Scuttlebutt: Porter (USA: Porter: 5.5% ABV)
Visual: Black. Dark brown at edges. Thin beige head.
Nose: Roasted. Nutty. Dry roasted peanuts. Creamy yet slightly dry. Praline and bitetr chococlate. Mild coffee. Slight sour cherries.
Body: Slightly chalky. Bitter and slightly soured. Slight sour black-cherries. Slightly light when chilled. Thin malt drinks. Somewhat roasted. Bready.
Finish: Chocolate bread on brown spread. Light chalk. Bitter and charred. Popcorn. Bitter cocoa dust. Sour cream and chives touch. Smoke and burnt wood.
Conclusion: Pretty savoury for a porter this one is. There are nuts, bready character, a sour cream twist touch, slight smoke – It is low on sweetness and quite dry. Chilled it can come through a tad thin as well. It feels pretty attenuated for a porter, definitely a much drier experience than normal, with smokey notes filling the finish, rising up to fill the gap the lightness gives. Also in odd notes, there is even a slight sour character that comes through sour cherry style. All in all an odd take on the porter so far.
At first I thought all this may be because I had it too chilled – but I’ve let it warm over time, and while it no longer feels so thin, it still feels like an odd mash up of notes. The aroma promises a fairly standard, chocolate, roasted and coffee heavy porter – albeit a good one. The closest the body comes to a standard porter is the roasted character and a malt drink presence.
The flavours tend towards the harsher ideas, without being too harsh in the implementation, if that makes sense. Slight sour cherries, slight rough chalk, slight roasted notes – harsh but all slight. The biggest element is the smoke in the finish which is very present and mouth filling.
It all ends up feeling slightly neutral, but the harsher idea flavours means it doesn’t manage for easy drinking either. Too rough to be easy going, but too restrained to boom. It feels like a half way porter with no home to go to. Not repulsive but a very meh porter.
Background: Grabbed from Brewdog’s Guest Beer selection, this was a bit of a random grab – don’t know anything about the brewer – just felt like grabbing a more normal beer than all the weird oddities flying around these days. Sometimes you just want a beer made with malt, hops, water and yeast. Drunk while listening to some 8-bit takes on Bad Religion – because I love punk and I love fun chiptunes.
