Sheaf Stout 5.7% Alcohol
Friday, August 14th, 2009
Being skinny all of my life when i was 18 i wanted nothing more than to put on weight and “get big”. Unfortunately though weight gain was just not something that came easy to me.
After a futile few weeks of eating massive meals every day and getting nowhere a mate’s dad came up with a solution. He told me that if i drank two long necks of Sheaf Stout per evening the weight gain would take care of itself. I still remember hating the stuff but forcing it down every night in the name of bulking up! In this instance my perseverance did pay off, after around 2 months of the long neck drinking regime i was around 8 kilograms beefier!
After the period of nightly beer “dieting” was over, Sheaf Stout and i parted ways. But of course it couldn’t go on forever ten years later, as per usual i saw the rows of Sheaf Stout peering out from their brightly lit fridge in the bottlo. But this time it was different the question popped up in my head, was it really that horrible? Sheaf was my first introduction dark beers, maybe i had just misunderstood it’s qualities before wrongly relegating it to the category of “hobo piss”?
Getting the bottle home i could hardly wait to get into a glass, it poured a lot better than i remembered with a dark black colour, lively level of carbonation, around 2 -3 fingers of greyish coloured head. This died down over the space of 4-5 minutes to a thin foam lacing that lasted pretty much the whole time their was still beer under it.
The aroma seemed very easy to miss but with a bit of trying i was able to detect a mild coffee smell. First taste was still while the beer was very cold, and came across as clean, mild tasting brew with coffee flavours dominating the back of the palate along with a hint of cocoa.
Then i made the mistake of allowing the beer to warm up a bit, a bad move indeed…. The coffee flavour became a lot more pronounced but this time without its buddy chocolate holding it’s hand. Overall tt still wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the bitterness that now made an appearance on the palate, highly unpleasant, acrid that seemed to storm across the drinkers tongue like a horde of unwelcome barbarians raping and pillaging.
A bit of warmth in this brew had me wondering should i even bother to finish it?
Verdict: If this beer could be kept at at a super low temperature you could knock them back pretty easy. Let it warm up though, and it’s best to leave it with the hobos and those dieting.
Score: 4.2 / 10
Link: http://www.fosters.com.au
Where to buy: In the long neck / singles area of pretty much every mainstream bottle shop in NSW.
Tags: Carlton United, CUB, Fosters
