Loch Lomond Brewery Silkie Stout Beer Review

I thought I was just about done with Loch Lomond Brewery when the 2020 LIDL beer festival ended, but then one of my lighter beer drinking friends found their Silkie Stout in a beer advent calendar and decided I'd probably enjoy it more then them, we shall see I guess. Loch Lomond are an award winning Dumbarton based brewery who have had a pretty successful first decade. This will be their first stout that I've had the chance to review, and as a dark beer drinker I'm very much looking forward to it. I am slightly concerned by the name though. 

Silkie Stout is an outmeal stout, and I usually think of outmeal stouts as heavy, full bodied drinks, so certainly not silky. Maybe I'm confusing the word silkie with silky? A quick Google revealed that silkie is actually the name of a breed of chicken, the chicken is white. OK that makes no sense either. After further Googling it turns out that a Silkie is a weird type of Scottish mermaid, so finally it makes some sense, but anyway on with the tasting.

SIlkie Stout comes in a really pretty, almost ghostly 440ml can, what the picture has to do with an oatmeal stout I'm far from sure, but it is very nice. There's a nice round 5% alcohol content, which is hardly going to make the beer stand out, but is strong enough to be fun. Silkie Stout pours a beautiful jet black with a thick creamy head, this is exactly what a good stout should look like. The head doesn't disappear either, honestly the retention is really impressive. On the face of it this looks like a pretty good stout.

The aroma has enough coffee to wake up a sleeping hippo, honestly you should be able to buy this beer in Costa if it tastes like it smells. Once the initial hit of the roasted coffee malts starts to dissipate a few other scents are allowed to come through. There's certainly some toffee smells in there, and maybe some caramel too. I should say at this point I'm really not a coffee drinker, and I don't really understand people that are so I always get a little nervous about a beer that smells like this.

The texture is really smooth and light, especially by outmeal stout standards. Thankfully while there is a coffee taste it's not as extreme as the smell. Sure there's still a roasted coffee bean taste, but there's also plenty of chocolate and coconut in there to even it out a bit. Silkie Stout feels far too silky to be an oatmeal stout, and there's certainly no oatmeal taste in there, which is slightly disappointing. That said though if you want a good quality silky smooth stout you wont go far wrong with this.  I'm going to give Silkie Stout from Loch Lomond Brewery a good, very drinkable 7 out of 10.