This time of year I always like to drink a good hearty stout to warm me up on the coldest of evenings. At 6.6% volume, this Mud City Stout brewed by Sadler’s Ales, in Stourbridge, should do the trick. This dark, almost black stout was brewed with a huge host of ingredients including raw cocoa, sweet vanilla pods, flaked oats, wheat, dark malts, molasses, rich coffee and liquorish. On opening the 500ml bottle there was an aroma of dark malt mixed with chocolate, caramel from the sweet vanilla pods and “nutty character” that the label had suggested, with a hint of liquorish and black treacle from the molasses. The complex odour of this stout made me very excited indeed and eager to guzzle this stout. To try to ease my initial desire so I may savour this stout; I passed it to Cinabar for a whiff and she agreed on the diversity of the aroma. She then took a sip. I’d advised her not to, as she doesn’t usually like beer, unless it’s been overly brewed with some sort of mixture of berries. To my relief she didn’t like this stout. I then became even more excited and snatched my almost full beer mug from her grasp. There was a dark malt flavour to start with, quickly followed by a sweet nuttiness, mixed with chocolate, vanilla and treacle, which was then finished with a sharpened bitterness from the rich coffee and liquorish, leaving a luscious chocolate and treacle aftertaste that left me begging for another mouthful.
The label recommended drinking this Mud City Stout with roasted meats, shellfish, strong cheese and sweet chocolate puddings. There were also some cooking suggestions for using this stout in meat pies and stew, cake or ice cream. Ice cream threw me for a moment, until I remembered just how good Newcastle Brown Ale Ice Cream had been. I opted to enjoy this Mud City Stout on its own on a chilly evening, and it certainly warmed me up and gave me that jovial stout feeling you may receive when you’ve drank a strong hearty brew full of vitamins and goodness. Another would have probably moved me from jovial to tipsy, and few others; asleep… But never mind! It is the season to be jolly and maybe a little sloshed! Happy Christmas everyone! ;-D
By Spectre
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