Old Black
Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery

Barely opaque chocolate brown with generous highlights of garnet and gold. An exceedingly gentle pour resulted in a thin wisp of foam atop the liquid... that faded in mere moments. No more than a few mouse tracks of lace made it to the glass.

Seeing the name of the beer during my last visit, I wondered if it was an old ale-stout hybrid. One sniff told me otherwise. As far as I can determine, Old Black is a straightforward stout. The nose was moderately roasted, with the standard aromas of chocolate and coffee.

The limited constellation of flavors included chocolate wafer cookies filled with coffee cream, a dusting of dark brown sugar and a mild fruitiness that might have been due to the ale yeast or might have been due to American hops. Probably the latter.

Of more interest than the individual flavors was the point-counterpoint of sweet, tangy and bitter. The beer was as consistent with a milk stout as it was with a tangy porter. It didn't have the flavor profile of an old ale, though, and isn't big enough anyway.

Old Black was nicely drinkable and was a surprisingly capable complement to my salmon fish and chips doused in malt vinegar and the rich remoulade sauce that I dipped it in. My purpose was to review a new beer with my lunch today, not to come up with a perfect beer-food pairing. Otherwise, I would have ordered a hoppy pale ale to cut through the oiliness of the fish.

The mouthfeel was on the willowy side for an American stout, but then I have to stop expecting all stouts to be stout. It held together pretty well throughout the mouthful and managed to leave a modest amount of mouth and tongue coating in its wake.

Old Black struck me as a jack-of-all-trades beer that should be enjoyable to a wide swath of Rock Bottom's clientele. Those that aren't afraid of 'dark beer', that is. Although I'm unlikely to order it again, I enjoyed it for what it was.