8 Wired "iStout" / 10.5% / £2.25 for a half / Port Street Beer House
Oh yon imperial stouts, how full thy body. How intimidating thy percentage. This is my third 10% straddling stout in two days. Cover me, treacle mass. Wash over me, leaving me tarred and in need of feathers. I had a sup (don’t ever use that word) of Siren’s Mrs Brown yesterday on keg at Bottle in Heaton Moor. A pecan maple syrup sassy sipper it was, v naughty in the wrong hands but I savoured over it and remained upright to split Magic Rock’s most recent can offering, Bearded Lady Grand Marnier Chocolate Stout, with my friend. I’ll be honest, reader. I preferred the former. Found the latter a lil too dessert wine-y for my tastes but don’t get me wrong, I completed my voyage and was pretty much chuffed to bits at the finishing post. I prolly wouldn’t get a can of the Magic Rock again BUT I am super psyched for their next can wave of the standards, nay core, in the shape of High Wire, Rapture, and Dark Arts. Bring the noise.
Another day, another imperial stout. The bargain-priced, and funnily named, “iStout” from New Zealand’s 8 Wired brewery, on keg at Port Street Beer House. A 10.5% third before home time and inevitably bed time. Lay my heavy head to rest. In fairness to myself, I’m working late and I have had an extremely disappointing time on Photoshop these past two hours. I just needed a mild face melting before catching the 9pm train home.
Getting into this high strength, low measure lifestyle. When I were a kid it were all pint this and pint that. Typically low strength. £1 pints of Foster’s at Bradford’s premiere rock club of a Wednesday. It wasn’t a case of what are you having, it was more how many have you had. Five was my usual. That’s what it took to turn me inside out. I remember the sticky floors and the mobile phone in the trough urinal that may or may not have been ringing. Picture that vivid scene. A Nokia in a urinal, “Mum calling” flashing up on the screen. Do I just look at it? What else am I supposed to do?
I digress. Small measures of strong beers are good. I took a third of this iStout to the nose and then mouth. Chocolate check, coffee check, super boozy check. It’s a sip standard warming fluid. A condensed good dark time. A viscous chilled mud maker. It’s a fine full stop on a clement evening. It’s a page turner and a channel changer. I dipped my toe, and then my beak, and then my elbow. It coated each extremity satisfactorily and I danced with vigour to the train station.
Check out 8 Wired’s bevs when you can. Part of the New Zealand Craft Beer Collective alongside Yeastie Boys, Renaissance, Tuatara, and Three Boys. They were a big hit at last year’s Indy Man Beer Con and there’s doubtless more big things to come out of NZ in the coming futures. Exciting times to be a lush. Viva life’s rich tapenade!