Northwest's Best St. Helen's Stout
Trader Joe's Brewing Company

The St. Helen's Stout poured black as night with a tiny foam head and very little retention as well as a foam head. No lacing to speak of.

The smell was faint and could not get much out of it except a pepper aroma. The taste was a little spicy and pretty bitter with a little bit of a coffee taste and sweet finish. Not much in the way of mouthfeel. Overall was not impressed by explosion.

Poured from a 12oz bottle into a standard pint glass. Had a uniform dark brown appearance which was attractive but even a rough pour generated virtually no head. So, disappointing to start.
Nose was sweet with milk chocolate and cafe mocha notes. Roasted grains somewhat offset the sweet aroma but not all that much.
Taste was sweet through and through. Chocolate sweetness pervades but lacks the bitterness of a baker's chocolate. Likewise, the coffee and roasted malt flavors miss the rather acrid taste I usually get from some of the finer stouts I've had. The feel was medium-light but had a certain creaminess that faded and thinned out over time.
Overall, not a bad stout though it seemed more like a cream or milk stout. Considering the price ($.69 at Trader Joe's), it's might be worth picking up as a starter brew to show newbies that "dark" beers aren't bad.

Very dark with slight hint of a red hue, and very little head to speak of. Smells rather peppery (black pepper) with just a hint of coffee.

Flavour is somewhat unusual. It is (as the nose suggested) peppery in a very subtle way with very little hint of the coffee which had seemed worryingly likely to trouble me. Offers a pleasant creamy roasted malt finish. Not too shabby for 84c, but not a big stout. This is a stout which would go well with a meal rather than replace one.

Given the picture on the label I reckon the apostrophe is in the wrong place!

I got this for 40 cents a bottle at Trader Joes... I've heard much about Hale's so i picked it up.

It poured a nice deep dark straight coffee color with a light leather colored and thin lace.

The aroma was very thin but of a roasty hint with some malt... I didnt smell much hop.

The taste, well the color belied the taste. It was a bit too light on the tastebuds yet had a solid roastiness to it finishing with some malt sweetness ending on a dry note with a medium body.

This is not my stype of stout. Stouts should be, well, stout.

This is a Trader Joe's beer brewed by Hale's Ales in Seattle. The label is a low-res picture depicting steam and ash billowing forth out of a mountain top that doesn't look particularly like Mount St. Helens. While I'm certain it was brewed and bottled before the recent activity at the volcano, it has fortuitously become a timely beverage of the moment. But I doubt sales have spiked recently. Do you really want to think of molten rock and burnt ash while you're drinking a roasty black beverage? It's a pretty mediocre stout anyway, about what you'd expect for a Trader Joe's "house" brand. It pours darkly and wetly, of course, into the glass with a smallish head that quickly dissolves. There's some decent lace left behind, but this, too, fails to stick around. An oblique aroma of sweet malts and dark wood is present, without much roastiness. The stout sips pleasantly enough, with a hearty dark amber malt quality and a vague twinge of nutty coffee. The hops are grassy, herbal, well-balanced. The mouthfeel's pretty thin and slippery, and the beer turns flat by the end of the glass. It drinks easily enough and there are no detrimental off-flavors, but the beer is not especially interesting.