New brewery alert! For me anyway. I’m talking about Birds Fly South, from Greenville South Carolina. I saw one of their beers on tap at Stout’s Growlers here in Canton, Georgia and decided to try it. The beer was Nights Like These, an Irish Dry Stout. The brewery says on their about page:

We make craft beer with a throwback approach. Through a combination of time-tested brewing/blending methods and modern practices, we create beer that is complex, thought-provoking, and above all delicious.

We focus on truly slow beer – mainly Farmhouse Ales and Saisons in our wild brewery and lagers on our clean production side – with a passion for experimenting with other wild and traditional styles from Imperial Stouts to IPAs to Dutch Kuits.

They say about this beer in particular:

The perfect toast to cooler temps. A full bodied, delicious and dark Dry Stout that is rich and roasty with minimal hop and soft conditioning. This classic Irish pint has a caramelized subtlety at the start, mellows into chocolate and coffee malt flavors, and finishes with a clean, light dryness on the tongue.

I love Irish stouts which made this decision a slam dunk for me. It helped, too, that at 4% alcohol by volume, this was an authentic Irish stout, and a sessionable beer indeed. So, I plunked down my heard earned ten bucks for a 32-ounce growler and brought it home.

When I filled my glass with Birds Fly South Nights Like These Irish Dry Stout I got a beer jet black in color with a thick creamy tan head and subtle roast in the nose. Taking a sip the beer is gently roasty, with a little coffee, a little chocolate, a little caramel. There is a subtle roastiness in the finish.

Subtle defines this beer (they even describe it that way themselves, although they also call it rich and roasty, which I do not). All the flavor elements are too restrained for me, the body is thin, and the beer is nigh watery.

I was very disappointed with my first beer from Birds Fly South. While Nights Like These is not a beer I would buy again, I am told by a friend in my beer group that their sours are to die for. I will try them of course not only upon his advice, but because I am not one to allow one off beer sour me on a brewery for good.