Stash Killer!: March 2017

Sunday, 12 March 2017

Franciscan Well Jameson Stout

Origin: Ireland | Date: 2012 | ABV: 7.8% | On The Beer Nut: December 2012

It's getting warmer in the stash. 2017's summer break is not far away, I'd say. At the moment it's pretty much perfect stout temperature up there so I thought I'd tackle one of the big guns: Franciscan Well's Jameson Stout. This was the second large-format stout that Franciscan Well released, following the previous year's Shandon Century, and the first collaboration between the brewery and Irish Distillers. It was also, I think, Franciscan Well's last new beer before the takeover by MolsonCoors was announced in early 2013.

To be honest, I don't think the years have had much effect on this one. It probably needs more than four of them to make any appreciable difference. There's still a beautiful pot-still honey sweetness at the middle of it all, surrounded by subtle dark chocolate, coffee and caramel. The only wear and tear I detect is a pinch of cardboardy oxidation in the finish and a minor savoury tang suggesting that autolysis might be at work. But you really have to look hard to find both of these: for the most part this beer is still doing everything the brewer intended it to do. Which is good.

So, I'm only slightly regretting opening it. On the one hand I'd love to find out what happens to those honey and chocolate notes after another five or six years, but on the other I reckon that the swingtop cap is not keeping the bottle optimally sealed and this could be the start of a downward slide. I guess all that really matters is how much I'm enjoying the contents of the mug in front of me.

What is this?

A floor was installed in my attic in 2008. I've used it to store beer ever since. It's particularly handy in winter when everything inside is kept at perfect drinking temperature. And right from the early days I began hoarding odd bottles, ones I'd already reviewed on my main blog and I thought it might be fun to leave them aside to see how they age, or to drink on a special occasion. The problem is, in seven years, the special occasion never arises. I'm the luckiest fucker alive: every day is a cause for jubilation, and it never seems to occur that I should probably mark this with a celebratory vintage beer.

But no more. The stash is getting out of hand, I'm no closer to actually drinking any of it, and I've begun to worry about fires, earthquakes, sudden death, or any number of other inconveniences that might prevent me from getting to those bottles. So today begins the project to do just that. I reckon a blog is the way to encourage me to keep it going. It won't be as regular as The Beer Nut, it won't cover beers I haven't already written about there, and it's not as open-ended: there is only a finite amount of liquid up there, after all.
-- November 2015