Pike Brewing just introduced a new autumn seasonal beer, Pike Organic Double Oatmeal Stout, but for me it’s more than a seasonal beer from a beloved local brewery. This one represents a big part of my personal beer history. Below, my personal history with this beer. Below that, the story of the beer itself.
When I started drinking beer back in the 1980s, there was no such thing as craft beer. The revolution was in its infancy. As a teenager I was introduced to beers like Rainier, Olympia, and Budweiser. Beers like Heineken and Lowenbrau were considered the good stuff.
As a teenager, I didn’t think about beer too much. Beer was for drinking, that’s all. It was nothing more than a fizzy beverage with pleasant psychotropic effects. I clearly remember the day all of that changed.
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At a friend’s house, where his English emigrant father allowed us to drink beer responsibly, I opened the fridge and found something unfamiliar and odd. It was a bottle of Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout. Curious and yet unaware, I opened it and drank it.
The rest is history. Not long after that I began home brewing. I became a beer hunter once I was of legal age. Now, here I am.
My lifelong love affair with beer is due directly to the influence of two men: Darol Hinton, who stocked his fridge with Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout way back in the 1980s, and Charles Finkel, the man responsible for importing that beer to America in the first place. Today, you probably know Charles as the patriarch of Pike Brewing Company, but before owning the brewery he imported beer.
I thought the story had come full circle this past summer when I was fortunate enough to visit and tour the old Samuel Smith’s Brewery in Tadcaster, England, but I was wrong. The circle was completed after I got home from England to discover that Pike Brewing was releasing an Oatmeal Stout of its own.
Enough about me and my story, here’s the story of the beer:
Pike Organic Double Oatmeal Stout- New Autumn Seasonal
Certain beers embody and capture a beer style more than any other. When it comes to oatmeal stout, the beer that sets the standard is Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout. This world classic has a long relationship with Pike Brewing Company since Pike founder, Charles Finkel, conceived the idea of reviving a classic, yet extinct, beer style. He introduced the idea to Samuel Smith for which he was the importer and then worked alongside their Head Brewer, Allister Ross, to arrive at the color and taste. Charles designed the logo and label that adorns the bottles and introduced the beer in the U.S. in the late1970s.
Pike Head Brewer, Art Dixon, sought to mirror all the characteristics that drew him to this Smith’s oatmeal stout, such as its silky mouthfeel, warm chocolate tones and roastiness, and then take it up a notch with Organic Double Oatmeal Stout. Always interested in the details that can set a beer apart, Art took extra care in selecting a unique blend of 6 malted grains and rounding them out with organic oats. He then added his west coast style to the brew with a late addition of Willamette hops, a relation to England’s famed Fuggle hops.
Pike Organic Double Oatmeal Stout is dark and incredibly smooth. The beer’s inviting malt aromas bring you into a silky and round mouthfeel and chocolate, roasty and caramel flavors.
Pike Organic Double Oatmeal Stout is available now on draft and in 22 oz. dinner bottles.
ABV – 7.5%
IBU- 30
OG – 1.070
°L – 24
MALT VARIETIES: Organic Pils, Crystal, Munich, Chocolate Malt, Roasted Malt, Malted Wheat, Rolled Oats
HOP VARIETIES: Nugget, Goldings, Willamette
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