PASTE - Endangered Beer Styles: American Stout

I know I've listened to local podcasts and when they talked about some 8% stouts they were remarking "this is to light bodied to be a stout. It's really just a porter."

Their idea of what a "stout" is truly is the modern diabetes stouts. Anything with less residual sugar is not worthwhile.

I do feel that the regular stout is getting harder and harder to find. The new breweries are making pastry and other sweet stouts. If there's roasty flavor in a stout nowadays it seems to come from coffee instead of roasted malt or barley more often than not.

 

I'd love a fresh bottle of Founders Imperial Stout

 

American Stouts 2000 to ~ 2013 pretty much the norm was to get your American stouts served like "black coffee" roasty, bitter, maybe some subtle chocolate notes at best but overshadowed by the roast and bitter. Acquired taste as the author stated

American Stouts 2014 to current = alot more Stout options like "coffee with alot of sugar and cream added". Reaches a wider audience (just like more people drink coffee with cream and/or suger added)

The higher ABV climb I think is really is just to add sweetness and create a thicker/creamier body...not really to try to be extreme on ABV for intoxication reasons.

 

Just finished off a sixer of 3 sheep's nitro stout, around 6.5%, I enjoyed them very much.

 

But that ain't how the beer distribution or the beer market works. Sierra Nevada never "shipped in" their stout or porter to any state. Sierra Nevada's distributors ordered it. Eventually, some (many?) stopped ordering it. Why? They couldn't sell it to their retailer customers, who saw it just sit on their shelves, dusty and unpurchased, and so they never re-ordered it.

So, who's to blame?

 

I will say that I can still go to any place that sells coffee and get black coffee while everyone else is getting sugary concoctions.

But I can't go to any bar around here and expect to get a regular stout. Except rarely it's normally sweet flavored stouts that I see around.

 

Manufactured crisis. For fucks sake. Paste? Jesu Christo already this is annoying. Here is my particular rant.

1. I did not read the article. I don't need to read about beer from "Paste", being fairly certain they have next to no authority and likely less knowledge then every fourth BA.

2. For the hundredth time, style guidelines are just that. "Style" is at best an adolescent in the brewing world, always subject to change and anyone who thinks the sky is falling is just plain ill informed and perhaps doesn't read books.

3. American Stout? It's disappearing? Say it isn't so!!! If only we lived in a Golden Age of brewing, one where new breweries are opening every day and brewers are continually looking to the old while expanding on the new.

4. I remember my Grandpa waxing eloquently about the merits of American Stout. This country is going to hell I tell ya.

What a load of horse shit. Rant over.

Cheers!

 

Most American versions I've had, which is probably not that many, were not very good. Sam Smith's is good. I don't think many American brewers quite understand that the purpose of the oats is to add body to a lower ABV beer, allowing for more specialty malts in the grist to make a richly flavored dark beer without all the alcohol of, say, a RIS. The end result usually being a mess, or a wildly off-style brew that isn't really trying to be an Oatmeal Stout.

 

The upside to these things is they are profitable so the brewer can afford to occasionally make me a Pilsner.

 

That's the Glass Half Full way of looking at it. Agreed.

 

I've only been into craft for about three years, so by the time I got into it many of the higher rated and cult stouts were sweet BA renditions. Though I make it a point to try any stout or porter I can find, I gravitate to sweeter high-ABV stouts (AKA pastry stouts), so apparently I am part of the problem. Guilty. Bring it Mr/Ms traditional!

 

Although, if the glass is half-full of a pastry stout it still may be too much .

 

Unfortunately it is we craft beer consumers.

 

My own experience is that "standard' stouts and porters are indeed not that common on the shelves these days. But I also feel like there's some rose-colored-glasses viewing going on in terms of how things used to be, at least in terms of what beer geeks obsessed about.

If you look back at the older Top 100 lists many, if not most of the stouts were either Imperial or Breakfast. Even beyond stouts, much of the top lists were either hard to get, high ABV, intensely flavored (for their time), or some combination of all those things.

I'm not sure it's obvious that the tastes of the audience have changed as much as the brewers have just continued to follow existing preferences which necessitate continually edging things towards bigger and louder over time in order to stand out.

 

Me too. Or an old bottle. Really miss that beer.

 

Huh, maybe I'll finally get around to that Murphy's stout. I'm spoiled by so many American takes on the style, and not even all barrel aged, imperial, milkshake, or whatever.

 

I love the no frills stouts but like someone else here stated, they weren't exactly super common back then either. But as more styles and breweries arrive, I don't see the percentage of regular stouts gaining traction either.

Locally we have a dry stout and a oatmeal stout that I buy regularly. Shelf wise for non locals, Barney flats when available, Deschutes obsidian, Kalamazoo stout, and ob 1050 (as a no frills imperial stout). Options aren't exactly any better now than years ago.

Can't forget Samuel Smith and Murphy's

Paste has a valid point for sure.

For many who liked Guinness, the natural step up was these oatmeal stouts but I think for most, they wanted more. So there is a natural jump over now with many drinkers to go with the bigger brews.

I think I'll round up some regular stouts for the holiday. Thank you paste.

 

I would too, but Founders Imperial Stout is not what this article is about. Founders Porter...yes, FIS...no.