Cigar City: Papso’s Passion Fruit Porter (USA: Porter: 6% ABV)
Visual: Black, large bubbled thin browned head. Quite a bit of wet suds caused around glass.
Nose: Light roasted. Chocolate dust. Apricot. Cloying.
Body: Quite fresh and slightly tart. Bitter chocolate undertone. Lime cordial. Passion fruit. Sour dough. Apricot. Strawberries. Bitter complex coffee. Kiwi fruit. Cider apple.
Finish: Roasted nuts. Bitter. Fresh feel. Sour touch. Bitter coffee. Sour dough. Peaches. Kiwi.
Conclusion: Well, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with this beer but I definitely know what I got! It took me a while to pin down, but finally I realized that this is very much like those deliciously fruity high end coffees.
Now of course a bitter coffee porter isn’t exactly ground breaking, but that really is the undertones and base, the element that allows it to layer on all the fruit flavours that make it seem like not just any coffee but quality coffee.
What grabs your attention is that slight soured fruitiness, yes there is passion fruit, but it mixes with the porter to create the impression of a huge range of fruit flavours somehow. What I find marvelous is exactly how heat responsive it is. Chilled it is all about the fruit, warm the coffee and chocolate are the main play, but it is in that half way point where it peaks as a mix of the two and that impression of high quality fruity coffee is exemplified to show its best facets.
There, in that moment it is lovely, however it is hard to hold it at this point, but well worth trying to hold there as long as you can and enjoying while you have it, all that kiwi depth, apricot high notes and sheer passion fruit. All wrapped up in and backed by the coffee, but the fruits are what you pay attention to.
I think we are going to see a wide range of experiences from people with this beer due to its heat reactiveness. Warm it is good but a bit too close to a standard porter style, cold it is very fruity and almost completely loses the porter. When it is on though, it is bloody great.
A difficult beer, but worth it if you can play it just right.
Background: Picked up from Brewdog Bristol this sounded proper nice, I’ve only had a bare handful of Cigar City beers but they seem to do pretty darn well. This one, a porter made with vast amounts of passion fruit, which sounds very counter intuitive, but hey. Anyway, drunk while listening to some moody music from Ritualz, especially Bodie (Warning, that song samples the last series of the wire so some spoilers).
