B.C. Beer Blog

As the weather becomes colder, the winter warmers are starting to make their appearance. This means it will be easier to find Russian Imperial Stout for this recipe, which is not commonly made by B.C. breweries who package their beer. Suitable beers for this cheescake are Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout, Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter, Moylan’s Ryan O’Sullivan’s Imperial Stout, North Coast Old Rasputin, and Phillips The Hammer. If you can’t find any of these at a BC government liquor store, try a private one. Add a scoop of French Vanilla ice cream to any of these, and you have a delicious beer float (I kid you not!).

Russian Imperial Stout Cheesecake served with preserved Bing cherries and cherry syrup that was served with a Lindemans Kriek.

Russian Imperial Stout Cheesecake

1 1/2 cups chocolate graham cracker crumbs *
2 tbsp white sugar
1/2 cup melted butter
1 kg (4 x 250g pkgs Philadelphia) cream cheese at room temperature
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tbsp vanilla
454g (1 lb) dark chocolate melted in a double boiler *
473ml (1 pint) Russian Imperial Stout (room temperature, degassed) *
4 large eggs at room temperature

Preheat oven to 325°F (or 300°F if using a dark pan). Grease the sides of 9″ spring form pan and cover bottom with wax paper. Mix crumbs, 2 tbsp sugar, and melted butter in a bowl until evenly blended; press firmly onto the bottom of the pan with a fork.

Beat cream cheese with an electric mixer until smooth, then add remaining ingredients (except eggs) at medium speed until well blended. On low speed, add eggs one at a time, mixing each until just blended. Pour batter over crust.

Bake 55-60 minutes or until centre is almost set. Loosen cake from side of pan by running a paring knife around the inside edge. Cool on a wire rack to room temperature before removing side of pan. Refrigerate for at least four hours or overnight. Store any leftover cheesecake in the refrigerator.

Adapted from Michel Brown’s Russian Imperial Stout Cheesecake by Fred Eckhardt in Northwest Brewing News, Feb/Mar 2008, Volume 7 Number 1, pg. 29.

* NOTE: You can use Oreo cookie crumbs for the chocolate graham crumbs. I also thought there was way too much sugar for the batter (American recipe), so I halved it, using only 1/2 cup. With the beer/chocolate combination I used, this amount of sugar was perfect. You may be able to get away with using even less, depending on the chocolate and beer you use; taste the batter before pouring it into the pan to see if you need to add more sugar. I would recommend a good quality chocolate with at least 60% cacao. I used an organic dark German chocolate found at Choices Markets; Belgian Callebaut would also be a good bet.

To degas the beer, a trick I learned from a brewer is to pour the pint of beer into a small container or pitcher, then pour it back and forth into another until the head dies down and the beer goes flat.

To serve the cheesecake, berries are an excellent complement — raspberries, strawberries, cherries, black currants. When plating the cake, you could crown the slice with a dollop of whipped cream topped with a berry and mint leaf, then surround the cheesecake with a coulis made from the same fruit. This is a classic Valentine’s dessert — sinfully rich chocolate and the fruit providing the red colour of love.

To pair a beer with the dessert, use either the beer used in the cake or a fruit lambic that is the same as the fruit you used to complete the presentation. If you want to impress dinner guests, stout should be served at cellar temperature in a cognac snifter and the lambic, like champagne, chilled in a flute.