River Brew Review: Ninkasi Brewing Company Oatis Oatmeal Stout

Boom! First beer review of the trip! We are camped on the Metolius River right now and are not crushing fish the way that we would like. We are getting them, but not as big or as often as we had hoped. Hmmm… I think that I would probably always want to catch more and bigger fish so maybe that isn’t a good description of the fishing so far.

Normally when we fish the Metolius we are good for a least one bull trout over 20 inches. It isn’t uncommon to land one over 25 inches and occasionally we will pick one up in the 30” range, this trip we landed a couple of 18 inchers (if you really stretch them out before measuring). The strange thing is that we are crushing the rainbows. We have 2 at about 18”, and 4 or 5 total, when normally in this stretch of river we are lucky if we pick up one!

Really we can’t complain at all George has been a trooper, the weather is perfect and we are catching fish. I guess that I just really wanted to start the trip with a big fish on water we know. From here it is going to get interesting as we attempt to catch fish in new watersheds all over the US.

This is our last night actually on the river. The internet here is too slow for us to stay during the week so we will retreat back to Bend for the week before heading to Pyramid Lake, Nevada next Saturday. In an attempt to go out on a high note we are tying flies. The flies that only catch big ones. Aimee is just tying one fly – the one fly to rule them all.

For fuel I chose a Ninkasi Oatis Oatmeal Stout. It is dark and strong and hit the spot.

Appearance: Drank it out of the bottle, looks dark.

Smell: Sweet oats with booze. Slight caramel hints

Taste/Mouthfeel: Very bubbly for a stout. I get a lot of tang out of this, some is the sweet malts, some is the booze. Has a nice thick oatmeal middle, but to my palette it starts strong and ends stronger.

Overall: I like this beer better when I am drinking it and not thinking about it or analyzing. If I just drink it is a nice, strong tasting stout. I will say that I liked the Oatis Vanilla a bit more, it is a bit smoother and seemed less boozy to my palette.

Stats:
IBU: 50
ABV: 7.0%
OG: 1072
Brewery: Ninkasi Brewing Company, Eugene, OR