Steamworks: Oatmeal Stout (Canada: Sweet Stout: 5% ABV)
Visual: Black with red hints at edges. A cm of caramel to brown tinted frothy bubbled head. Some suds.
Nose: Roasted nuts. Mint leaves. Bitter coffee. Milky. Slight charring. Slight sour dough notes when at room temperature.
Body: Muesli. Milky coffee. Light pepper and spice. Dried sultanas. Bitter chocolate. Oatmeal.
Finish: Charred touch. Coffee granules. Chocolate milkshake.
Conclusion: Now, the beer is still cool as I write this, so this is a work in progress set of notes, but this beer does feel slightly thin. Very surprising for an oatmeal stout. At 5% abv it isn’t super heavy, but not so light that I would expect it to hit the mouthfeel.
Maybe I am wrong, maybe the relatively modest abv for a oatmeal stout does hit it, I am used to relatively lighter abv stouts in cask, so maybe from keg they need a higher abv to deliver the best mouthfeel. Maybe.
Anyway, flavor wise it is kind of a milky coffee drenched bowl of muesli. For those of you who don’t regularly eat such things for breakfast – it gives a nicely workable contrast.
As it warms the texture doesn’t really thicken, but the flavours do rise out of it to cover that up nicely. It becomes kind of coffee meets chocolate milkshake. Over muesli.
That analogy now feels slightly convoluted
Warm it does work better, slight overly charred but it lays down its main flavor nicely. It doesn’t really rock the style, it needs that bit more grip, but the chocoffee muesli breakfast thing isn’t exactly a common interpretation so it is doing its own thing.
Id say it is on the weaker end of the style – a pity as with more fortitude I think the main conceit would have legs. Ah well.
Background: Oh, and 30 IBUs. This is the final Canada tasting note. Well the final from Canada itself, I brought back two bottles. One a USA Enjoy After IPA, which is best part of a year away from drinking, and a Canadian Double IPA which I will have notes up on soon. People had been recommending Steamworks to me the entire trip, right from Calgary onwards, so when I was in Vancouver I decided to visit their brewpub and give it a shot. I also tried an awesome Sockeye Salmon burger there, I didn’t even know people made Salmon Burgers. Very nice indeed. Also I tried their gose, just because I am still getting used to the style – it was very salty and yet creamy, as odd as most goses are, but slightly fuller bodied – feeling slightly lactose like. Very thirst quenching but a bit overly salty even for the style for me.
