Strawberry Gum Stout by Beer Farm

This week’s beer comes from WA and is the first stout for the blog.  It’s the Strawberry Gum Stout from Beer Farm’s Native Series.

First off, for anyone who might be reading from outside Australia, in this case a strawberry gum is a type of eucalyptus tree, not a piece of pink chewing gum.  While neither is a flavour typically found in a beer, the former works well in a stout, the latter would be utterly disgusting (although I’m betting someone has probably tried it).

Beer Farm has started a brilliant range of beers called their Native Series which incorporates and highlights native Australian ingredients and flavours.  I’ve tried a few of them and, while I haven’t loved every one, I love the idea, the pushing of boundaries, and the utter uniqueness of the ingredients that, to my knowledge, haven’t really been used in beers before.  And to be fair, none of the native series have been particularly bad either, some were just not quite to my tastes.

This, however, is very much not the case with the Strawberry Gum Stout.  For me, the key here is that it is first and foremost just a damn tasty stout.  I may have mentioned previously that one of my pet-beer-hates is when breweries make a big, strong-flavoured stout  and dump all sorts of crazy flavours in it (I’ve seen cotton candy/fairy floss, bacon, pineapple, and a fair few other off the wall additions) that don’t really add to the beer, and are really just there to make it jump out and look unique on the menu. 

But as I mentioned, the Strawberry Gum Stout nimbly avoids this by starting with the delicious stout.  The strawberry gum flavour is definitely there, but more provides a unique highlight flavour rather than either an overpowering taste, or one lost beneath a deep dark stoutiness.  It is a rare and welcome deliciously balanced beer in the ever growing (and all too often ham-handed) ‘funky-flavoured stout’ genre.

It also comes in at 6.5% which has a bit of a kick, but really not too high at all for your average stout.

In general, I would definitely recommend giving any beer you find in Beer Farm’s Native Series a try.  At the very least they’re unique with flavours you almost definitely haven’t tasted in a beer before.  But specifically, this Strawberry Gum Stout is an absolute winner.  I whole-heartedly recommend giving it a try if you see it in your local bottle shop.