IT’S going to be a very weird St Patrick’s Day, with not quite as much green on the go as usual due to many events being postponed. People are stocking up on essentials and one of the St Patrick’s Day staples is stout. So, if you are going to be holed up for a while, it’s best to get something you can savour.
Luckily, there are quite a few decadent stouts made by local brewers and here are a couple which can get you through.
Now, Beer Hut have been busy knocking out some cracking juice bombs and milkshake IPAs recently, one of which – their Double Galaxy Mosaic milkshake – was runner-up in the Beoir Beer of the Year awards recently.
But the Kilkeel boys are equally adept at crafting some great stouts. One such stout is Sparks Will Fly, which is a chocolate vanilla stout clocking in at 7 per cent. It pours inky black in the glass with a tan head and there are strong coffee aromas. It says it on the tin, so there is no surprise that this beer contains a lot of chocolate flavours. They are sweet without being sickly and the smoothness is certainly helped by the vanilla flavour too.
This one is billed as a ‘pastry stout’ and there’s fair degree of decadence about it all. But there’s great depth of flavour too. It’s got nice roasty and bready notes, almost like near-burnt toast (trust me, that’s a good thing) and the creamy smoothness give it all a bit of a cappuccino feel.
Hoops and Staves is a stout from Mourne Mountain Brewery. It’s a barrel-aged version of their Bear Grease stout but there’s a lot more to it than that.
This oatmeal stout has been aged in single malt whiskey barrels and clocks in at a hefty 9.5 per cent. It is jet black in the glass with a thin tan head with roasty aromas and a little whiff of the whiskey coming through too.
It is a boozy one all right but there’s a fair bit of flavour in there too. It has nice woody, vanilla flavours as well as creamy, almost buttery notes. There are strong coffee flavours to it with a sweet, almost cakey malt taste and the whole thing reminded me of tiramisu.
