This week’s beer is an oatmeal stout out of New Holland Brewing in Michigan. If you’ve never had an oatmeal stout before I should probably say that it won’t taste like oatmeal, and if you say you can really taste the oatmeal you are either a liar or on drugs. Quicker readers will have already figured out that oatmeal stouts are stouts with a small amount of oats. The addition of oats to the beer generally makes for a smoother and sweeter stout, while still giving all the roasty, coffeeness a stout normally has. After some Googling, I was surprised and disturbingly excited to learn that oatmeal stouts were popular in the 1800s, and that the drink was often given to small children and lactating women as a cure for certain ailments. I’m not really sure what affect it was supposed to have, but I like the way those 19th Century cats thought. While I can’t legally advocate giving beer to small children, if any lactating women want to give it a try feel free to write in and let me know if you feel sufficiently fortified. Writing that made me feel dirty.

Anyway, on to the beer. I picked up a six pack of the The Poet at the local beer store. The packaging is purple, and it has a large raven on it, which i guess leaves the drinker on his or her own to draw the connection to Edgar Allan Poe – a poet of some note. I think. The beer is a nice deep brown color, almost black – you kind of have to catch it in the right light to see the color. Not much head to speak of, so I can’t really comment on that, but perhaps a more aggressive pour would give me better results. The beer smells like a stout should – roasted malt, coffee, some chocolate. The Poet apparently inspires some to verse, as one guy on BeerAdvocate.com noted an “almost ghostly scent of roses long dead.” Wow. I’m totally dropping that line next time I want to hit on a beer.

The taste of this beer is somewhat tricky. It tastes of coffee and bitter chocolate, and it has a nice amount of sweetness to it – not too much, not too little. I kept expecting to get hit with some stronger flavor, but it never came, save for a little bitterness in the end. Overall, it felt just a bit too watery and thin for my tastes. Brian agreed, saying that he’d probably pass on this if there were other oatmeal stouts at the bar. This is probably a good choice if you want the aroma and flavor of a stout with a thinner body. Oh, and at 5.2% ABV its fairly low in alcohol for a stout, so it’s probably a good choice if you want to have several beers. The Poet’s a good beer, but it’s not going to stand out in my mind as a truly great stout.