Brewery: De Dolle Brouwers
Location: Esen (near Diksmuide), Belgium
Style: Imperial Stout
ABV: 9.0%
Version: bottled
Source: Beermerchants.com

Open It! beer number three, and my last one for the evening, was De Dolle Special Extra Export Stout. This bottle of De Dolle Special Extra Export Stout arrived as part of a BeerMerchants.com self-mixed case that I ordered back in July.

De Dolle are a Belgian brewery with some odd (or maybe just tongue-in-cheek?) ideas about stout (“Stout is an old-fashioned beer, but still popular in English speaking countries”? Try telling that to the Danes…) and this was the first of their beers that I’d encountered.

Pre-warned by Mr Dredge, I carefully opened the bottle over the sink and prepared for a lightning-quick decanting, but I must have been lucky with this one: the beer behaved itself and I got pretty much all of it into the glass.

As you can see from the pic, De Dolle SEE Stout poured with a thick, oily, black body and a huge tan head. First impressions: a light effervescence cuts through the luscious mouth-feel. Flavours are big, rich and delicious: dark chocolate truffle, vanilla and port-wine flavours abound, with a dry mocha-coffee edge. Deep and sensuous, this is a beer most definitely to be savoured, which is what I did for the remainder of my Friday OpenIt! evening.

Delicious stuff – just the sort of robust, flavourful stout I thoroughly enjoy – and one that I won’t hesitate to buy and try again if the chance presents itself. Speaking of: looks like Beermerchants.com are out of stock at the moment, but then the De Dolle website does say they only brew stout twice a year, so I’ll just have to keep my eyes peeled. Either that or raid John Clarke’s cellar… ;)

Brewery: Hardknott [@Hardknottann]
Location: Millom, Cumbria, England
Style: Red IPA
ABV: 6.5%
Version: Bottled
Source: Utobeer, Covent Garden, London

Friday Night was Open It! night, so I brought out a trio of beers that I’d been saving for a while. First up was Hardknott Infra Red. I (literally) grabbed this bottle off the shelf on a visit to Utobeer earlier this year (I think it was their last one) and had been saving it ever since.

The first thing I noticed was the thick, spicy hop aroma that poured from the bottle when I cracked the top. Infra Red poured with a deep, copper-red body and a frothy beige head.

Hardknott Infra Red is a very savoury beer. The first sip brought a flood of flavours that were all about the hop-burn. It was slightly sour (in a Belgian Red kinda way) and slightly metallic, with a long, lingering dryness, and hints of something that was struggling towards sweetness but never quite arrived. Burnt sugars – caramelised roast veg, something like that – came in towards the very end but there was still nothing you could call ‘sweet’ about it.

All in all we’re talking a distinctly acerbic, bone-dry, big IPA in a very definite Brewdog Hardcore mode, rather than what seems to be a more common sweet malt base for the big US-produced IPAs that I’ve sampled recently. Definitely a beer for the more adventurous palate, but one that rewards the bold-hearted with a big, brash blast of hoppy flavour. I liked it a lot and I’ll be buying more the very next chance I get.

Brewery: Thornbridge
Location: Buxton, England
Style: Imperial Russian Stout
ABV: 7.7%
Version: Bottled
Source: Courtesy of MyBreweryTap.com

I’ve learned a lot in the almost-two-years that I’ve been expanding my beer horizons and two of the most emphatically driven-home lessons have been:

1) Imperial Stout is my absolute favourite beer style.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good, hoppy IPA, I’m steadily growing partial to a range of interesting Belgian beers and I’ve even learned to appreciate a good Helles lager. But give me a choice of something to sip and savour and love, then I’ll pick a rich-nosed, full-bodied, black-as-the-inside-of-a-cat Imperial Stout any day of the week.

2) Thornbridge brew bloody good beer.

No, scratch that. Thornbridge brew bloody excellent beer. Every one of their brews that I’ve sampled to-date have genuinely impressed me.

So, combine 1) and 2) in the form of Thornbridge St Petersburg Imperial Russian Stout and it’s pretty much a no-brainer.

I’ve had Thornbridge St Petersburg before, on draught at the Marble Arch, and it was superb. And the bottled version – whilst not quite hitting the same dizzy heights – was still very good indeed. Big hits of chocolate and coffee accompanied by faint vanilla notes; a slight sweetness up-front, with a long, smooth, dry, roast-malty finish to follow. Lovely.

If I’m being perfectly honest I’ve had bottled Imperial Stouts that I’ve enjoyed more – Dark Star Imperial Stout and BrewDog Tokyo* spring to mind, as well as BrewDog Paradox – but it’s definitely up there with the likes of Acorn Gorlovka and Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout; one of those big, bold, flavourful beers that I’ll happily come back to time after time.

Another very big thank you to Richard at MyBreweryTap.com for adding this one to my recent order!

Jo suggested we have dinner and a couple of pints at the Marble Arch on Saturday and it didn’t take much to get me to agree (she had me at ‘dinner’, to be honest, ‘pints’ and ‘Marble Arch’ were icing on the cake). We were hoping to get there early enough to bump into MyBreweryTap.com‘s Richard Burhouse (@MyBreweryTap) and Rob Derbyshire (@BGRTRob) of Hopzine.com fame, but alas they got there earlier than we did and had already supped their fill and moved on before we’d managed to get into town.

So instead we ended up chatting to half a dozen complete strangers over the course of the evening (topics of conversation ranging from bondage trousers and Stiff Little Fingers, to the relative acoustic merits of the Bridgewater Hall and the Lowry, via the best way to get to the Palace Theatre by car whilst avoiding the gas-main works that have buggered up the city centre for months) and had a bloody good time doing so.

There was ale involved, of course. And oh, my word, what ale there was…

On arrival, I headed for the bar to get Jo her customary half of Marble Stouter Stout and made a b-line for the Thornbridge Raven, which Rob D had mentioned was on earlier in the day. As it weighs in at 6% ABV I thought I’d just go for a half to start with, so I got myself a pint of Marble Pint at the same time, to ease myself in. But Jo finished up her stout and sent me back to the bar for another (along with our food order) and the Raven was so damn good – a dark, smoky, delicious black IPA with a lingering hop-bite – that I couldn’t resist a second. And that pretty much set the tone for the session…

Our food arrived just as we’d both gotten a pint of Marble Chocolate in and we feasted on char-grilled belly pork and black pudding (actually, the best damn black pudding I’ve ever tasted) with duck’s egg for starters, followed by sea bass served with creamed crab meat and spinach for Jo and turbot poached in red wine on creamed polenta with salsify sticks for me, and some lightly steamed greens on the side. Fantastic food, as always in the Marble Arch – we’ve eaten there a few times now and have never been anything less than blown away by whatever we’ve ordered – and it all went extremely well with the rich, tasty Marble Chocolate. Perhaps a dark ale or stout might not the obvious choice for a with-food beer, but the bitter-sweetness of the chocolate and roasted malts were very complimentary indeed to the satisfyingly meaty, beautifully cooked fish dishes.

After dinner we ordered dessert: another Marble Chocolate for Jo, whilst I decided to try a pint of Marble Brew 14. This one was a completely new to me (although apparently it went down rather well on the first #twissup pub crawl / blogger outing in Sheffield back in January. Brew 14 turned out to be a feisty session bitter that was all about the bitter oranges and big hops with a long, dry finish. Very, very good indeed and one I’d definitely have again.

At this point, Jo and I were thinking about winding down and heading home, so I opted for a quick half of Marble Dobber for the road. But of course, one half of Dobber is never enough and as I was heading back to the bar for another top-up, I spotted a new pump clip nestled among the array of Marbles: Thornbridge St Petersburg! I’ve been trying to track down and try this 7.7% ABV Imperial Stout for a while now, so this was just too good an opportunity to miss. And it was delicious: rich, smoky malt, chocolate and coffee, blended to perfection. A top-up of that one was absolutely compulsory, it would have been the very height of rudeness not to.

That really did finish the evening off for us and we weaved our way out the door to find a tram and head home for a nice cup of tea and a kip. Lovely, lovely evening and a fuzzy, fuzzy head the next day, but absolutely, totally worth it. I tell you what, it’s a good job we don’t live just round the corner from the Marble Arch, we’d never be out of the place.

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?

First up was Ascot Ales Alligator Ale, a golden ale brewed with single-varietal (US cascade) hops. I was expecting something light and refreshing, but this 4.6% ABV ended up punching well above its expected weight. It poured a slightly cloudy (although that may have been my fault, I might not have been as careful with the sediment as I should have been, distracted as I was by watching the World Cup draw) dark gold colour, with a very thin head. The first sip delivered a big hit of rich malt, which took on a chocolatey character as the beer warmed up. The hop finish was sneaky: it crept up and slugged my taste buds when I wasn’t looking, but hung around for ages afterwards in the lingering, dry finish. There was a hint of citrus sourness in there as well; a mix of bitter orange and acid drops. Very little in the way of sweetness, but with plenty of character and flavour, I definitely enjoyed my first Alligator encounter.

Second round: Dark Star Imperial Stout. I had a strong suspicion that I’d get on with this one very well indeed, Imperial Stout being pretty much my all-time favourite beer style, and I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. This 2008 vintage, 10.5% ABV roast-malt monster poured a lovely opaque black, with no head whatsoever. The first sip released a cascade of big, big flavours: rich, dark chocolate, sour cherries, port wine were the first three I scribbled down as tears of pure joy leaked from the corners of my eyes. After that I noted treacle, liquorice and then a definite vanilla, toasted almond, marzipan-esque semi-sweetness began to creep through. The sweeter flavours became more pronounced as I sipped my way down the glass, but at no point did they take over or become cloying; that bitter-sour note was ever-present, keeping the whole thing in quite wonderful balance. Delicious. Absolutely delicious. I’d happily drink a bottle of Dark Star Imperial Stout any day of the week.

And so to round three: Harvey’s Imperial Extra Double Stout. Not just Imperial. Not even just Imperial Extra. No, this one’s Imperial Extra Double Stout… so I was expecting something that was going to be nothing less than absolutely incredible. Bottled in 2003, this beer had already been maturing for six years when I cracked it open on Friday evening. I have no idea what it tasted like when it was young, but aged for 60 months or so, it was… well… I started off with ‘smells like christmas cake’ (when it was still in the bottle) and moved on to ‘looks like used engine oil’, this second observation provided by Jo, after the pour. And it tasted like… rubber. And burnt coffee. And red wine vinegar. And… okay, you know how the phrase ‘a bit of a Marmite beer’ is usually used metaphorically? in the case of Harvey’s IEDS it’s quite literal, too. Individually, there’s not a flavour there that should have endeared me to Harvey’s ober-stout, but slam them all together and you get something that really works. In an oddly savoury, distinctly medicinal, weirdly masochistic way, it all just works. I managed to finish the bottle, anyhow (which surprised me almost as much as it did Jo) and, although I wouldn’t rush back to it, I’d still give it another go. I think. Tell you what, offer me another one and we’ll see what happens…

Huge, huge thanks to Beer Viking crew member Simon B for sending me this eclectic, interesting and extremely generous selection. Some genuinely remarkable (and surprising) flavours, there. I’m very happy indeed that I took part in the first round of the Beer Swap project, and I’ll be glad to volunteer for the next one.

Earlier this week, I finally got the long-awaited and much-chased email from Collect+ confirming that my Beer Swap package had arrived at the local store for collection. My Beer Swap buddy was Simon B, a loyal crew member on the good ship BeerViking.com and – judging by the selection of beers he chose to send my way – a man who definitely knows his brews.

The package from Simon contained the following:

      

Alligator Ale from Ascot Ales. A single-varietal (US Cascade) hop golden ale made in small batches of 4 barrels at a time.

Imperial Stout from Dark Star, 2008 vintage. A 10.5% ABV uber-stout in the Baltic export tradition. (I owe Simon a pint for sending me this one, definitely.)

Imperial Extra Double Stout from Harveys, 2003 vintage. 9% ABV and sanctioned by A. Le Coa and Tartu Brewery in Estonia. (If the last one earned Simon a pint, then for this one I probably owe him a hogshead…)

Now, anyone involved in the Beer Swap project will have spotted that I’ve only mentioned three bottles there, rather than the four that Beer Swap participants were asked to send. Simon did send a fourth – a bottle of Dark Star Sunburst – but alas, it didn’t survive the journey intact. So, whilst I’m truly impressed with Simon’s generosity and dedication to the Beer Swap cause, I can’t say the same for the efficiency of service or customer care demonstrated by Collect+. They were, frankly, a bit crap. Not only did they take ten days to ship the parcel from Marple (just South of Manchester) to Prestwich (just North of Manchester) – which is a journey of “19.2 mi – about 35 mins” according to Google Maps – but they also managed to break the bottle of Sunburst, despite the copious amount of newspaper packing that Simon had included in the box and the ‘Fragile’ tape he’d used to seal it up with.

So when I picked up the parcel I was greeted with one end of a box reduced to a mass of soggy cardboard and the pungent (yet still oddly enticing) whiff of stale beer, handed to me by an apologetic shopkeeper who assured me that this what it had looked like when he received it:

I mentioned the damaged parcel to Collect+ (pointing out that the broken bottle had been removed, so I couldn’t see whether it had been crushed in transit or had just cracked under its own pressure) and asked them to refund Simon his sending fee. They flatly refused. Instead, they apologised for the damage, but in the same email quoted chunks of their terms & conditions stating that they don’t carry liquids or glass except by prior arrangement.

Which, of course, they’re perfectly entitled to do. Fair’s fair, terms and conditions are agreed to in advance and all that. But to me, that sort of approach (“oh, sorry… not our problem though”) still smacks of an opportunity lost on their part; an opportunity to impress a first-time customer with their dedication to providing an above-and-beyond standard of service. Their loss: I won’t be using them again in future. Terms and conditions aside, Collect+ still managed to break a beer bottle that was perfectly well-packaged in a box clearly marked ‘fragile’, which suggests their drivers or depot staff are nowhere near as careful with other people’s property as they should be.

Anyhow, today is actually the last day for posting a Beer Swap write-up, according to the original schedule. Thanks to Collect+’s amazing ability to turn a 35 minute journey into a 10-day delay, I’m going to be cutting it fine if I’m going to make the deadline… Sunday seems like a much more likely prospect than this evening, but I’ll do my best. Depends on how much recorded TV we end up watching. Or rather, if I’m honest about it, how engrossed I get in Football Manager 2010… :)

Brewery: Dent
Location: Dent, Cumbria, England
ABV: 6.0%
Version: Bottled
Source: Yorkshire Real Ale Shop, Watershed Mill, Settle

Another one from the notebook archive sweep here. I picked up a bottle of Dent T’owd Tup as part of a batch that I ended up with when Jo and I nipped in to Watershed Mill to kill half an hour on the way through Settle a while back and I drank it back in the Spring.

T’Owd Tup (Champion Winter Beer of Britain back in 1999 and clearly still going strong) is named for an old ram or an ancient sheep or something, hence the woolly beast on the label. It poured a very dark black-brown with chestnut highlights and gave off a lovely, chocolatey aroma. The chocolate was prevalent in the flavour as well, along with some coffee notes and just a hint of vanilla and ginger, or nutmeg? Something spicy, anyhow. Even thought it’s quite strong for a stout the alcohol wasn’t too up-front and in-yer-face either. Nicely balanced. Smooth.

A very nice drop indeed and an excellent choice for a winter warmer, I’d say. Do try some if you see it, especially on draught. I’d imagine that would be a beer experience worth seeking out.

Brewery: BrewDog
Location: Fraserburgh, Scotland
ABV: 18.2%
Version: Bottled
Source: Courtesy of BrewDog

The Back-story: At 18.2% ABV, BrewDog Tokyo* is the strongest beer brewed in the UK and as a result, it’s currently the most infamous: it has been condemned by health groups, the Scottish Parliament and the largely ignorant media.

The Beer: BrewDog Tokyo* is “an imperial stout brewed with jasmine and cranberries added in the kettle”, dry hopped “with a combination of North American and New Zealand hops” and then aged “for 4 weeks on toasted vanilla French oak chips”.

The Tasting Notes: I drank this one soon after the BrewDog Rake Raspberry, the better to compare the two. Tokyo*’s aroma was a lot more muted, but still noticeably fruity; more rich fruitcake than crushed berries. The pour was noticeably effervescent and the head slightly lighter, but still with that same tan colour.

And the flavour? Bear with me, I may run out of superlatives halfway through these notes… let’s start with ‘absolutely incredible’ and move on from there, shall we? The first thing I noted: a distinct sweetness that was malty without being syrupy and an overall impression of definite alcoholic warmth, but without the stridency that you’d expect from a similar ABV beverage; port or sherry for instance. The flavours are rich, dense, complex and quite fascinating: a touch of cough-syrup, toasted bread, treacle, vintage port and dark cherry, with a hint of nuttiness, and a very slight herbal tang. Not much smokiness, not too heavy on the tannins; an extremely smooth, immensely satisfying drink all round.

Honestly, I could have happily gone on slowly sipping this one all night. All weekend, in fact. An absolutely stunning beer… quite possibly… in fact, no, definitely the best I’ve ever tasted. There, I’ve said it. Back in February Ed, Tim, Joe and myself all posted our tasting notes for BrewDog’s Paradox Smokehead and RipTide stouts and concluded that they were quite possibly the best stouts we’d ever tasted. I hinted at the time that there was actually one or two I’d tried that were even better: I can tell you that I was alluding to BrewDog’s Paradox Springbank and Paradox Longrow (I’ve just been too bone idle to type up the Tasting Notes since then). Well, I can promise you that this year’s Tokyo* surpasses even those utterly stellar beers. Really, truly, unbelievably good…

And that’s it… I really have run out of different ways of praising the stuff. Seriously, if you haven’t grabbed a couple of bottles yet, do so while you can. I’m contemplating investing in a few more myself, even though I have one more stashed in the special beer cupboard already (and may actually transfer that one to the house safe…)

In a word: wow. Just… wow.

What the other Beer Bloggers are saying: I sampled this one last Friday night so I was hoping to have the Notes posted at the weekend, but BT managed to kill my landline for four days, so I’m lagging behind both Pencil & Spoon‘s Mark Dredge’s video review and Pete Brown‘s blog. Haven’t seen any more reviews just yet, but I’ll post the links as and when I find them.

Back at the end of 2008, seized by some mad fit of seasonal largesse, I stumbled on a idea: how about I order a case of BrewDog‘s Rip Tide and Paradox Smokehead stouts, send a bottle of each to the other BoB blokes and then write up the resulting mass Tasting Notes here? So I did.

And this is what we all thought of the beers:

Tim said:

What a couple of tasty puppies these were!

Rip Tide: this one poured a delicious chocolate-brown, and that chocolatey theme persisted through to the taste. Rich, dark, with a slightly bitter caramel after-taste, it went down smooth and sweet. It settled after a few minutes – yes, I did manage to keep some in the glass that long – and became even smoother to end with. I thought I’d found a new favourite stout when I tried this, and naturally, after one bottle I’d been turned twisted and merciless ….

But then I tried the Paradox Smokehead. Oh my. Oh my! This ale danced a joyous jig of delight on my tongue. Smoky indeed, both its smell and taste brought back intense memories of building bonfires in my grandparents’ huge back garden in Devon thirty years ago. It has a very rich, sweetly-smoky pinewood taste, and it leaves a pleasant, warm tingly sensation on the tongue afterwards. The taste and smell seemed to increase as the beer settled in the glass (thought it didn’t get to spend long in there), and though its strength is right there at the fore, there’s nothing smothering here. The various tastes are distinct and perfectly complement each other. A triumph.

Long may Brewdog keep birthing new puppies like this one.

Joe said:

Re: the Rip Tide, I’m with Tim on the chocolatey theme – very chocolate with a bit of burnt toffee in there too both aroma wise and taste-wise. Actually to be honest at first I thought it was too strong a taste, I found it a bit overwhelming which was off-putting, but after a few sips I thought it became smoother too, nice chocolate after-taste too, smoother and milder after a quarter of the glass than I initially found and I went from that rocky beginning of thinking “no, this is just a bit too overpowering” to really enjoying it. Then I had a couple of squares of 75% cocoa dark chocolate and another sip: perfect…

Ed said:

Rip Tide: A wonderful chocolate toffee aroma to kick things off, which is retained through to the tasting. Unlike a lot of other beers the smell sticks around so you get another whiff with every sup. Taste is full of chocolate malt and toffee, with just the lightest touch of bitterness. Combined with a very smooth texture, this one is deceptively easy to drink. The high alcohol content doesn’t over-ride the flavour, you know it’s there but it’s well controlled and not overpowering. Truly wonderful stuff, easily one of the best stouts I’ve ever had.

Paradox Smokehead: Opening the bottle gives off a delightful smoky, chocolatey smell – and that’s without even lifting the bottle to the nose. Pouring into a glass gives off more smoke and chocolate, combined with peat and a touch of seaweed; exactly what I would expect from an Islay-related product. Tasting reveals another surprisingly smooth beer, despite the high alcohol content, making for another deceptively easy-drinker, but it really deserves to be taken slowly to appreciate the complexity of the flavours. There’s plenty of that Islay peat smoke character, with chocolate and toffee up front, and hints of liqourice and raisins in the background adding to the richness. Slightly sweet but very well controlled, with the alcohol strength again not impinging on the flavour. A perfect combination.

…and I said:

Rip Tide: Pours a thick black with ruby gloss highlights. The first sip delivers a superb mouth-feel, plenty of chocolate and a few faint herbal notes, not too heavy on the liquorice. Later on there’s a hint of toffee and tangerine as well. Overall, it’s an incredibly smooth drink, faintly bitter, not overly sweet. Cockle-warming, incredibly tasty, quite fantastic stuff.

Paradox Smokehead: The first impression is of an intensely smoky aroma, like roast oranges on baked ham. The flavour is smoky-sweet: treacle, cough drops and sherry, almost reminiscent of a dessert wine, perhaps? The sweetness calms down as the beer breathes, but the smokiness persists, even increases, as the drink continues, making for an incredibly distinct stout-rauchbier combination that’s truly memorable.

All in all, I think that whilst the all-out assault on your senses that the Smokehead provides is an experience not to be missed, I think I actually preferred the Rip Tide, if only because it was an easier beer to savour. I’ve got a bottle of each brew left and I’ll be cracking them open round about my birthday in March, unless (seeing as their best-by date is sometime in 2010) I can pile on the willpower and save them until next Yuletide. I’ll report back on how they’ve developed and matured over time, as soon as I can resist temptation no longer…

In Conclusion

The best stout we’ve ever tasted? The best stout in the world? Could be. Could be…

Although if there’s a stout brewer out there that disputes our pretty much unanimous verdict, one who thinks they’ve got a brew on their list that can top either of these two, then please do get in touch and challenge us to try your brew: we’ll happily supply a postal address (or four) for you to send samples to.

[P.S. Actually, I have sampled a stout since I tasted these that (IMHO) was even more delicious... I'll be reporting on that one in the near future.]