Abbotsford Invalid Stout

Brewed by Carlton & United Breweries (CUB)
Style: Stout
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Dark brown to black, ’clean looking’. Weak head, very thin on pouring and not surprisingly disappears in no time. A bit of non-descript sweetness on the nose but well backed some some darker roasted notes. Fizzed up in the mouth (CUB are so bloody predictable) which makes it tough for any real stout flavours to come through. Some roasted malty sweetness came through eventually but doesn’t really carry the beer. I’ve definately had better so to be fair I’ll revisit in due course.

Initially the coffee aroma is quite promising and the first taste gave me the impression that I might like it, with a similarly strong coffee flavour. However, after a few sips the coffee flavour is but a memory as a sugary sweetness takes over the anaemicly thin body. Has a cheap lager like finish. Not worth the effort.

A fairly crap stout in short. The beer had next to no body, tasted week and unbalanced. The taste was quite strong of burn toast, roasted grains. Basically an invalid with no sense of taste might like it, but it tasted as though it lacked all the nutrients and goodness that they would need from it. Just don’t bother tasting it.

The beer with the big story. First about the beer: Pitch black coloured body with a decent brown head. Aroma of prunes, a bit of coffee and some roasted malt. Ligher Medium-bodied; Heavy prune, raisin and unripe pit fruit tastes with some roasted malt flavous ending bitter with a somewhat long finish. Overall, a decent beer, but not at the same level with even the most populars (Guinness, etc). Now the funny part: JonR888710, Haddon90 and I were in Melbourne, Australia when we were drinking this beer. We walked into a bottle shop downtown and asked the clerk about beers. He said that you could walk around downtown, drinking beer, as long as it was wrapped in a brown paper bag. So, we (being stupid Americans) agreed, bought the beer and proceeded to walk around carelessly drinking from our brown paper bags. We stopped and talked to locals and quickly found out that this WAS ILLEGAL, so we decided to go right back in the store and finish the beer as quick as possible. Nothing happened to us, but it was mildly entertaining during our first few days there. I sampled this beer from an 800 mL bottle in Melbourne, Australia on 03-June-2004.

I’m surprised to see this rates so low. Dry coffee and roasty flavour with some rum and a mild but not sweet finish. Seems like the roasted malts cover up the typical CUB funk and whilst it’s not as in-your-face with the roasty tar flavours as some of the other big brand Aussie stouts the mildness makes a nice change. But the best thing about this beer is that it doesn’t matter how shit a pub you are at, they will always have some of this stuff in the fridge (unless it’s a Tooheys pub obviously.)

Dark Colouring with a non-existent head. Watery, sewerage with a slash of sweetness type of taste which made me want to wash my mouth out. One of the worst beers, and let alone stouts that I have come across.

I’d have to agree with some of the previous comments. It’s fairly disappointing - CUB should go back to the drawing board and completely redesign this, and try to produce something much more Guinness-like.

This ones is for invalids I think..It was not too good and gave me a bad taste for the rest of the evening. Too little of everything except aroma.