Best of the Ohio Stouts

Are you looking for stouts or barrel aged beers?

 

Siberian Night by Thirsty Dog is one of my favorite beers. They make various versions of this beer (we were at tasting room when they tapped a keg of SN sherry barrel aged) and the bourbon barrel version is great.

 

Thirsty Dog - Siberian night/BA SN and if you can get downtown, the Coffee BA and Bananas Foster BA variants are amazing.

Hoppin Frog has a ton of great ones, but BA DORIS is easiest to get and now in 12oz bottles, TORIS and BA TORIS are easily some of the best in the state though as far as "base" stouts go, no crazy adjuncts.

 

Haven’t been to the new restaurant in Cleveland yet, but I’ve heard good things. I sometimes forget Hopping Frog, but I shouldn’t. They make great stouts and porters.

 

BA and regular Dark Apparition!

 

If you like wee heavy beers, try their barrel aged Wulver. Also a great beer

 

I agree with all of the beers and breweries mentioned.. not mentioned: Great Lakes Blackout Stout.. Columbus Sohio Stout.. and Maumee Bay Total Eclipse Breakfast Stout..

 

Listerman has some awesome stouts. Their Cranium base along with the variants. Same for MadTree Axis Mundee

 

If you are in the Butler County area, Barrel Aged Black Solstice is a very good BA stout from Fig Leaf.

 

Brink Brewing Co. Armored Heart w/Sidewinder Coffee and Streetside Brewery Demogorgon are two of the best Ohio stouts I've had recently.

 

Yeah. Don’t sleep on Total Eclipse.

 

Cranium sits on shelves all over. Country Fresh on Beechmont has had it.

 

I was given this by a friend. Unfortunately, I found it painful to drink =X. Just, really really far from what I like - and I have appreciated other breakfast stouts. Super bitter for me, and not much chocolate. Super thin, also, as I recall.

YMMV of course.

 

You'll never go wrong with any stout from Jackie O's, BA or not!

Hoppin' Frog makes plenty of good stouts. Aside from the usual suspects, I really enjoyed Sippin' Into Darkness: Chocolate Imperial Martini Stout.

Haven't had it in a bit, but Great Lakes' Blackout Stout and BA Blackout Stout are good. (Years ago, when BCBS was just a pipe dream, I would gladly gorge on all the BABS I could get.)

Fat Heads' Bean Me Up Imperial Coffee Stout was pretty good when I had it a few years back, but for my money (and, I know it's not a stout), the BA Battle Axe Baltic Porter was great.

Columbus Brewing's Steel Dawn stood out very well.

Royal Docks' Deathly Mallows Toasted Marshmallow was a good beer from a newer brewery.

If you can get some, Willoughby's Nutsmasher, any variants of it, or BA BDC, you'll be very happy.

And, some of my favorite, non-Jackie O's, of late were Wolf's Ridge's Dire Wolf and it's variants.

Ohio's a great beer state, chock full of fantastic stouts. Good luck exploring!

 

Here's what I got.
Wolf's Ridge Dire Wolf and ALL Variants
ANY Jackie O's Stout BA or Reg
CBC Sohio
Sideswipe Coffee Mastermind
Platform High River
Madtree Axis Mundi
Seventh Son Oubliette
Homestead BBA Bison
I'm sure I'm missing plenty, but these never disappoint.

 

Had a Great Lakes Ohio City Oatmeal Stout tonight, and thought of this thread due to the name.

I'd recommend passing on this, although it's not an awful representation of the style. Just kind of "meh".

For reference, my favorite oatmeal stouts have been the "regular' Beer Geek Breakfast (Mikkeller), The Poet (New Holland, a brewery I typically despise), Wigsplitter (3 Floyds, which is more of a "coffee" stout), Mocha Merlin (Firestone Walker; fuck Velvet Merlin & Velvet Merkin, this is the best one), Steel Wheels (Livery), St. Ambroise (McAuslan) and last but not least, Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout.

 

Regular Dire Wolf is really easy to find in 4 packs.

 

I really enjoyed it. Straight forward BA stout.

 

Regular WRB Dire Wolf won an imperial stout blind tasting I participated in (along with Ten Fidy). It's my go to.

 

Only thing I was upset to see is my first time at the brewery this beer was terrible. It tasted like I was drinking a bag of nickels. Wife agreed.

 

It's rare for beer itself to be extremely metallic in flavor. It would be nice to warn a server if you encounter this - if it was actually a problem my guess would be the glass or the draft faucet.

Not saying it couldn't have been the beer or wasn't the beer, just that I've never encountered that issue with one of our beers except on a brass faucet a few times.

This would apply to most breweries and beer unless a tank was scratched or non-stainless maybe. So let someone know and the problem can be troubleshooted and likely fixed.

 

Agreed and thanks for the response. Only reason I didn't bring it up was everything else on draft was really good (TDS Blue, Gold, ATB, and others) and I knew it wasn't going to keep me from trying back again another time.

With that said, I don't usually post quick responses without context like that and shouldn't have in this case either. My bad.

 

Coffee Bourbon Barrel Oil of Aphrodite is better than Bourbon County IMO (and just as expensive)

 

It's actually more expensive per ounce in bottle. 350 ml @ $11.99 vs 500ml @$8.99-11.99 (JO vs BC, respectively).

Unless your comparing coffee to coffee. Then I'd have to do some math since I think Coffee was $13.99?

 

Gotcha, so was this fairly recently? We're all out of Dire Wolf for the moment so I guess it's a moot point but I'll look into what could have been the cause.

 

It was the Wed before Thanksgiving.

 

Copy thanks.

 

Although it’s not always available but nut smasher is Great

 

It sounds like by "stouts" the OP means "imperial stouts." I've included the list from the other site of top-ranked stouts and porters of various styles. The list inevitably will be dominated by imperial stouts. Use the style dropdown box if you want to look specifically at actual stouts, sweet stouts, imperial stouts, porters, imperial porters, etc. https://www.ratebeer.com/top/all-stout/us/ohio

 

Wouldn't it have been just as easy to link to the BA list?

 

Not for me, but I don't pay much attention to the ratings here, just the forums (I rate at the other site; I merely advocate here). I know at BA you can filter top beers by state and separately by style, but can you combine those filters? In my very brief exploration I haven't found that feature.

 

Maybe not, but on the other hand the ratings here seem to be more accurate and frequent to me and everything top down looks way better here.

Plus BA isn't owned by a financial firm in Brazil while pretending to be a bastion of small brewer community.

But more than anything else, that was largely just a jab at the fact that typically it's frowned upon here to link to the other site. At least it was years ago.

 

Yeah, that always was dumb. I call it "the other site" as a tongue-in-cheek nod to the days when people got bent out of shape about that stuff. Each site has its strengths and weaknesses, and both can be great resources for beer consumers.

 

When you’re ready to get to the good stuff, look to the state north of you. Haha Ohio has great breweries too. My real advice would be try singles when you can and see if their isn’t a variety of stout u like more (oatmeal, cream, coffee, etc) I’m a sucker for stouts with vanilla added, but some are much better than others.