Spire Twist and Stout

Brewed by Spire
Style: Stout
Chesterfield, England

Serve in English pint, Shaker, Snifter

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Bottle. Black with a big head. Slightly acidic and lacking in flavour. Nice choice of name for a pretty mundane beer.

Gravicask at the Bricklayers Arms Derby Beer Fest. It pours darkest brown, with a quickly dissipating thin beige head. The nose is salted caramel, roasted malt and coffee. The taste is overpowered by sour tang, as well as cardboard, wet wood, roasted malt, varnish, salt, coffee and dark fruit. Medium body, pretty much flat and slightly sticky mouth-feel. Probably infected.

UPDATED: SEP 27, 2011 Gravity cask at Bricklayers BF, London. Pours brown-black with a small head. Light milk chocolate nose, faint roast. Light sweet flavor, tangy malts. Not right. Light bodied with soft, almost no carbonation. Tangy finish, light roast. Either the beer is off or it just isn’t good.

Cask at 5th English Rose Beer Festival, Luton, Bedfordshire. Deep, unmitigated Stygian black (well, maybe a hint of reddish brown round the edges) with a small beige head. Sweet, complex aroma. I thought I picked up lime, as well as a meaty, peppery boeuf carbonnade. Long, slightly blurry bitter finish. Interesting stout: certainly the best beer of the Festival, and as if in confirmation, at this point the awning beneath which I was seated dramatically blew away to the consternation of all.

Cask. Silk Mill, Derby. Aroma is roastiness and licorice. Black with a tan head. Taste is medium to heavy bitterness. Long bitter finish.

Bottle, Global Wines, Birmingham. A black pour with a fading beige head. Roasted malt aroma and flavour with coffee and dark chocolate notes and some fruitiness lurking also. Drying finish. Solid and drinkable effort and I like the name.

Cask @ 3 Judges. Black colour, tan head. Aroma of toasted malts, chocolate. Flavour of roasted malts, smoke, hint of burnt plastic.

Bottle conditioned, 500ml from Bellingers Garage, Grove, Oxon. Black with light tan head. Initially a touch tart and the feeling is here we go again, but this soon goes, leaving a solid, drying heavy roasted malt body with coffee, dark chocolate and pitch flavours. Simple enough, but then there is a lightish hop note mingling in the background. Pretty decent all round.

Birthday bottle from Octo. Glossy pitch pour with a dirty cappuccino collar and sprinkles of lace, a few grey swirling floaties, not a chink of transparency. Fine roasty nose exuding charred barley, musky hop, bitter chocolate, grapefruit, blackberry, sweet red apple yeastiness. A right old dollop of US Imperial pungency here: the balance of carbon and fruit is spot on. Really deep and burnt with fire alarm toast, tonic water bitterness, little compensating vanilla and blackberry licks, merciless high cocoa and carbon long after the swallow. Oily but not creamy. Characterful dry dry stout, if anything just a little top heavy on the bitterness..

Bottle. Black with a big beige head. Aromas are toffee and coffee malts with earthy, peat notes. Flavours are sweet weetabix notes with coffee. Dry and earthy on the finish. Simple but well done.