oatmeal stout

The perfect beer for a broken man.

My first oatmeal stout was handed to me immediately after I had the piss beat out of me by my oldest cousin, a man I love and respect tremendously. After we flailed on the pavement, after I poured my heart and soul into fighting one of the men I love most, my thirst was slaked with a beverage that seemed to come from heaven.

I'd seen red during the brawl, but now everything was tinted a deep shade of emerald. My head was spinning, my arms were weak, and my stomach cried out after it was abruptly forced to empty its contents onto the asphalt. At the very lowest point my ego could reach, I was revived by a delicious oatmeal stout. The creamy, hoppy goodness washed over my insides and, immediately, I was well again.

Looking back on that night, I will always remember that the only thing that made me get up and fight again was a beer. Maybe it reminded me of my dad, maybe the taste jumpstarted testosterone production, who knows. What's important is that now, whenever I drink an oatmeal stout, I am brought back to one of the defining moments of my life.

Essentially a Stout brewed with a proportion of oatmeal replacing up to 5% of the more usual barley in the brew. This delectable type of beer was popularised in the early 19th Century due to its largely spurious 'health benefits' over other beers, to the point that it used to be prescribed to the elderly as a restorative.

In general, Oatmeal Stouts tend towards the medium to full bodied end of the scale. They have an almost unreal smoothness, richness and a slight sweetness to them, largely due to the higher levels of protein contained due to the use of oats. A personal favourite of mine is Samuel Smiths' Oatmeal Stout, which was one of the first to revive this style of beer in the late 1970s.