Thick Stouts

And the maturity to check their ego at the door and admit that there may be a better way of doing things.

 

Or maybe, you know, the beer is exactly the way they want it. And craft beer geeks should perhaps broaden the way they look at things. This 'thick or watery' dichotomy is the silliest thing to come down the pike.

 

All I can think of when reading this thread is Marshal Zhukov from Cigar City. Damn it's a good beer.

 

Agreed. Excellent mouthfeel on that beer.

 

Agreed! What’s even sillier is people who don’t actually brew beer speaking as an authority on this. Much like a person who only eats takeout telling a chef how food is made.

 

Well, we do have objective ways to measure ‘body’. Much more accurately than something like ‘bitterness’.
But you’re right, if someone wants to make a 1:1:1 mix of stout, LME and bourbon, and people want to buy it, more power to them!
As long as the brewer is being honest about it and not passing off their inability or reluctance to brew property attenuated beer as “I did it on purpose!”
And be honest about what it is too. Don’t talk about how ‘smooth’ and ‘balanced’ a beer is and then hand something with a higher SG than Coca-cola.
I, and many other people, are of the opinion that whether brewing a Pilsner, a Pale Ale, or a barrel aged Imperial Porter, beer is about balance.
Loading drinks with sugar (or loading food with sugar, fat and salt) to make them more palpable doesn’t impress me...

 

Amen.

Never seen a benefit to something being MORE bitter, MORE alcoholic, or MORE sour. More just throws off the equilibrium of the beverage.

 

Yup! But then again, I’m more of an Old Fashioned than an Appletini guy. To each their own!

 

If you do more of anything (sour, boozy or bitter) responsibly it can create some incredible beers. I personally want brewers to take calculated risks and really push the boundaries. Balance is important, but I got no issue with going balls to the wall either. Except for Dogfish Hoo Lawd, that was a BS publicity stunt.

 

You're singing my song. And, yes, there is such a thing as 'lack of body' in terms of a flaw; but that's not what I'm addressing. It's more the attitude of equating thickness to quality, the thicker the better, that I see all too often.

 

Just like more haze, man.

 

Agreed. I love me some Black Tuesday and some KDS equally, they're just two different beers within the same category brewed two different ways.

 

You are making a big assumption that brewers whose stouts do not meet your definition of "thick" are therefore failing to "nail that thick mouthfeel".

 

Totally agree with you @MNAle it's like saying "Why aren't all these stouts thhhiiiiiiiicccccckkkkkk instead of thick?"

 

At the risk of being taken for a collossal ignoramus, what is LME?

 

Liquid Malt Extract.

And it's a fair question.

 

Thanks.

 

People assume high final gravity means a beer is sweet, that's just not true.

 

Some years back someone from this site degassed some DL and found that year's finished at 1.073 IIRC

 

Does it cost more to produce a “thicker” stout?

I’ve always wondered why central waters doesnt use whatever base beer they use for anniversary/bg/maple stout for their brewers reserve stout. Being too thin has always been the knock on the brewers reserve and they've proven they can do “thicker”. Ive always assumed it was a cost issue.