I’ve been feeling crappy since last Thursday, with a head full of a common cold. It put paid to my plans to visit the National Winter Ales Festival on Friday as I stayed in and supped hot lemon and honey drinks instead, but on Saturday night I thought I’d take the offensive. So I decided to break out a couple of strong stouts, on the grounds that at least I ought to be able to taste those…

First up was Ridgeway Foreign Export Stout, weighing in at a hefty 8% ABV. Ridgeway beers are brewed by Peter Scholey, formerly the head brewer at Brakspear, mainly for the US export market (as far as I can tell) although I picked this one up in my pre-Xmas trip to Beer Ritz in Leeds.

It poured an almost opaque black and thanks to its bottle-conditioning was slightly effervescent, resulting in a big frothy head, although it didn’t hang around for long. Flavour-wise is was all big, burnt sugars cut through with treacle, liquorice and cough syrup. Which seemed appropriate under the circumstances. After a while, the sugars settled down and a more stewed-fruit character began to come through: I eventually decided it was like scraping the sticky bits from the edge of a blackcurrant crumble dish (and everyone knows that those bits are the best bits, right?) Very, very nice indeed and one I’d be happy to go back to (once I have a nose that actually works… it didn’t miraculously cure my cold).

After that I brought out the big guns: De Struise / De Molen Black Damnation, a blend of De Struise Black Albert and De Molen Hel & Verdoemenis (“Hell and Damnation”). Two bottles of this 13% ABV Low Countries stout have been lurking menacingly in the cupboard since I bought them as part of a BeerMerchants.com rare continentals case back in the summer, so the one I opened had benefited from an extra six months’ bottle maturation (although the best before date is given as March 2014, so that’s probably when I’ll be opening the other one).

Pouring a thick, thick black with a big tan-coloured head, Black Damnation was all about the big, big flavours again: mocha coffee, dark sugar and toasted hazelnuts, with a generous measure of charcoal and peat-smoke mixed in for good measure – Jo said it distinctly reminded her of Laphroaig single malt – and a bit of a tang of charred orange peel (imagine you left some orange peel on the barbecue after the flames had died down, that sort of thing). All of that delivered by a lasciviously viscous mouth-feel: wonderful stuff, quite wonderful.

And after that one… well, I happily forgot that I had a cold for a while, I can tell you. But it was still lingering on Sunday morning and my sinuses are still on fire as I type this. But hey, you know what they say about a cold: “treat it and it will last for two weeks, don’t treat it and it will last for a fortnight”. By that reckoning I’ve got another week or so to go, so I might just try another strong-stout treatment at the weekend, on the off-chance that the next one works. You never know, eh?