Do you want anything from the shop?

I was going out to the Mace on the South Circular Road. This modest convenience store with a kick-ass beer selection is possibly the only place in the country you can pick up an Ambrosia rice pudding and a De Molen Rasputin in a single transaction. A request for something strong and dark was proferred before I left the house.

Non-pastry stouts are hard come by these days. I had a choice of six or seven 8%+ ABV dark beers form the fridges but almost all had been "enhanced" with syrups and sugars of various kinds. Only one was unadorned: Jekyll & Hyde, described as a "double stout porter", brewed by Wylam with input from De Molen.

Coffee is the main flavour this is built around. Though it's sweet and gloopy, as befits 9.8% ABV, there's a lot of dry roast and coffee bean oils in the flavour. A dusting of red summer berries lightens it up while the strong and warming alcohol gives it a rich depth and long finish.

I don't know that this is fully up to the excellent standard of either brewery but it's bloody good drinking and great for a random pick from a cornershop shelf. Well played all.

De Molen also made a stout with another northern English brewery, Kirkstall. De Abdij & The Mill was the result, popping up on cask at The Black Sheep before Christmas. Manager Cormac was very keen I give it a try. It's 6% ABV and made with oatmeal, something that really accentuates the smoothness that cask already provides. The flavour is complex without being busy, mixing creamy Galaxy-Bar milk chocolate with a more serious dry and crunchy cereal. Enjoyable as the taste is, it's really the silky texture that makes this beer. Truly nothing shines on cask like a well-made stout.

We succumb to the pastry for the last one. Nightfall is also a collaboration, being an imperial stout brewed by FourPure with input from Brazil's Sunset Brew. It's 9% ABV and the Brazilian influence is manifest in the inclusion of chocolate and coconut in the recipe. There was pretty much no point in photographing it in the dimness of UnderDog as it's very dark indeed. The coconut aroma is massive, and it's concentrated in the flavour too: that almost crunchy effect you get from real coconut flesh. The chocolate is in second position but is definitely pronounced. Would I make the cliché'd comparison to a Bounty bar? Yes, I'm afraid I would because that's how it tastes. Sorry. Best of all, after all that, it simply cleans politely off the palate, not building or growing difficult. I think I could consume quite a lot of this.

This post started out as a sort-of rant against wacky-recipe stouts, but sometimes it's hard not to like them.