STOUTS--Millstream's Back Road Stout and Cream Stout by Samuel Adams.

Holden with his fancy pose

Back Road Stout Millstream

This week on the barely legal beer tasting I am sampling two stouts. Stouts are very dark beers that are usually considered the stronger or the stoutest of porters. They have a couple different variations of the style  Dry or Irish stout, imperial stout, milk stout and oatmeal stout are a couple of the more popular versions.

Cream Stout Boston Beer Co.

The first one Holden Walton, Rory Hennessy and I tried was the Back Road Stout by Millstream Brewing Co. in Amana Iowa. The brewery opened in 1985 was the first brewery to open in Amana since 1884, and is now the oldest brewery open in the state. It produces nine different beers, of which five are offered year round.

We poured the stout and it of course is a very dark beer , a deep black color with an SRM of 48. It had a light brown head, that was slightly frothy. It smelled like a typical stout, with a strong emphasis on the chocolate malts with a slight sweet smell. It didn’t have much of a wallop at the beginning of the tasting. It had a chocolate taste to it if you let it sit in your mouth for a while and ended kind of bitter. The more you drank it the more the sweetness came through and you got less of the bitterness.  It was very creamy, which from what I read is typical of Oatmeal stouts. Overall a good beer, but almost to creamy and heavy to be able to drink a lot of it.

The next was the Cream Stout from Samuel Adams  it was also a very dark beer like the back road, but didn’t seem to be as dark and lacked the brown head.  It smelled very piney, I don’t know if this is the best way to describe this beer, but that’s what we were getting. Unlike the Back Road we couldn’t smell any chocolate. It started out with a piney taste just as we described in the smell, but ended with a chocolate taste. Ironically it didn’t seem to have as much of a creamy mouth feel even though it is called Cream Stout.  The more we drank it, the piney taste left and became sweeter.

With both of these Rory said he was imagining drinking this with something very salty. Even though me and Holden were both thinking sweet, we decided to take a little salt and follow it with some of the stout, BAD IDEA. It turned into an attack on our taste buds and left us yearning for some water.  Oh well though live and let learn. See ya next time for the barely legal beer tasting.

ME trying to ya Idk