This beer was given to me along with 6 others as a gift for being in a very good friends wedding recently. I look forward to reviewing them all for you, but this one peaked my interest the most so I had to give it a go first.
Appearance:
The Porter pours a very dark brown with a hint of red and with a little more than a finger of dark cream colored foam head. The pour was thin and smooth with only slight carbonation and dark enough to keep you from seeing through it, but not so dark that you couldn’t grab some light.
Aroma:
The nose was kind of dissapointing. I was expecting a much thicker vanilla aroma up front and although the nose was sweet, I felt that dry toasty malts and chocolate notes really dominated. It is actually making me wonder if some of the other “chocolate” notes I have pulled out of beer before weren’t actually hints of vanilla.
Taste:
The vanilla is much more mellow that I was expecting. I take back what I said about doubting myself too. The chocolate aroma definitely turns into a chocolate malt flavor on the tongue. There is definite dry toasted malts backing it all up. There is a slight hop bitterness tickling the outside of my tongue, but nothing that would drive the milder crowd to put it down.
Palate:
The body of the brew is quite nice. Medium bodied and silky perfectly on style in my opinion
Overall:
In total, I am actually dissapointed in this beer. I was expecting a sweeter more vanillla driven porter and it felt much more dry and chocolate forward. Not to say that this is a bad brew though. It is very well made and very well balance, but just not what I was hoping for. It is going to be tough for me to score this one because what I wanted and what it was were two very different things.
Total:
83 / 100
