Six String Brewing Black & Gothic

Style
Stouts
ABV
5.1% & 9.4%

Things have clearly taken a turn at the Six String Brewing Company. Where the warmer months on the Central Coast were once characterised in the main by new and fruity IPAs and lagers, these early parts of the cooler seasons have seen the brewers turn towards the darker side of beer styles – very dark, as it turns out. Indeed, they've gone so dark the first large scale release is an oatmeal stout that’s been called, simply, Black.

Yet if it’s a beer that’s meant to appear menacing – and the spindly Redback spider sitting atop the label certainly suggests so – the reality when drinking it is quite different. Far from being a rich and robust sipper it’s just a good, easy-drinking stout, one where gentle coffee characters, raw chocolate and moderate roastiness and bitterness combine without ever feeling confronting (partly due, you suspect, to the slightly creamy effect of the oatmeal). As it warms you do start to get some fuller, potentially even divisive, characters like liquorice and vegemite coming out, but ultimately it’s a beer you’d be happy to have for company when parked on the sofa on a cool evening.

If Black doesn’t sound like the kind of monster beer you’re searching for, the Gothic Imperial Stout may very well be. If these two beers were siblings it’d be in a Danny Devito / Arnold Schwarzenegger Twins kind of way. In other words: they’re very different. At just under ten percent ABV, Gothic is essentially twice the size but about ten times as rich as the oatmeal stout. This is a sipping beer, a dark mix of sweet treacle, coffee and chocolate where the bitterness and alcohol are on display. Yet those bigger flavours are also cloaked by a caramel coat that sweetens the deal and makes it an altogether moreish proposition that the strength may suggest. Six String’s stouts may not be siblings, but they do make for fine companions.

Nick Oscilowski

Published May 10, 2018

Name
Six String Brewing
Address

4/330 The Entrance Road
Erina
NSW 2250

Phone
(02) 4365 4536
Open Hours

Wed to Sat: midday to 9.30pm
Kitchen: midday to 3pm & 5pm to 8pm
Sunday: 10.30am to 4pm Kitchen: 10.30am to 3pm

Regular events

Tours:
From Nov 2020, on weekends
Numbers limited to 10 Bookings essential: bookings@sixstringbrewing.com.au
Brew Days:
Monthly – returning in 2021

Tours

By appointment (max 15 people)

CBCo Goldy
Black Bad Boy Bao 2024 B

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