February 10, 2005 -- While planning for March at beerbistro, I've had black beers on the brain. (We're going to carry quite a few throughout the month, and will be featuring a few unique, stout-themed beer cocktails for good measure.) So I though I'd post some notes on recently tasted stouts and porters.

The Wolaver's Oatmeal Stout, an organic ale I picked up on a late-2004 trip through Vermont, is a lovely deep purple-brown stout with a suitably porridge-ish aroma holding some gentle fruity notes. The start is plummy, reminding me a bit of ruby port, while the body settles down more into a complex blend of roast and fruit, mixing roasted grain and very faint burnt toast with plum and date and perhaps some hints of prune, complemented by an apparent creaminess derived from the oats. The weak side to this beer is the finish, which is relatively quick and one-dimensional relative to the more interesting body, but overall this is a pretty damn good beer which, like all the Wolaver's ales I've tasted lately, needs make no excuse for being organic.

Not quite as successful is another Vermont stout, the Heart of Darkness from the Magic Hat Brewing Company. Dark purple, almost black, it has a sweetish aroma of chocolaty caramel underscored by notes black licorice, and a sweet and lightly sugary start. The body adds some roast to a grapey fruitiness, along with some raisin notes and hints of vanilla and licorice. Again, the weak spot here is the thinnish finish.

The star of this black beer show, however, is the Station Porter from the Wickwar Brewing Company of Wickwar, UK. A bottle-fermented porter of 6.1% alcohol by volume, it offers a nose of black plum, chocolate, lightly burnt toast and vanilla, and a gentle start of dark chocolate and roast mixed with the beginnings of hoppiness. The body settles into a fruity-roasty body with over-ripe plum and black raisin notes, winey undertones and very impressive structure. The finish is pleasantly alcoholic and warming and roasty -- the roastiest point of the entire beer, actually. A trifle unconventional, but a cold winter's treat and one porter I would definitely love to try one day as a cask-conditioned ale.

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