Schell Snowstorm 2009, Founder’s Breakfast Stout
It’s been a cold and windy day here in Minnesota, with some more of that white stuff falling on our heads and wind chills forecast to go down to Are You Fucking Kidding Me tonight. A new person came to knitting this evening and we talked lots about beer, so it followed that after dinner and a sip of Amanda’s Snowstorm I needed one of my own. This is my first porter, unless I count an ill-considered Summit porter straight out of a bottle at a moment when what I needed was really a Good Stiff Drink, which I don’t. I am definitely going to drink more porters. I am, provided I can lay hands on it, certainly going to drink more Snowstorm! Yum. Mine was on tap in a pint glass, dark brown-black with a little ruby red in the light and a thick foamy head. It had all the pleasing, dark, round flavors I associate with stouts, plus strong Christmasy high notes. Usually when I say something tastes like Christmas, I mean chocolate and citrus and spices, but this is different. It’s like a good steamed pudding full of dried fruits, with boozy-creamy hard sauce, or the sugar cookies with raisin filling that were a fixture of the holiday cookie rotation when I was a kid. Festive, comforting, belly-warming, highly recommended.
The other night I had a Founder’s Breakfast Stout, a beer that by all rights I should love. Coffee, chocolate, breakfast: I love all these things of which the Founder’s ought to be redolent. Did I just never let it get warm enough? Was it a bad choice for second drink of the evening after an orange-mango mimosa about which I regret nothing? The pairing seemed like a no-brainer: chocolate sour-cream Guinness birthday cake with ganache filling and Irish whiskey buttercream, and it was a hell of a cake. The beer was just too smoky for me, I think, and the coffee flavor was so strong that it was off-putting, like drinking diner coffee black.
