February 27, 2009: Buffalo Bill's Blueberry Oatmeal Stout

If you read my earlier post on Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale, you can imagine how I felt about drinking Buffalo Bill's Blueberry Oatmeal Stout tonight. After all, it's another gimmicky beer to come from the same brewery as the Pumpkin Ale which I was less than enthusiastic about. In case you're new to the blog and haven't read back in the posts that far, my take on the pumpkin ale was "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". That's basically how I felt about the the Blueberry Oatmeal Stout before I tried it for myself. I consider myself somewhat of a purist when it comes to beer, and I'm typically not impressed when a microbrewery decides that they want to add some kind of twist to one of the most popular beverages of all time. Nevertheless, I will drink my Blueberry Oatmeal Stout with as impartiality as I can possibly muster.

But....as long as I'm being honest, I have to admit that I wanted to hate this beer before I even cracked the top. Blueberry? It just sounded too fruity for my taste. Save the fruit for breakfast, I want my beer to taste like a beer for God's sake. Is that so much to ask, Buffalo Bill's Brewery? because thousands of people around the world have resisted the urge to add Blueberry to their beer for thousands of years and their results have been pretty stellar so far. Yes, I can pretend to be unbiased as much as I want, but I definitely had it out for Blueberry Oatmeal Stout. That is until I actually took the first sip, and changed my mind completely.

Before I get into the details of this beer, I think I should clarify the term "Oatmeal Stout". Oatmeal stouts aren't beers that are flavored like Oatmeal, but rather they are stouts where Oats are added as an ingredient in the brewing process. Once a common ingredient in medieval European beers, oats were gradually phased out of most beers because of the acrid, bitter flavor they gave to the beer. Eventually the oatmeal stout was completely eradicated until it found a strong resurgence in popularity in the late 1970's. Oatmeal stouts are still somewhat uncommon today, but are finding much more favor with microbreweries as they attempt to create new alternatives to traditional ales.

I braced myself for the worst. I made myself imagine that someone had taken a fistful of unwashed blueberries and squeezed them right into a perfectly good oatmeal stout. I imagined that it wasn't a beer at all, but just bitter carbonated blueberry juice. To my overwhelming surprise however, Buffalo Bill's Blueberry Oatmeal Stout was actually really tasty. The blueberry flavor that I was dreading for so long actually seemed to compliment the bitter taste of the stout very nicely. It wasn't a blueberry assault on the taste buds that offended the senses, but instead a pleasant blueberry aftertaste that released slowly after each sip. The flavors in this beer were surprisingly complex for something to come out of a microbrewery, and I enjoyed the Blueberry Oatmeal Stout to the last sip. Sure, the old saying "If if ain't broke, don't fix it" still applies to many situations in life, but an equally apt anecdote warns "never judge a book by it's cover". I like to think that I'm a big enough man to admit when I a wrong about something, and in this case I clearly missed the boat. It's not a beer that I would drink every day, but if you're looking for a refreshing new twist on a stout, don't be afraid to try out Buffalo Bill's Blueberry Oatmeal Stout for yourself.

Cheers,
Ian

http://www.buffalobillsbrewery.com/