It Was a Dark and Oily Night…

If you really want to treat yourself to something special in a beer, find a bottle of Harviestoun Ola Dubh 30, which is a collaboration between the award-winning Scottish brewer Harviestoun and the award-winning Scottish distiller Highland Park.

In 2000, Harviestoun unleashed on the world its Old Engine Oil Porter, which, as the name implies, is black as oil. For Ola Dubh 30 (Black Oil), Old Engine Oil is notched up to 10.5 percent alcohol (it is normally a six percent porter) and then conditioned for up to six months in casks that contained 30-year-old single malt whiskey from Highland Park.

The result is a still, dark beer that weighs in at eight percent without a hint of carbonation. It is sold by individual bottle, which comes in a box, much like a bottle of single malt Scotch, and each bottle is numbered. I had bottle #3824, bottled in June 2013. This is a beer you could relegate to your cellar for a while, if you can resist its siren call – Drink Me Now!

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I was looking for a warming bomber bottle of beer on a recent bone-chillingly cold night. People were mentioning the cold all day, and it did seem colder than usual. So I wanted a big, warm hug of a beer, and for me that is usually a stout or some other liquid darkness. I grabbed a bottle of Brewhouse Coffee Stout from Central Waters Brewing Co. of Amherst, Wis.

There is a very homegrown feel to everything about Central Waters Brewing Co., from the green energy that powers the brewery, to the simple packaging, to the uncomplicated beers. But I have to say I was disappointed by the one-note flavor of this coffee stout. Even trying it at different temperatures, I just got the same bitter coffee note, with none of the usual underlying flavors you would expect from a complex stout.