What a Rush!
Written: Apr 18 '00 (Updated Apr 19 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: More flavor in one bottle than in a pallet-load of Bud Light.
Cons: Hard to find, but that should change.
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| beerfly's Full Review: Neversink Oatmeal Stout |
I have no time for folderoldol, brewery histories and review padding of that sort. The beer has been poured and the game is afoot!
Neversink Oatmeal Stout is more visually stimulating than most. It pours thick, splashes thick, and the head is heavy, and the beer drains through it slowly. As I shake the last few drops from the bottle they splay themselves on the dark tan foam, deep chestnut ink-stains on the parchment that slowly sink in, and disappear.
The body of the beer, in a standard sleeve pint glass, is opaque. I have a 60 watt bulb I use for color-checking on beer; nothing gets through, not even a garnet flash around the edges.
The aroma leaves a dense trail through the air as I move the glass to my nose. I am convinced I could track this beer through a large building, that it would leave a trail of malt, graham cracker, coffee, and burnt chocolate hanging invisibly in mid-air. I can smell cookies baking in here, hard blocks of Mexican chocolate being broken and melted, cafe au lait left in the cup.
Brrrr! It's big in the mouth, sloshing slowly around. There are hops a-plenty (more on that in a minute) and shovels of a roasted barley bitter dryness. It is not a rich beer, as the aroma might imply, but a bracingly dry mouth, like a red wine rich in tannins. It is only in the finish, as the hop-numbed tongue rises through the flowing stream, that the chocolate and malt come through.
Whew! This beer is abrupt, once the tasting actually starts. I felt like a body-slammed wrestler there for a bit, and I am used to big beers. I'm halfway through it, though, and it continues to intrigue me.
Neversink Brewing, of Reading, PA, has made a 180 degree turnaround since the arrival of new brewer Jonathan Zangwill. Jonathan comes to Neversink from the Foundry Alehouse, a Pittsburgh brewpub. He had developed a reputation in Pittsburgh as an over-the-top brewer, a man who could not conceive of the possibility of "too many hops." Neversink was a brewery that mainly made tasty lagers, some quite rambunctious, but never a hoppy beer in the bunch.
Zangwill changed all that in about a month's worth of pig-squealing, no-holds-barred recipe-wrangling. He's got the whole brewery changing direction, new labels, new names, a new assistant, and lots of hops! I ran into him recently at a beer fest and he was grooving on the reception his beers have received. People are waking up to his potential, and they're excited.
I hesitate to try to match a food with Neversink Oatmeal Stout. A flourless chocolate cake might work, something with lots of bittersweet chocolate and perhaps nuts.
This beer is most definitely not for everyone. Your typical Guinness poser would take one sip and run white-faced screaming into the night. It's for people who don't mind shaving the wild hair off their beer. But by God, we need beers too!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
beerfly
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Member: Lew Bryson
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Reviews written: 88
Trusted by: 82 members
About Me:
One bourbon, one Scotch, one beer, eh? I'll take Kentucky Spirit, Scapa, and HopDevil.
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