With autumn on the way, I like to start brewing up my fall “party” beers. Everyone’s brewing (or has just brewed) an Oktoberfest or Vienna, but if you’re planning well ahead you should be thinking about those post-Halloween/pre-Winter beers, which brings us to one of my favorite styles: Irish Extra Stout. Unsurprisingly, it shares a lot of DNA with its lighter cousin, the Dry Stout (or Irish Stout), but this one has an extra bump of alcohol and a deeper coffee and dark chocolate flavor profile that make it a great seasonal beer. There’s more to it than just increasing your original gravity, though, and you don’t want to drift too far into the roasty weeds or you’ll just be making an American or Imperial Stout!
STYLE
Some people say that the subdivision of stouts is a bit of a time-waster: aren’t they all roasty, black beers? Yes, they are, but that’s ignoring the often-prominent differences between them, despite those common characteristics. In this case, we’re moving to a mid-range ABV (more than Dry, less than Imperial), with more coffee and chocolate flavor than we get from the lighter Irish Stout, but without the sweetness or full-bodied mouthfeel common to the Sweet and Oatmeal Stouts, respectively.
At the same time, we’re relying principally on our roasted and crystal malt flavors and effectively not-at-all on our hops (let’s leave that to the American Stout folks), except for bittering. Digging slightly deeper, we want stronger coffee and chocolate flavors than we’d find in the Dry/Irish Stout, but certainly not prominent or dominant roastiness.