Favorite Oatmeal Stout

I just looked at that beer on BA and it is listed as 7.5% ABV.

That is more like a Double Oatmeal Stout.

Cheers!

@zid

 

Fremont's Rusty Nail is amazing, even though it's 13.2%. Their normal and BA Dark Star is great as well.

 

No Jack, a coffee stout. Cheers.

 

I thought Beer Geek Breakfast was bad - bitter, acidic metallic aftertaste. But perhaps a bad bottle/batch as it does have very high ratings on here.

That being said, Samuel Smith's a good one that is widely available.
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/113/571/

 

New Holland - The Poet

 

Annual = AVBC Barney Flats
Seasonal = FW Velvet Merlin

 

I 2nd the Sam Smith's ...Mayflowers offering is quite serious as well.

 

Ipswich. Just wish I could find it more often.

 

Hey, what a great idea! Then we could put Stoudts' Fat Dog in the same new category.

@zid

 

With coffee:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1199/11757/ - Founders Breakfast Stout

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/31722/96579/ - Burial Skillet Donut Stout

Without coffee:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/113/571/ - Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/335/8322/ - New Holland The Poet

 

Mine would have to be Young's Oatmeal Stout. I used to sell kegs to a nice place back in the 90s and the beer had a big following. I haven't had it since it was brewed in London. Very good stuff!

 

The funny thing Jack, (and only cause you brought it up ), Pattinson's research indicates that traditional oatmeal stouts were for the most part a marketing sham. They were a health rage and brewers would add an infinitesimal amount of oats to be able to legally call a stout an oatmeal stout. Brewers would even brew up a stout with a toss of oatmeal and package it as either regular stout or oatmeal stout. The oats had no impact on the beer.

Today we have "breakfast stouts" because oats, coffee, syrup, donuts, and eggs clearly complement each other no matter what the medium.

Have craft brewers carried on the tradition of hoodwinking their customers or have they legitimized the term?

But to mitigate my BS, I feel obligated to mention some "oatmeal stouts" I've enjoyed :

Hawkshead Organic Stout
The White Hag Black Boar Imperial Oatmeal Stout
Belfast Bay McGovern's Oatmeal Stout
Founders Oatmeal Stout
Great Divide Oatmeal Yeti
Hill Farmstead Earl
Rogue Shakespeare (yeah, Rogue on the same list as Hill Farmstead... no apologies)
Sly Fox Oatmeal Stout (cask) (have you had this Jack?)
Stoudt's Fat Dog

 

RIP, that was the best there ever was or will be.

 

I can't comment for every commercial brewery but I can state that at Jack's Brewery oatmeal (Flaked Oatmeal) is 10% of the grain bill for my Oatmeal Stouts and it is damn tasty to boot!!

Cheers!

 

A beer I wish I had tried.

 

I'm on board with the Samuel Smith's. It's a classic, and maybe even the benchmark for classic oatmeal stouts. But my other personal favorites are:

-Modern Times Black House (plus the new Nitro version)
-AVB Barney Flats (maybe the original American benchmark?)
-FW Velvet Merlin (and of course Velvet Merkin, but that's hard to call just an oatmeal stout )

And I could get by just fine on these.

Cheers!

 

Have you ever tried brewing the same beer but without flaked oats?

 

I agree; the more modern versions tend to feature a discernible quality from the oats, and have recipes that go hand in hand.

That's not 100%, naturally, and I'd put Rogue Shakespeare Stout clearly in the West Coast substyle. They didn’t start calling it an Oatmeal Stout until recently, and the oats really just smooth out a fairly aggressive beer to begin with.

 

It was similar to Samuel Smith's, but better in every respect, if you can imagine that.