Oilberta
Brewsters Brewing Company & Restaurant - Eleventh Avenue

 

 

 

I enjoyed a growler of this during a recent trip to the Elbow Valley. It is a well-crafted stout. It pours with a lovely, lingering, creamy tan head. The primary flavours include coffee and semi-sweet chocolate, with a healthy dose of roasted malt. Overall, this is a very enjoyable stout.

 

 

 

 

 

14oz (industry night, I think) shaker glass at the Oliver Square location. Silly, lazy pun/portmanteau moniker on this one.

This beer appears a mostly solid black, with mildly pervasive basal red cola highlights, and one scant finger of puffy, foamy and bubbly beige head, which leaves a few rings of drippy painted lace around the glass as it quickly sinks away.

It smells of fairly roasted caramel malt, bittersweet cocoa powder, semi-sweet black licorice, a tinge of day-old cafe-au-lait, dark orchard fruit esters, and some tame leafy, musty, and earthy hops. The taste is sugary caramel malt up front, hard toffee, toasty chocolate wafers, mildly sour milk, stale coffee, and more earthy, generically fruity, and leafy hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly soft and pliant, via its genial frothiness, the body a decent medium weight, fairly smooth, and perhaps a tad creamy in its eventual bearing. It finishes off-dry, the roasted malt and bittersweet cocoa notes duly lingering.

Overall, this is certainly a pleasant, well flavoured stout, with a nice cocoa and roasted character, though not quite as dense and viscous as the name might imply. Worthy of a round or two as winter slowly relaxes its grip around here (or if the Oilers ever make the playoffs again, Flying Spaghetti Monster in the sky forbid).

Brand new brew from Brewster's, with a great name ... Way to take the power back yo. An opaque brown-black with just the odd flash of red here and there, with a rather anemic spattering of tan foam dribbled across the top. I immediately got a decent dose of chocolate, coffee, and dry ash on the nose, with all these roasted elements offset just a little by a hoppy citrus zest. Palate is chock full of chocolate and black malts, but again with some orange and lemon rind to add an acidic tang which works to complement the acidity from all the dark malts. Bitter and rich, with dark coffee, molasses, and wood char accompanied by some sweeter milk chocolate and rather covert dark raisin, red grape, and melon fruity notes that become easier to pick out once you habituate to the bitterness. Wonderful complexity with some surprisingly discernible hop flavors for such a heavy dark brew. Full-bodied and chewy, with a fairly smooth, creamy mouth feel. Finishes semi-long, less lingering than expected but with a pleasing earthy, woody depth. I am reminded of Deschutes Obsidian Stout, not the first time these guys have made me think of a Deschutes brew with some of their rotating offerings. Not that this is a bad thing.

P.S.: Do people really have to add new Brewster's beers just because they tried said brew in Edmonton rather than Calgary? These beers need to be consolidated, but in the meantime, I think its OK to review a Brewster's beer wherever the person who added it resides rather than adding a duplicate entry. Could just be me.