Midnight Snack

ALLERGEN WARNING: Contains Hazelnuts (Tree Nuts).

Midnight Snack is an English Brown Ale conditioned on house-toasted hazelnuts. Pouring a deep brown hue with a dollop of foam, notes of hazelnut truffles and chocolate hazelnut palmiers rise from the glass. Featuring Simpson’s Export Pale Chocolate malt atop a traditional grain bill, notes of hot cocoa, toffee cake, coffee, and toasted nuts envelop every sip. Rich, quaffable, and cozy, it is the perfect accompaniment to a day spent outside and a late night with friends.

The royal chef shouted at no one in particular as his staff scrambled about the kitchen, scouring every nook and cranny only to come up empty-handed. Where in the name of St. Lawrence had those hazelnut-dusted truffles disappeared to? He felt sweat pool in his cap and run in rivulets down his rubicund face, even redder than usual. He gritted his teeth, overwhelmed by an unexpected vertigo. “What sort of culinary witchcraft was this?” he shouted. Had they been mislaid, had kitchen elves whisked them away, and right before the visiting lord’s farewell dinner?

“My very reputation is on the line!” he cried out!

Now, in a state of commingled panic and disgust, the royal chef accused a server of throwing them out, a cook of eating them, and the pastry chef of forgetting to make them in the first place. Amidst this chaos, a dishwasher whisked a silver platter from under the butcher’s block to reveal thereat naught but crumbs sprinkled about a single morsel.

Still fuming, the royal chef studied the silver platter, where in its lid he saw his reflection besmirched by tiny chocolate fingerprints. At once his suspicions fell upon their autumn guests’ littlest brat: a mischievous scamp with sticky cheeks and a scowl that only lifted when the staff wheeled out the dessert tray. And who could blame him, the chef thought, for were his sugary sculptures not famous amongst all the lords and nobles of the land? And who could resist the legend of his junkets, sweetmeats, and luxurious comfits once they’d smelt them?

Something must have been in the air, for a similar thought simultaneously animated the simple mind of the pastry chef, who suddenly shot atop a stool to shut a half-open window. There, with balled fist, he frenziedly wiped away the condensation gathered on the glass. The royal chef hurried to his side, almost knocking him over as he climbed up beside him to have a look through the circular port. The two chefs’ heads knocked together as they pressed their faces to the glass, and, from this coign of vantage, they spied the adjacent tower adorned with thin stained-glass windows: the very tower where the young scoundrel had been sentenced to an early bed the night before for stealing goose eggs!

The royal chef’s eyes glazed over; it was as if he could see the brat’s escapades under yesternight’s moon. On tiptoe past the sleeping guards to squeeze out an open window, then scaling the battlements in pitch-black to slip through the king’s portrait room. And, on feet still featherlight, the scoundrel traversed the hall, the kennels, the laundry room, and finally poked his head into the kitchen, trespassing on his own domain!

The royal chef and pastry chef met eyes as they knocked heads again, then shouted in unison in each other’s face, “That little thief!”

Brewed in Massachusetts by Tree House Brewing Company

English Brown Ale, 5.1% ABV

Brewed in Massachusetts by Tree House Brewing Company