By Greg B. I’m always in search of good stouts, and with the colder weather creeping in slowly but surely, I’ve started to stock up my cellar with darker beers.  Normally, I tend to believe with stouts that the bigger, bolder, more flavorful the beer, the better it is.  But I do recognize that in the history of stouts, this is not necessarily the case.  Look at Guinness.  We all think of it as a ‘big’ beer, but this is really an illusion given to our senses by the addition of nitrogen, giving the beer that full bodied creamy texture, though the beer itself is a rather light bodied beer (You can definitely tell this with the Guinness 250 that came out a few months ago… using CO2 instead of Nitrogen, that beer pales in comparison to it’s original brother Guinness!).  The reason I’m giving this little explanation is that this beer, the Shipyard’s Blue Fin Stout, surprised me in just how good of a beer it is, while keeping with the light bodied tradition of stouts from the past. 

I poured the beer into a regular shaker pint glass, and while opening the bottle learned that it is in fact a twist off and does not require the use of specialized beer tools, such as the church key.  Generally this might be seen as an indicator of a beer that is surely an American craft brewed beer, but lacks a bit in quality.  So with my enthusiasm slightly dampened, I poured the beer.  A light black color, producing a medium amount of creamy, dark tan head which rises up and recedes at an average pace leaving behind it a nice respectable lacing on the glass.  The beer smells of mocha and coffee, with a hint of milk chocolate and a detectable sweetness even.  To taste, this beer explodes with flavor.  Dark roasted malts, whose aromas were well hidden initially, come right out to the front of the taste buds, but quickly stand aside letting the sweeter chocolatey flavors take center stage.  The beer finishes with a hint of burnt malts, and leaves me eagerly and anxiously trying to finish this write up so I can drink more of it!  This is a VERY nice stout.  Shipyard brewing company, from Portland Maine has an excellent product in this beer.  It is complex, well rounded, and shows off it’s flavors not all at once or in some jumbled beer fashion, but in a well structured progression of deliciousness.  A great light bodied, full flavored dry stout!  3.9/5