The Oatmeal Coffee Stout is a newly released beer from Good People Brewing Company, the local brewery located in Five Points South, as part of a collaboration with Free the Hops, the organization working to revise Alabama’s nonsensical prohibition era beer laws. The stout features late additions of our Peru Norté coffee in addition to hops, both of which give the beer more flavours and depth than a traditional Guinness Irish Stout or Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout. The Good People Oatmeal Coffee Stout is available only for a short while, and is currently on tap at The J. Clyde.

A stout is a type of porter, which is a darker beer resulting from a slight roasting of the malted grain before fermentation. This roasting often leads to hints of chocolate or coffee flavour in the beer, so it is not uncommon to add small amounts of real chocolate or coffee to the beer after fermentation to complement one of those tasting notes. Oatmeal stouts merely use oatmeal as a portion of the grain, which tends to make for a smoother, more full bodied beer.

For some tasting notes on the new release, we will defer to a person much more experienced in the ways of beer, one Danner Kline, founder of Free the Hops. Of the Good People Oatmeal Coffee Stout, he says:

It’s fantastic.

Appearance is a deep opaque dark brown. I think the coffee actually may have shifted this from black to dark brown.

Aroma is almost 100% coffee. It’s a bit shocking, actually.

The first sip is like the aroma, almost 100% coffee, and intense. And you start to think this is overdone. Too intense on the coffee. They messed up the balance on this one.

But then the hops hit you. Glorious Willamette. Coffee on the front end, hops on the back end, and the dark malts lurking in between, popping out here and there. The hoppy aftertaste sucks you in, bringing you back for more and more and more. For anyone who likes coffee and hops, this is ridiculously drinkable. And you have no business ordering this if you don’t like coffee. And if you’re a hop head, well then all is right in the world.
—9 Numbers: Good People Brewing Coffee Oatmeal Stout

Of course, we could hardly wait to try it ourselves so we headed out to The J. Clyde last weekend for some after hours “work”. The bias of our involvement notwithstanding, we were quite impartially pleased with the result, finding it both delicious and quite drinkable. A very informal experiment seems to indicate that despite the stronger coffee overtones, the stout does not contain too much caffeine, at least not enough to cause evening jitters after downing a few.

Stouts do not traditionally have late hop additions, so while Oatmeal Coffee Stout is certainly more hoppy than other stouts, it is not nearly so as the other beers offered by Good People, which all have stronger traditions of late addition hopping. The Peru Norté coffee’s subtle vanilla and floral characteristics complement well the milder floral bitterness of the Willamette hops, in some ways tying them together with the roastiness of the malt.

The Oatmeal Coffee Stout is currently available on tap at The J. Clyde and is scheduled to make an appearance at the Five Points Grill as well. Try some soon because this is a one-off release, so once the available kegs are gone, it’s gone for good. If the response to the beer is good, however, Good People may brew it yearly as a fall seasonal, so if you like it don’t be shy!