A welcome disruption

Non-alcoholic beer gets the occasional bit of coverage on here, though I tend to find very few which perform the role required of a beer. Pale ales, wheat beers and lagers seem to be the preferred styles, which may be the problem. I've often said that dark styles make for better alcohol-free beer, my favourite to date being Švyturys Go Juodas, and the Guinness one is pretty decent too. The latter's success has provided an opportunity for other breweries to get in on the 0.0 stout racket, and the first I've seen locally is Dundalk Bay's Zero Zero Nitro Stout, available in Aldi.

It's in a widget can and pours well, the head forming and staying in place as it should. Nitro here doesn't mean an absence of aroma, and there's quite a pungent roastiness: thick coffee, made a little Turkish with cardamom and nutmeg. Guinness adds fructose sugar to its 0.0 on the grounds that there isn't enough flavour in the base grains. Maybe that's a quirk of the Guinness recipe, because this is all-malt (barley and wheat) and there's no lack of flavour. It's very bitter, mixing dark toast with savoury herbs, the intensity turning almost metallic by the end. A little chocolate or mocha sweetness creeps in as it warms and helps soften the experience. The texture is where it falls down most, however: although there's a certain creamy aspect because of the nitrogen smoothness, it's inescapably thin, with a disappointing watery quality in the finish. Maybe this is where bulking-up with a non-fermentable sugar might have helped.

Overall, though, it's impressive stuff. Dundalk Bay does good stouts in general, and they seem to have brought some of that acumen to this one. It's boldly flavoured and tastes like a big and bitter old-fashioned stout. My theory holds up. Now, who else wants to give this style a go?