Carlton Sheaf Stout

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

For my liking, stouts should be meaty with plenty of coffee/chcoloate/burnt malt flavours and aromas. This brew is very middle of the road. Somewhat sweet on the initial taste, but doesn’t blur into a bitter finish like expected.

Mullet’s late night-Lane Cove-fire sale-clear backpack space for the plane-tasting, with sushi: Very much opaque, brown, speckled head. Creamy chocolate aroma with a touch of yeast - simple but OK. Soda water flavour, some saltiness, smooth chocolate. Shellfish aroma, though it might’ve been the sushi. Perceivable bitterness, though I wouldn’t call it bitter. It’s OK but I think Abbotsford is better.

Bottle: Nice aroma coffee and chocolate. Smells like you’ve walked into a coffee shop. Pours a dark brown, virtually black, with an off-white head with okay retention. Real nice lacing. Flavor is mostly coffee. Not really chocolate. I don’t know my gourmet coffees, but I imagine they taste like this because I’ve smelled what this tastes like in places that sell coffee after grinding the beans. Light bitterness in the finish with a little saltiness. A little thin. Decent stout. Smells better than it tastes.

Pours a nice chocolate colored head. Aroma is of sweet coffee and malt. Starts sweet and finishes with a somewhat dry malty/maple syrupy taste. Head doesn’t last long but does remain throughout the entire glass. A decent stout.

Ringing in the Sheaves. This is an interesting stout. Strong molasses and sorgham tones to the malt with a clean bitterness to the hops. It pours black with transparent shallows and harbors a meaty peanut colored head. In fact, there is a peanutty flavor in there somewhere. Very much like a hopped up milk stout. Chestnut and roast. Quite complex. I remember drinking this with my big brother back 10 years ago in Colorado Springs. Those were the days. The unique flavor really takes me back.

Nice aroma, dark body, with a light tan head. Too watery a palate, and fairly weak flavors of malt and hops, and a coffee-ish tone. Not a bad stout but thin compared to others out there.

Definately a less assertive stout. Rather dull....and uninteresting. Poured black with a less than adequate head and no lacing. Aroma is faint. Some hop spicyness and some chocolate notes. Dark roastiness, chocolate with a nice hop bite. Smooth going down but just a little too simple.

Color, fully black. Head, big, beefy, brown. Aroma: rich and delicious,roasty and bitter beauty, with a lot going on! Anise, pepper, dark rum, a bit of chocolate, a touch of coffee, and a touch of cream. Wow! Wonderful! A brisk battalion of hops jumps on board the palate and remains for the duration. Big, fat, delicious, luscious roasted malt. Flavor and texture is perfect, drinkability divine. A touch of sweetness emerges, and mingles with the darker flavors, making for a more complex flavor profile. They made an excellent choice to bottle these only in these gargantuan containers. Less would not be enough.