I’m thinking Sheaf Stout doesn’t get much love from the CUB stables. See, in my day job I was compiling a page of winter beer reviews for the newspaper’s food and wine magazine. As each of the beers needed a bottle image alongside the review, I contacted the PR company that looks after CUB’s beers and asked them to send me an image.

They couldn’t do that as they’d never heard of the beer and apparently couldn’t find any images of it. Which was quite strange as I’m pretty sure CUB doesn’t do much in the way of dark beers, so I would have thought the few they do make would stand out.

I also thought Sheaf Stout would simply stand out by virtue of being easily one of the finest-tasting beers in the CUB stable. Hell, forget the CUB caveat, it’s simply a fine beer. It’s a very nice dark colour in the glass and gives of all the coffee and chocolate aromas you could want. And it’s even got that wonderful retro label happening that makes you feel like you’re drinking a beer from the 1950s.

If you’re going to drink a mainstream stout, forget the cliched Guinness, go for a stout.