Fresh off a successful tasting with Skagit River on Thursday - thanks again to Mike Armstrong - we will be comparing three different styles of Stout: Beamish Irish Dry, North Coast's Imperial Old Rasputin and Left Hand's Milk Stout. We'll be tasting from noon to 6 pm, so come on down!
Style Notes:
Irish Stout. Irish stout or dry stout (in Irish, leann dubh, "black ale") is very dark or rich in colour and it often has a "toast" or coffee-like taste.
Imperial Stout. Imperial stout, also known as "Russian Imperial Stout" or "Imperial Russian Stout," is a strong dark beer or stout in the style that was brewed in 1796 by Thrale's brewery in London, England for export to the court of Catherine II of Russia, as "Thrale's Entire Porter" - when the brewery was taken over by Courage the beer was renamed Courage Imperial Russian Stout. It has a high alcohol content - nine or ten percent abv is common. Imperial stout exhibits very strong malt flavours, hints of dark fruits, and is often quite rich, resembling a chocolate dessert.
Milk Stout. Milk stout (also called sweet stout or cream stout) is a stout containing lactose, a sugar derived from milk. Because lactose is unfermentable by beer yeast, it adds sweetness, body, and calories to the finished beer. Milk stout was claimed to be nutritious, and was given to nursing mothers, along with other stouts, such as Guinness. The classic surviving example of milk stout is Mackeson Stout, for which the original brewers claimed that "each pint contains the energising carbohydrates of 10 ounces of pure dairy milk". In the period just after the Second World War when rationing was in place, the British government required brewers to remove the word "milk" from labels and adverts, and any imagery associated with milk.
