Brewery: Samuel Smith Old Brewery (Tadcaster)

Name: Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout

Style: English oatmeal stout

Origin: England

Bottle: 12 oz

ABV: 5%

Appearance: As black and dark as a Callieach’s intentions and a Sluagh’s domain. Dark like the garments of a lone figure pulling a cart on a lone road late at night.

Pours: A thin tan head blooms then dies down to a small central island.

Smell: Wheat, rye, dark caramels and bourbon.

Taste: A play of deep mellow with just enough green, woodsy sourness to give it a bit of life. Best enjoyed by a quiet campfire on a moonless night when your imagination turns shadows into Sidhe, or if you’re more comfortable with the trappings of men, then find yourself a corner in a rustic Yorkshire pub playing traditional music.

Mouthfeel: A play of deep and mellow with green and sour with neither letting the other dominate but the one improving on the other. Okay, same as the taste yes, but the two are so tightly interwoven and knotworked together it’s indistinguishable as to where one ends and the other starts.

Rating: 9.0 Same as the previously reviewed Pacific Pear but for a more or less contrasting reason. This is a beer that tastes of a history older than the Tadcaster brewery it’s made in. A taste of ancient forests and new growth. The taste of the history of Ancient, Pre-Norman England in a bottle. I’m only ”English” as it were, by dint of the history of some of my ancestors and with a stout like this I definitely feel pride in that aspect of my ancestry.