have created a stout that delivers “Canada’s favourite dessert liquefied.” Its not-so-secret, secret ingredient, graham crackers, shifts these cake flavours to the taste of a classic. Limited run.

Malevolent Benevolence: German Chocolate Cake Imperial Stout

Rorschach Brewing Company, Toronto (11.9%)

The brewer promises “decadent flavours” in this imperial stout and it’s fit for a chocolate-craving Kaiser. It’s loaded with chocolate, coffee and caramel malts. Add toasted and shredded coconut, cocoa nibs and vanilla beans, with a wisp of lactose sugar, for the Bavarian-bakery-beer equivalent of the everything bagel.

Malevolent Benevolence: Coffee Cake Imperial Stout

Rorschach Brewing Company, Toronto (11.9%)

Similar to its German Chocolate Cake cousin, this bakery brew is infused with strong coffee. A few waves of the cinnamon stick give this brew extra sweetness.