Dogfish Head World Wide Stout
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(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Let this be a lesson for anyone exploring beers by Dogfish Head — if the ABV rating is nowhere to be seen, but the word “ridiculous” appears on the label, assume you are in for a heckuva strong beer.
The bottle describes Dogfish Head’s World Wide Stout as, “A very dark beer brewed with a ridiculous amount of barley.” In fact, so much barley is used that I should have treated the beer as a barley wine; Dogfish Head’s World Wide Stout has an 18% ABV rating!
I know this now, but I didn’t do my research before imbibing. I merely grabbed a big beer glass and dumped the entire 12 oz bottle in with such force that it created the big, tan head you see in the picture — usually, such a high alcohol-by-volume beer wouldn’t produce much of a foamy topper. Such was my carelessness that the beer gods, now offended, began plotting my imminent comeuppance.
World Wide Stout certainly was dark, pitch black with mere dark brown highlights, and it smelled delicious. Though alcohol dominated the aroma, the astringency was infused with rich vanilla, licorice, and roasted chestnuts — creating a perfume that sped deliberately to the nose and delivered its aromatic right punch. This stout smelled like the inside of a bourbon barrel; one that’s empty but still redolent of hooch.
This is a lean and condensed beer in the mouth. Not thick on the tongue, not oily, but so packed with flavor it seems dense as it lights up your taste buds. The aroma strongly influences the taste, sweet but roasted, malty with hints of plum-like fruit and charred wood. The combination affected a resemblance to some hybrid of stout and liquor, rum and bourbon.
Dogfish Head describes the beer as:
Dark, rich, roasty and complex, World Wide Stout has more in common with a fine port than a can of cheap, mass-marketed beer . . . Have one with (or as!) dessert tonight!
As it happens, my “dessert” came before dinner — and I learned never to drink Dogfish Head on an empty stomach. Or to drink it so quickly.
So engrossed was I with the flavor nuances and cobra-charmed by its aroma, I downed the beer with little thought spared to the virtue of a lengthy savor. This beer is designed for sipping and sharing, but I finished in about 20 minutes — the equivalent of chugging three or four beers in a row — and walked away feeling quite pleasantly buzzed.
The sweetly-bitter aftertaste lingered pleasantly, but the alcohol had just begun to flex its muscle.
Don’t offend the beer gods when deference and awe are due to a beer. They just might slur your speech, plant your rear end on the couch, and let you wake up in the wee hours of the morning to a TV infomercial while your fuzzy head aches for relief.
Or put another way — wow, that was a great beer!
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