North Coast Old No. 38 Stout

Brewed by North Coast Brewing Company
Style: Dry Stout
Fort Bragg, California USA

Near black with a large deep tan head. Sweet roasted malts, molasses, coffee, chocolate, and soft sour dark fruits in the aroma. Flavor is a little on the harsh side. Intense roasted malts, coffee, chocolate, nutty, with the dark fruits nearly hidden. Nice body. A real nice stout, though maybe a tad harsh. Could use a little mellowing.

Bottle. NIce dark color with a brown foamy head. Perfect amount of carbonation. Sweet malt and chocolate aromas. Coffee and chocolate flavors, a bit of toasted malt. Well rounded, a nice suprise.

Pours a near black with medium sudsy tan head. Sweet/sour aroma of chocolate and hops. Metallic flavor at first sip, but then lots of bitter chocolate. Roasted coffee in the finish. Body is light for a stout.

12 oz. from Riverside. Aroma allows nice floral notes to emerge from the chocolaty malts, though the aroma seems a little light. Beautiful appearance in the glass, with a stable one-finger dark tan head. Coffee, chocolate, a little nutty, but with some hops lingering nicely on the upper palate in the finish. A little light for a stout - if this were mislabeled as a porter, this would rate higher - and just a tad bit too carbonated. Overall a nice entry; the ’flaws’ are very minor, and there’s a lot of good stuff going on here.

This is a solid performer. Nice well rounded biscuit malts, burned nuts, chocolate, coffee, and toast. It wasn’t balanced enough with hops, as it was too straightforward for me. Easy drinking stout.

dark with lots of rich foamy head, dry soft aroma mellow flavor full bodied heaviness

Pours dark brown with a blood red hue and has a nice tan head. The aroma has roasted malt, cream, milk chocolate and light spicy hops. Medium / full body that is lush and smooth with gentle semi-sharp carbonation. The flavor starts with the aroma traits with all of them being very smooth and accommodating. The finish has some woody hops added. Overall a nice stout.

I’ve yet to be disappointed by a North Coast beer, and this is no exception. This stout offers lots of roastiness with not a lot of accompanying flavors I’m accustomed to in a stout (coffee, chocolate, liquorice, etc), but was quite dry and certainly lives up to my expectations for this style (dry stout). The beer pours a non-viscous black-red, with abundant cumulus-like head formation which had pretty good vitality. Aroma was pretty minimal, but offered a small quantity of roastiness. Flavor was very roasty and dry, like having a mouthful of cinders, which for me is a good thing. Mouthfeel was clean but a bit thin. All-in-all, I thought this a very nice dry stout. I’m not sure where I got this particular sample, but I believe I picked it up during Murray’s Wine & Spirits going-out-of-business sale.