Bottle Stout
Stouts are very dark beers that were originally types of porter ales until black malts were started to be used rather than brown malts that were traditionally used in porters of old. The black malts gives stout its characteristic “burnt” coffee like taste. Stouts are extremely popular across the world, in particular “Irish” stouts and their alcohol levels can vary dramatically between standard stouts at around 4% to export strength and imperial stouts that can reach 12% ABV levels.
Moorhouse’s, the Lancashire-based independent brewer is to launch a bewitching special edition of it’s ‘Black Cat’ dark ale (3.4%), a former winner of the coveted CAMRA Champion Beer of Britain. Primarily available as a 4.6% cask beer, there will also be a 7% version with limited cask availability – the latter will also be available in bottles, to be sold exclusively by the Booths supermarket group. Moorhouse’s describe the beer as “An intensely dark beer, Black Cat Reserve conjures deep complex notes of roasted coffee chocolate and mocha, balanced by…
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Batemans Mocha is a strong stout from the traditional family brewers Batemans who were founded in 1874. Their company slogan is “Good Honest Ales” and a strong stout that has chocolate and coffee as the predominant flavours ticks all the boxes as far as I’m concerned so I have high hopes for this one. Mocha pours a darkish mahogany colour as opposed to the more traditional jet black stout and no matter how it was poured from the bottle it was impossible to retain any head for longer than 30…
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I’ve long been a fan of beers with a hint of ginger about them and so I was keen to try this one. Until this point, most of these beers with ginger (I’m deliberately avoiding referring to them as ginger beers to avoid any confusion) have been paler entities along the lines of Marble’s own Ginger Marble and the somewhat stronger Ginger 6, or the rather lovely Hardknott Cool Fusion, and I can’t remember having ever sampled a ginger stout before. These paler beers leave a lovely fresh lingering ginger…
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Hook Norton is an old English brewery that has been in operation for many years and they have produced an appealing looking bottle design with strong classy branding for their Double Stout with a nice tag line of “Handcrafted in the Cotswold Hills since 1849”. How many other stouts currently on the market have a brewing history of over 150 years? The stout ours jet black with an off cream head that seems to dissipate to a couple of millimetres of head within a few minutes of drinking and as…
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March of the Penguins is from a brewing company from which I have never had the pleasure of drinking any of their brews before so I have been looking forward to sampling the quality. The bottle itself is branded very nicely. It has a modern, slick design which the brewers have clearly given some time and effort towards. Understandably for a stout it pours jet black and is slightly above average carbonation for a stout. It has quite a frothy off-cream coloured head upon pouring which is retained through drinking….
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Marston’s Oyster Stout is a traditional stout offered by a mainstay of British brewing. Perhaps this can explain the “traditional” labelling on the bottle which in my mind is quite old fashioned and lacking in precision. The notes on the bottle label suggest it is best to drink with oysters, other shellfish or just on its own. I haven’t personally contemplated a combination of eating oysters or any other shellfish along with a stout, but perhaps that’s just me being unadventurous. Anyway, about the brew itself. It pours jet black…
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