Big Beef Oatmeal Stout
Hood Canal Brewing

 

 

 

 

pours is watery brown with a ruby tint with a thin beige head, and not much lacing, looks like a coca-cola with some water in it.

smell is faint, malt, and a touch of cocoa.

taste is watery, a little tart, weak, some cocoa, and malt.

overall not a good stout at all.

The bartender’s favorite. Unfortunately, this beer is quite awful. To begin with, the color is an odd and watery purple-brown and the body shows a bewildering lack of suds for an oatmeal stout. The whole beer is awash in peculiar residues with conflicted yeasty off-notes making Big Beef anything but smooth. It tosses out a light bitter chocolate aroma and taste and has slight brown ale qualities. But the beer is intrinsically flawed in its design and execution and comes across as painfully disappointing. Every quality you might hope to find in an oatmeal stout -– creamy, roasty, dry, sudsy, full-bodied – is just not there. In a word; weak.

What's the deal with this beer? I was disconcerted from the get go. It's pour resembled a cola more than any stout I've ever seen. I want a stout you cannot even see through, but this you can easily see through. It isn't black, its more of a light brown. I wish I was kidding. Nose is mostly ... fruit? I get plums and a bit of tart grapes. No roastiness. Taste is very sweet fruit. A hint of roastiness but that's all. Mouth is thinner than a sheet of paper. I really don't get this brew at all. I really wanted to like it too. Hood Canal, I KNOW you can do better than this. I promise if you brew another recipe for a stout I will try it. I will not however, buy this again.

Sampled at the brewery on tap on the day before super bowl.

Really light appearance. Amber color, Highly filtered type clarity. Smell was also pretty subdued.

I gotta say that the brewery had a laid back style that I appreciated, and this was the only offering I wasn't all that fond of. Overall a drinkable brew, toasty at points, clean, watery in others. Extremely light mouthfeel. Just plain and simple not a stout worth pursuing.

Brewery comes reccomended, this one didn't do it for me though.