Jailbreak's Oats & Toffee & Chocolate & Stuff

When it comes porters and stouts, I generally like them simple.  Perhaps I am old fashioned in that respect.  These beers are classics in and of themselves.  The style comes out of London, where brewers were making dark beers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  The beers started out as strong beers, beloved by local street and river porters (hence, the name porter).  The strong porters eventually went out of style, and, brewers reinvented the style in a milder form, which is the predecessor to the typical porter or stout thart one sees today. 

Many brewers have reverse engineered the stout and porter, in a sense of speaking. There has been a big push for imperial versions of the beer, pushing the ABVs up in a probably unintended, but quite coincidental nod to the original stout or porter style. I love imperial porters and stouts.  It is when the brewers take the next step ... adding stuff to the beer ... that I start to have reservations.

When Jailbreak Brewing released its Oats & Toffee & Chocolate & Stuff Imperial Stout, I had those reservations.  I had taken my parents to the Jailbreak Brewing taphouse for lunch and my dad ordered a flight.  This was one of the beers on that flight.  Skeptical, I just ordered the barleywine.  My dad ultimatley bought a four pack (at bit pricey) and left one for me to try.  I eventually opened it the beer and tried it.  It was quite the surprise. 

This beer is an Imperial Oat Milk Stout with Toffee and Chocolate; and, its ABV is a respectable 10.1%. The brewers describe the beer as a "liquid heath bar," with "a plentiful addition of liquid cacao" and a "big hit of peanut butter-esque English toffee upfront followed by pleasing milk chocolate. All of these descriptions. Ordinarily, I want my beer to be a beer, not a snack.  

With that said, this beer was actually pretty good.  The beer poured pitch black, like motor oil, which is the perfect color for a stout. The sweetness was inescapable in the aroma, as the toffee and the chocolate greet the nose almost immediately.  That sweetness was also the primary feature of the taste. In this regard, the milk chocolate was very prominent, making it a little difficult to focus on the chocolate aspects to the flavor.  

Overall this is a very good beer.  I believe it was brewed as a one-off, a version of a line of stouts that Jailbreak has been doing.  Given how great Jailbreak is as a brewery, I should not have had any reservations at all about this beer.  Until next time ...

ENJOY!