REVIEW #93: Dry Stout (Stringers Beer)

Pours virtually black with a frothy milky-coffee tinted head. The aroma is all bourbon biscuit and chocolate ice cream. Lots of coffee and baking chocolate in the foreground. The delicious bitter roasted flavour is a consistent all the way through the swig and lingers for minutes in the finish. Bags of bittering hops to complement the burnt bitterness must have gone into this one. If only Guinness was like this - or this was as omnipresent as Guinness! Arguably a shade thin but I'm clutching at straws there really. Stringers Dry Stout very flavourful and drinkable session stout. Its the sort of beer that, if local, I would have as a my regular tipple.

Stringers Beer is a Micro in Ulverston, Cumbria. I picked this up along with several other stouts in the fantastic Booths, a North-West supermarket chain that has an exceptional range of ales, most of which are specific to the North of England and Scotland. The brewery is powered wholly by renewable energy. Dry Stout is Stringers' bottled version of their cask ale No. 2 Stout, a regional award-winner. I would very much like to get my hands on their 9.3% ABV stout Mutiny! I love a brewery that state what they put into their beers on their bottles (its the friendly thing to do) so here is Dry Stout's vital statistics:-

• MALTS: MARRIS OTTER pale; black; chocolate; smoked
• HOPS: NORTHERN BREWER (WHOLE HOP)
• IBU: ?
• ABV: 4.5%

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