Wednesday, March 17, 2010

A Pint of Plain


  "When food is scarce and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan,
When hunger grows as your meals are rare -
A pint of plain is your only man."


I've never been terribly inclined towards stout...although I've been known to drink it in a pinch ;)  The husband is inclined though, so as befits the occasion, we opened up a few bottles of Obsidian Stout from the Deschutes Brewing Company in Bend, Oregon. I'm no beer expert, but here a few notes in comparison to one of  its more widely-known counterparts:

Unlike Guinness, this stout is vegan friendly. (full marks!)

Like Guinness, it has a nice flavor (not the same, but nice).

Unlike Guinness, the head is a bit...how can I put it?...disappointing. It's watery/bubbly and dissipates quickly. A good pint of stout should have a nice sturdy, creamy, layer on top. Maybe this particular beer would pour out better on draught, but I don't know.

No worries, we enjoyed it just the same...Sláinte!

Beannacht Lá Fhéile Pádraig !
 

Happy Paddy's Day!!

13 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing a vegan friendly version of Guiness. That was the only beer I ever learned to love. ;-)

    Alicia

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  2. Happy St Patrick's Day and I'm impressed that you found a vegan/vegetarian friendly Guiness, though I have to admit I probably still wouldn't have tried it. Something about beer, just never appealed to me.

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  3. happy St Patricks day! thank you for coming to see me, i had ben here but i feel like i have been coppying all of Alicias friends so i stopped following her people,lol you always leave veryy nice comments on everyones blogs, its neice to meet the person of dandelion

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  4. and please stop spreading the word about there being a vegan option of beer, it was my only good excuse when people would ask me why i wasnt drinking. LOL !!!!!!!

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  5. Mangocheeks,

    Happy St. Patrick's Day to you too.

    I'm not a huge beer drinker either...but every once and a while it goes down a treat... :)

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  6. Hi Dirty Duck,

    Thanks for stopping by...I know what you mean about finding people via Alicia...I do a lot of that too...you're very welcome here anytime!

    You can still probably use the vegan excuse for not drinking...I won't tell ;)

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  7. Guinness isn't vegan friendly?! That's a bummer.

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  8. Hi SV,

    I know, I thought so too...it's listed on Barnivore as not vegan friendly...but it seems that there is a bit of confusion too... here's the link to barnivore in case you want to check it out:

    http://barnivore.com/beer/26/Guinness

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  9. Oh that looks so good and so quintessentially Irish!! I haven't really been missing beer, but that stout is bringing back some tasty memories. BW made organic vegan homebrew for several years, and it pretty much spoiled us for anything else. His oatmeal stout was especially sublime. Like you, we would not mind having beer as a treat now and then, but that's the trouble with homebrew... you don't make it in small batches! I hope your pint enough for the rest of us! :-)

    Happy St. Patrick's Day, Rose!

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  10. How odd, either blogger ate part of my last sentence, or I suffered a brain stutter of massive proportions!

    I would SWEAR I wrote, "I hope you enjoyed your pint enough for the rest of us!"

    (I think there are leprechauns afoot on your blog, Rose!) ;-)

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  11. Hi Laloofah,

    Your homebrew sounds marvelous...but I think I would end up getting tempted a little too often ;)

    I hope there are leprechauns or fairies afoot...

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  12. I love you for quoting Flann o' Brien. He's one of my favourite authors.

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  13. Mihl,

    Thanks for stopping by...one of the first plays I ever saw was Flann O'Brien's 'The Third Policeman' in Dublin, Trinity College...it was pure magic!

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