Stout Of This World
India is home to Asia’s best stout beer. Esquire India deciphers the often mysterious and misunderstood beer
In the world of beers, stouts often get overlooked. Dark, mysterious and misunderstood, stouts can be called an acquired taste and hard to approach.
Not at Fort City though. The Delhi microbrewery recently won the accolade of Asia’s Best Brewpub at the Asia Beer Championship 2025 in Bangkok. More interestingly, its oatmeal stout variant - Over the Moon - was adjudged the best stout beer in Asia in the same competition. “If the World Beer Cup is the Oscars, then the Asia Beer Championship is like the IIFA of beer awards,” says Ashish Ranjan, co-founder, Fort City. “Most of the breweries that have won gold, silver at World Beer Cup, they have been performing well here.”
I meet Ranjan and co-founder Gautham Gandhi at Fort City on a balmy Friday afternoon. The second floor is relatively empty for now and makes for perfect sitting for an interview about beers.
Founded in 2021, Fort City holds a cult status among beer drinkers in Delhi. From interesting beer drops and collaborations to cultural and quiz events, the brewpub has become a location of interest for beer goers.
Gandhi says it was a result of their collective wants for better beer in the national capital. “We were missing good beers,” he says. “We knew we were not alone. There's a whole bunch of people who are coming back to India, having worked abroad: be it the US, Europe, Australia or Japan. Beer becomes a very critical part of your life when you're living outside India. You're drinking beer more than you're eating anything. But we had no options here -- nothing to drink that was at a global level,” he adds.
The recent awards are another feather in the brewpub’s cap. While Fort City sent five entries for the awards in Singapore, it was the stout that struck gold. “The logistics were probably the hardest part,” says Gandhi. “The batch (of Over the Moon) we sent was brewed very last minute because a previous batch met with stuck fermentation,” he adds. “Yeast is a live organism. It plays in very mysterious ways. You have to give it the best atmosphere – almost C-Suite conditions for it to work,” adds Ranjan.
But what makes this stout so interesting? Having tasted the beer a few weeks earlier, it’s fair to say Over the Moon leaves a lasting impression on the palate. The addition of chocolate is inspired by the Cyclo Imperial Chocolate Stout from Pasteur Street Brewing Company in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. “Stout was one of the first beers Gautham perfected,” says Ranjan, who also points to the Milk Stout by Left Hand Brewing as an inspiration. “When I was in the US, it was the first beer that caught my attention,” he adds.
Gandhi and Ranjan did not want to go down the milk/lactose route for their stout. Enter oatmeal, which gives Over the Moon a distinct body and mouthfeel. You get notes of coffee and chocolate on the nose too. Fort City uses cacao nibs’ husk from Darkins Chocolate in Delhi. “The husks are anyway transported somewhere to be dumped. Instead, they come here, and we use them in our beers… We kept adding more of it to a point where we were getting very strong chocolate notes from it,” Ranjan explains.
Over the Moon has an interesting brew story as well. The first batch of the beer was dropped on the day India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission made a soft landing on Moon's south pole.
Like India’s moon missions, beers also involve their fair share of science and chemistry. Fort City has close to 6-7 beers at any given time: from IPAs to Saisons to lagers. On the other hand, their nitro stout is lighter and airy. The cascading effect in the beer, which is a downward flow of tiny nitrogen bubbles, catches your eye. It is a hit and run on your palate.
Meanwhile, Over the Moon is a slow treat, like melting chocolate in your mouth. It is also one of Fort City’s most complex beers, with 7-8 malts that give it different characters. The flaked oats, the cacao nib husks, the right amount of water – every element finally brings a good beer to life. “It's actually like having a nice cold brownie chocolate, which lingers on your tongue. It’s slightly sticky and then it slowly flows back,” says Ranjan.
Gandhi and Ranjan also debunk some myths around stout beers. High on alcohol content? Not really. Not all of them. “Anything that's dark, people relate that to the alcohol content,” says Gandhi. “Globally, a lot of stouts are table, sessionable stouts, which are at three to five percent ABV”.
Is there a right season to drink stouts? “If you look at higher alcohol stouts, you will prefer to have them in winters,” Ranjan adds. “But across the world, stouts are great for day drinking, summers, winters, autumns, gloomy weather, happy weather. It’s the perfect all-season drinks. Ireland only drinks stout.”
What about caffeine? “That’s another misconception. Unless it’s a cold brew stout, which is another category. So, you can get a good night's sleep after drinking a stout,” Ranjan tells me. Clearly, beer works in mysterious ways.
We end the interview in the most apt way possible, with a tasting of the Over the Moon stout. The sun is slowly setting now, and more people begin to pour in at Fort City for their Friday night plans. The beer though still tastes the same. Chocolaty, exquisite and long-lasting.