Sometimes beers hit a home run, sometimes they swing and miss.
I was really excited to open a bottle of Orange Blossom Pilsner‘s Toasted Coconut Porter recently – it’s been sitting in my fridge for a couple months while I lazily ignored it. I believed it would offer a unique, grand coconut flavor, but I was wrong. Apparently I’m not the only one disappointed with this brew, as it has a 82 on Beer Advocate from limited reviews and a 47 on RateBeer.
Let’s keep this one short and sweet after the jump.
If I had to pick out a defining theme of the porter, it would sadly be the lack of coconut flavor. This is doubly disappointing considering it’s what the beer is basing its marketing on. On the nose, I couldn’t pick up any coconut unless I took an incredibly deep whiff, which then only presented me with a light dash of the fruit. It mostly just smelled like a straight-up malty porter.
On each sip, the taste presented itself in this order: light coconut first that quickly gave way to light chocolate from the malt. That was it. I suppose I could commend Orange Blossom Pilsner on creating a balanced beer. While I would’ve loved to have true coconut flavor, it also would have probably been bad as an overpowering adjunct in a beer. Still, for a brew that brands itself as a coconut porter, not a porter with coconut, I’d expect more.
A look at the fast-disappearing head.
The best part of the beer was actually its carbonation. My initial pour gave a generous amount of head that quickly diminished – a common problem of brewing with coconut because it has head-killing oils in it. In spite of this, Thomas Creek or Orange Blossom Pilsner threw something in the recipe to maintain a great, steady, bubbling carbonation that gave a tingle each sip.
Yes, this beer is disappointing, but at least I’m glad I tried it to know as much.
*Note: Orange Blossom Pilsner is the beer company which made this beer at Thomas Creek Brewery in South Carolina. Their website is also an embarrassment.
OBP Toasted Coconut Porter stats: N/A
+Bryan Roth
