Whole Foods Old Plowshare Stout

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

12 oz bottle. Pours nearly jet black with 2 cm of a 2 cm dense tan head that is slowly diminishing. Aroma of mocha. Initial flavor is slightly sweet with coffee and malt. Flavor ends with a hint of bitter chocolate, long bitter aftertaste. Light to moderate carbonation, tons of lacing, moderate body, limited alcohol presence. Overall, I think this beer probably deserves a better rating because it is pretty decent drinking.

Pours a deep brown color from the bottle with a firm tan head. Smells of dark cocoa and tastes of watery coffee and barley. Balanced and suprisingly drinkable for an organic stout.

This dark brown ale poured with a fluffy tan head and a chocolate malt aroma. The flavor is bready with noticeable coffee and chocolate features. The initial taste is pleasant and malty, but the finish is watery and disappointing.

Bottle. Pours super dark ruby, near black with a whispy tan head. The nose is rather mild. The hops are actually noticeable in a papery fashion. It seems to have a burned quality and strong charcoal aroma. Hey, that’s not bad at all though. The flavor is pretty decent too. Nice and moderately dry with a tame bittersweet dark chocolate character throughout. Hints of earth and wood are also found. This is a pretty smooth, reasonable stout. No bells or whistles, but sessionably solid.

Bottle. Pours a deep reddish black, with a fizzy tan head that dissipates quickly. Aroma of roasted bready malts, and a touch of coffee. The coffee is more pronounced in the flavor than in the aroma; also present are chocolate and earthy flavors. Not a bad stout, and very drinkable. The mouthfeel, however, is somewhat watery, a bit like soda pop.

A vigorous pour into my 25cl tulip glass produces a frothy, not quite two-finger thick, lightly browned, tan colored head. The beer is a deep, concentrated, dark brown color that shows a concentrated red color when held up to the light. The aroma has a rich, expressive, dark malt character to it that is a mix of aromatic notes of sweet dark chocolate, espresso beans, malted milk shakes, browned saltine crackers and a touch of dusty, almost basement like in some way, malt. I really like the aroma of this beer, purely dark malt driven, but it has quite a bit going on with that & strikes a nice balance.

The carbonation and the dark malt combine to contribute a thin, lightly acidic quality to the front of my first draught of this beer. The middle and finish though gain a fullness and a malt sweetness / richness that is quite nice. A quick swirl of my glass gets rid of the excess carbonation (which wasn’t more than at a medium level to begin with). The beer is now much smoother all around which accents the chocolate malt flavors and darkly sweet malt notes much more nicely. The finish has just a touch of burnt grain acidity as well as a roasted bitterness to it, both of which are light enough that they only serve to balance the sweeter dark malt notes found up front.

This is a solid Stout, much less organic one. I would definitely be happy to drink more of these. The mixture of rich chocolate notes with the sharper, roasted grain flavors is just about perfectly balanced & this beer is just so quaffable.

Dark brown with fair, creamy, tan head / Deep roast cocoa and coffee nose / Medium body, a touch thin, with good balance of malts and hops, with faint sweetness and good, dry finish / Rich, smooth flavors of bittersweet chocolate, oak, roast coffee, and dry hops / A little more ooph in the body and they’ve got something, or it’s a very fine porter.

12oz bottle. Pour is a dark brown/red with a long lasting pillowy head of white cream. Tight tiny bubbles. Aroma is sweet caramel and just a touch of roastiness. Flavor is mild upfront but the roast starts to show more and more as it rolls over the tongue. Very mild stout. Nothing harsh, nothing biting, and kind mild on flavor. But it is easy to drink. The score is worse than it should be.