Old Yale Brewing Yeti White Stout: This is a white stout hybrid style beer brewed in Chilliwack, BC to a strength of 8% abv using Belgian pilsner malts, peated malt and oats with the addition of Himalayan truffles in the brewing process. It’s interesting to see that they’re clearly building on their successful Canadian Beer of the Year winner Sasquatch Stout in using the Yeti branding (Sasquatch’s frozen cousin), which is something that will likely play well in the Canadian market and makes for a fun offering. A white stout is sort of a pseudo style of beer that imitates some flavour characteristics of a traditional stout without using the roasted malts typically used for a stout style beer. I wanted to disclose up front that I received this as a free sampler directly from the brewery.

Flavour: It kicks off with a very strong presence of lightly roasted coffee which lingers on the palate for a moment before developing into a chamomile tea middle that’s accented with a creamy vanilla mouth feel and medium bodied texture. As it finishes, notes of earthy truffles, almonds arise while brief glimpses of caramel tease in the aftertaste as it goes down.

Overall Impression: Admittedly, I have yet to find a white stout that I’ve like up until I tried this one, which was actually rather enjoyable. I found that the medium body and higher alcohol level gave the beer a bit more depth and texture to help balance out the strong coffee notes, something other white stout offerings that I’ve had were clearly missing. If you like light or earthy coffee, or happen to fear darker beers, than this is probably a good option for you.

Rating: Since this is a free sample review where the beer was sent to me for tasting and review, I won’t be providing an official rating due to potential bias, but rather will focus on the tasting notes only.

Food Pairing: On their web description they recommend a few food pairing ideas and I suggest the Sheppard’s Pie option as being the best one since the earthy truffle and gravy would pair together perfectly. You could even add some of the beer to the gravy for added flavour or if you want to pair up with the coffee notes, some almond biscotti would work great too. It also might make for an interesting Black and Tan, blended with Sasquatch Stout, so stay tuned on that one as I’ll give it a whirl.

Although this wasn’t how my beer was delivered, here’s a pretty fun little video they made that’s worth taking a minute or two of your time to watch!