Beer Review: Dogfish Head Oak Aged Vanilla World Wide Stout

Name:Oak Aged Vanilla World Wide Stout
Brewing Company: Dogfish Head Craft Brewery
Location: Milton Delaware
Style: Stout / Imperial Stout / American Double
ABV: 16% IBU: 70

From the beer’s description on Dogfish Head’s site:

Rare and often rumored about in the darkest corners of the beer community, World Wide Stout is dark, rich, roasty and complex, and lingers somewhere beyond the limits of the average beer.

Brewed with a ridiculous amount of barley, we’ve now taken this Dogfish Head classic and aged it on oak with real vanilla beans! With a little tender love and care we foster this beer from smooth, sweet wort into the big, bad blackend stout it always longed to be. Its bold, port-like complexity goes great with (or as) dessert.

With its high ABV, this is an excellent candidtate for cellaring, so grab a few bottles to enjoy now and lay the others down for a few years.

I seem to be making my way through some of the foundationial Northeastern Craft Breweries on these beer reviews without even planning it, having reviewed great beers from Tröegs and Victory in Pennsylvania and Flying Fish right here in New Jersey. Few breweries and brewers have as much respect in the world of craft beer as Dogfish Head and Sam Calagione. From experimental brews to beers that are icons in the American Craft Beer landscape, Dogfish Head has been brewing it all since 1995 and Sam even had a TV Show (Brew Masters).

One of their semi-regular releases is World Wide Stout, big 18% Stout that catches a hefty price tag. One bottle can be pricier than a six-pack of a quality beer. I was foolish when the beer was released last year, I didn’t pick up a bottle. However, I was not going to let this Oak-Aged Vanilla variant go off the shelves without picking up a bottle.

My, oh my am I glad I picked up a bottle.

The first thing I did after pouring the beer in the glass pictured above was nothing. Just look at how pitch black and beautiful that beer looks. I wanted to let it sit for a bit, come up to room temperature and breath to let the flavors come alive. Strike that, I took a big whiff of the beer and there was a great punch of vanilla.

I was slightly nervous, I have to admit. I’ve had a couple of beers with vanilla beans or some kind of vanilla component and I was a little disappointed, the vanilla was too over powering in those beers. I won’t name names, I try to focus on the positive when talking about specific beers here at the Tap Takeover. Knowing the quality of Dogfish Head’s beers, I really should not have worried. If the aroma was a hint of things to come (and it was), the vanilla here was quite present but not dominant.

The first sip was just sublime, the roasty flavor of a stout comes through, there’s a little bit of the oak, but that vanilla shines through so well. Like I said, it doesn’t hit you in the face and overpower you, but it is a noticeable, perfect blend with the stout flavors you’d expect along with a hint of the oak.

The beer is a whopping 16% ABV and isn’t too noticeable on the first sip, but the more you have of the beer, the more the potency comes through. Again, not in an overpowering way, but as a perfect element of the gestalt of this beer.

One other element of the beer that surprised me was the high IBU at 70 IBUs, when I saw that I earned another level on “Hopped Up” badge (for beers with an IBU over 65). A lot of these higher ABV stouts have a large hop presence, but there was no real bitterness to the beer, the hops were just slightly noticeable to me at least. Again, a perfectly applied component of a delicious beer.

A sipping beer to enjoy over the course of 45 minutes or so, or “slow, easy drinking” as I said on my untappd comment. This one helped me through the finale of Game of Thrones. While the show delivered some of what I expected, the beer went above and beyond to the point I was sad when there was no more.

This is an outstanding beer that I cannot recommend enough, if you are able to track down a bottle. I know I will because I want to see how this beer tastes a couple of years from now.

Recommended, link to Untappd 4.75-star rating.