Tasting Notes: Five commercial dry Irish Stouts

Inspired in-part by a recent video on Tree House Brewing’s YouTube channel, I decided to do my own Irish Stout tasting. That and finding a bunch of singles at my local Total Wine. 

I intended to make an Instagram reel or maybe even a TikTok video of the tasting. I ended up talking about each beer for 3-4 minutes which was way too long for either platform, so I posted the full video to my Facebook page and to YouTube.  

Off camera I jotted down some quick thoughts in a BJCP format like I do with my commercial beer and homebrew side-by-sides. The difference here is since I wanted to choose a favorite is I actually scored the beers using the BJCP 0-50 scale. Since these were all commercial beers, my scoring was probably harder than it would be for a homebrew competition. 

Double Brew Day & Tasting Notes: Muntons American Light Lager and Sullivan & Buckley Irish Stout

April arrived and I only had one brew day in the books for 2024; a mediocre one at that. With summer approaching that was not going to cut it. Starting in May, my schedule opened back up a lot, but before that became clear I came up with a plan to get a couple of batches quickly fermenting.

The best way to quickly make a batch is a canned beer kit. I've had great success making quality beer with beer kits when I worked for Muntons and since. Brewing at least one beer kit made a lot of sense if the goal was to make a batch quickly.

Beer kits and Hopped Extract. Homebew cheat codes

As a dark beer lover, I always want to have at least one dark beer on tap even in the summer. Originally I wanted to re-brew Spring Training Stout and have a double brew day when I brewed my Amber Lager. I just didn't have the time for a double brew day. Looking for something a little lighter than an Irish Extra Stout, I decided to re-brew my Murphy's and Beamish-inspired Irish Stout Sullivan & Buckley. That was an all-grain batch I brewed in the summer of 2020 and enjoyed thoroughly. Looking to save time my first thought was to convert the recipe to extract. From there I took the conversion one step further in the interest of saving time.

Tasting Notes: BeerSmith's Dry Irish Stout on cask

When I packaged BeerSmith's Dry Irish Stout I filled a three gallon keg that is currently in my basement, I filled a one gallon polypin to simulate cask conditioning, and bottled the rest. The bottled version was the basis of my original tasting notes. I brought the polypin to the March North Shore Brewers meeting to share and get feedback.

 

Irish stout out of a polypin, psuedo cask beer!

The meeting was at Mystic Brewery in Chelsea. It was a chilly, early spring night. I put the polypin in the trunk which chilled it to a degree. One thing I didn't have was a spigot for the polypin. Once I took off the cap I had to carefully pour the beer into the glass.

Tasting Notes: BeerSmith's Dry Irish Stout

My house has a ton of world-class hoppy beer. Since hoppy beers don't keep well I am doing my best to drink them fresh and store them at as cool of a temperature as possible. Even with all of this beer, I still had a hankering for an Irish or Irish-style beer for St. Patrick's Day. The one store I stopped in was sold out of all of their Guinness, I didn't see any O'Hara's, nor any of my local favorites like Samuel Adams Irish Red or Harpoon Celtic Ale. Luckily, my homebrew was ready to go!

 

Frothy, tan head.

About a week and a half ago we made a day trip up to Portland. It was supposed to be Bissell Brothers last release of their double IPA Swish until the fall. As we were driving up, Jennie saw that the brewery published their release schedule for the upcoming quarter, and there was indeed more Swish in the pipeline.

Brew Day: BeerSmith's Dry Irish Stout

I have a couple big, high gravity beers in my pipeline. These beers are going to need a lot of yeast to ensure a healthy and thorough fermentation. If yeast is under-pitched, fermentation can lag which increases the risk of infection. There also may not be enough yeast to ensure a complete fermentation, and/or enough healthy yeast to clean up the chemical byproducts from fermentation. None of this is good.

Beautiful black color.

Typically I would use my stir plate, and prepare a yeast starter to build up enough yeast cells to pitch into the beer. My upcoming high-gravity beers are going to use the same yeast, 1084 Irish Ale. To make yeast starters for both of the beers I would have to make a starter, probably step it up again to have enough cells, and repeat for the second batch. That means I would have to spend four different weeknights boiling extract and cooling it down in an ice bath. Not exactly what I want to do after getting home from work or the gym.