David Brockington's Tasting Notebook

Leavenworth Dirty Face Stout

The Leavenworth Brewery
636 Front Street
Leavenworth, Washington
(509) 548-4545

Initial Impressions:

This is the first of several notes I took at the 1995 Herbfarm Microbrewery Festival, held out in rural Fall City, Washington. This was the eighth year of the event; it was my sixth. This year's festival featured 44 breweries; a far cry from the 10 or so present at my first Herbfarm festival in 1990. For those unfamiliar with this festival, which I surmise would be the bulk of you, the event is held outdoors in a semi-wooded area. Rain had not been much of a problem until this year, as it was a blustery day, complete with several periods of hard, driving rain. Fortuitously a friend had scoped out a sheltered table, so while we were sampling beer we remained relatively dry.

I learned a week prior to the festival that Leavenworth would be bringing a party pig of their Dirty Face Stout unannounced. Leavenworth is a brewpub in the town of the same name, just on the other side of the Cascade mountains from the metro Seattle area. They brew an assortment of good-to-excellent ales and lagers, the latter undergoing the requisite period of cold storage. As it is about a two-hour drive out to Leavenworth, I don't make the trip often. They do "export" some of their beer (including the IPA and the Pilsner) to Seattle, so I can generally expect to find some at one of the two neighborhood alehouses within walking distance of where I presently sit. Unfortunately, the Stout has never, to my knowledge, made it out to Seattle. Hence, I jumped at the opportunity to sample it at the festival.

No stylistic description, other than stout, is applied to this beer. The gravity is 1.064, which places it well into the "export" substyle (as opposed to being an Irish Dry). Export is a fairly vague and ill-defined categorization (the AHA refers to it as "Foreign Style") originally based on the bottled form of Guinness. The brewers in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California have really taken this substyle on as their own, and I would argue that the classic examples ought to be the stouts brewed by Pike Place, Grant's Imperial (which really is a tad thin for Imperial status by certainly works as an excellent example of a PNW stout) Mad River's Steelhead Extra Stout (excellent roasted barley profile) or the old Sphinx Stout by Hart Brewing. I will consider the Leavenworth Stout in this context.

The beer itself was black and opaque in my tasting glass. The head was a deep tan and displayed good retention properties.

Nose:

The first word written in my notebook on the bouquet of this beer is simply "stunning." A variety of complex aromas competed for attention, including a general maltiness, coffee and chocolate notes, some hop aroma, and a noticeable alcoholic aroma.

Flavor:

In many cases, the promise of the aroma is not realized in the flavor of the beer. This stout is an exception. The first flavor was a hop bitterness, followed by (what I believe to be) a chocolate maltiness. Roasty notes took over the middle of this beer, and it finished with a lingering combination of roasted barley and hop bitterness.

Final Analysis:

A stunning and amazing stout. I would speculate that the fact that it was very fresh (brought by the brewer to the festival in a small 4 liter plastic keg) had a lot to do with my positive reaction. It makes for an excellent example of what I consider the West Coast style of stout.

Rating: ****1/2

(5-star scale)

Next Up:

Blue Ridge Porter
Blue Ridge Amber Lager
Saxer Liberator Doppelbock
Oasis Nileator Doppelbock
Copyright 1995 by David Brockington, all rights reserved.
Seattle

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dbrock@u.washington.edu
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