I first encountered Stannington Stout when I visited Crown Brewery to help brew Ring of Fire 2009. Although by the time I drank it I may have been a little worse for wear, I did however enter “Lovely roast almost smokey flavour” to my phone. So when Stu sent me some that he had bottled as a trail before it when on sale.
Deep, dark and delicious
As is usual with the sample bottles Stu sends the bottles were absent proper labels, he did send the image file so I could make my own but I made a hash of it so as you will see in the photo I just stood it up next to the beer.
The beer opened with a nice hiss, so it was off to a promising start, it poured extremely dark, almost completely pitch black. It had a thin to medium head that was a really lovely caramel colour.
The aromas were of really roasted malt, hints of smoke, chocolate and coffee, yum!
In the mouth it was medium bodied with a nice amount of carbonation, as a result it felt silky smooth.
The flavour was lovely, deep, dark roasted malt, wafts of chocolate and coffee intermingle with the malt giving it a lovely sweetness there’s also a slight liquorice flavour in the background this all leads to a lovely clean roast almost finish. I didn’t quite get the smokiness I originally put in my phone so maybe I was a little bit worse for wear after all.
In all honesty this is a really, really good stout, Stu has pulled it off and it’s bottled really well. I might use some of the other bottle for steak and ale pie, I have a feeling the big roast flavour will go brilliantly with some mushrooms and steak.
If you want to try it then you can buy it here, you can visit the Crown website here, Follow Stu here, visit the facebook page here or read my other Crown Brewery beer reviews here.
Right. That one’s definitely on my wishlist.