After the Oregon Brewers Festival drew to a close, I decided to stop back by the Rogue hospitality suite one more time to see what was going on. It was my hope to see if any other brewers might be stopping by. It was mostly the guys from Rogue, but it gave me an opportunity to try another Rogue beer I hadn’t had before. There was plenty of the Shakespeare Oatmeal Stout, and I’m a fan of stouts, so I thought I’d give it a try.
It looked thick and very black in color, and it had a creamy dark tan head with some soap-like bubbles in it. The aroma was a very good, complex mix of chocolate, coffee, toffee, and toasty malt smells.
It had a solid medium body along with a creamy, almost velvety smoothness. It tasted much like it smelled – with a sweet chocolaty and malty flavor up front, followed by some toastiness. The finish had a bit of a coffee and chocolate like bitterness to it.
As far as a food pairing goes, I think I would enjoy this with a nice chocolate brownie (covered in vanilla ice cream) dessert. The flavors would go nicely together and the ice cream would sort of cleanse the pallet for the next round of rich chocolate and coffee flavors.
Overall, I thought this was a very creamy, flavorful stout. While I’m not sure if I could have more than a couple of these, it would be a very nice treat on a cold winter night.
My Rating: 
Reader Ratings[five-star-rating]
