A while I ago I wrote a blog post about some Irish Craft Beers I’d love to see rebrewed & reintroduced. Since 2013 I have harassed poor Declan of YellowBelly/Otterbank & Alex of Rye River/Whiplash about rebrewing their Farami Stout, which is made with my all-time favorite coffee, 3Fe’s ‘Farami’ blend. I got my wish. It happened.

The single greatest stout I’ve ever had was Otterbank’s Farami. Brewed gypsy-style in Brú Brewery’s brewhouse in Navan, County Meath in 2013 it was a triumphant bastard of a full-on, hardcore oatmeal coffee stout. In the time since this beer was brewed, I’ve had a few thousand beers (not kidding), & all I’ve kept dreaming about amongst the plethora of Stone beers, BrewDog Tokyo*’s, hop-fuelled IBU rage monkey IPA’s, Farami continued to be my obsession.

Last year I went brewing with Alex for a collab-beer called Sticker Junkie IPA, & I’d thought about doing an imperial version of Farami with him with some additions such as Amaretto (because I’m a sick guy – bugger off King Ross, I’ll gimmick infringe when I want!!!!). Every time I’ve had a coffee stout, I’ve found myself pissed off it wasn’t as good as Farami.

Let me wind this back a bit first to explain this obsession. 3Fe are an artisan coffee roaster & café in Dublin City that have a speciality coffee blend called Farami. It’s an incredibly clean finishing coffee made with Costa Rican beans from Farami de Dota in the Tarrazu Valley from the Catuai variety which is an arabica varietal, which due to the nature of the plant, it requires alot of care, attention & is notoriously difficult to harvest as the fruit doesn’t fall easily from the tree, but fortunately it’s a high yield plant.

This coffee blend is a big hit of milk chocolate up front which gives way to a sweetened appled type flavour finishing on a lemon note. It’s to my mind, the perfect morning & mid-day coffee blend. And I am utterly in love with it & have been for a long time.

Alex & Declan know a thing or eight about stouts. Alex has made Uncle Jim’s stout at Rye River into a beast of a nitro stout. Declan’s recent stouts for YellowBelly,, ‘Kangaroo Jack‘ & ‘It’s not Vodka‘ were both stunning. And so, under Alex’s own Whiplash Brewing label, ‘Farami’ has returned.

When I got word before its release it was happening, I got insanely excited. And I mean excited. Farami for its triumphant return comes in a can. It is brutally brilliant in its delivery of coffee powered awesomeness. So much so, even The Sun newspaper has recommended it as a craft beer for Christmas.

Cracking the can open, a big giant waft of Farami coffee erupts out of the can. Poured, it creates a wonderful one finger, rich creamy chocolate milkshake type head with a creamy coffee aroma on the nose. The first taste on the palette is a wonderfully rich, milk chocolate, which then gives way to a great stout flavour carried by the oatmeal which gives a fantastic velvet smooth mouthfeel, with a great coffee hit finish.

I’ve hadsome very good coffee stouts over the years, but none of them have even remotely come close to Farami. I dare even say, even this rebrew with an additional half a percent ABV & obviously access to a great brewing kit in Rye River, is the single best stout I;ve ever had. This is the ONE stout where I can take a can from my beer cellar & crack it open without jamming it in a fridge, where straight away it gives me everything I want.

And it’s a super accompanyment beer. With a mince pie? Epic. With a fried breakfast? Fantastic. Middle-of-the-day cookie snack? Righteous. I’m itching to try a can or two of this beer to be used in doing a giant piece of slow cooked pulled pork, or some brownies.

Bottom line here is; if you’ve done your christmas beer shoppping & not gotten some of this, get your arse to one of the stockists of Whiplash beers & don;t just buy one or two, buy alot of it. This is the definitive Irish Stout. There is nothing brewed in this country or anywhere that comes close to how good this stout is.

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