Firebird: Surrey Hills Coffee: Coffee Porter (England: Porter: 5.5% ABV)
Visual: Thin brown head. Dark brown to black opaque body.
Nose: Cold coffee. Mocha coffee. Bitter roasted coffee beans. Lightly earthy. Turmeric. Bitter cocoa.
Body: Bitter. Light chalk. Bitter coffee. Dry coffee cake. Soft vanilla over time. Brown bread.
Finish: Bitter roasted coffee. Light chalk. Dry coffee cake. Dry chocolate cake. Crushed almonds and crushed peanuts.
Conclusion: This is definitely another “It does what it says on the tin” Ronseal kind of beer. This is a coffee porter. Very clearly so!
It feels very cold drip coffee influenced, from my admittedly very limited experience with cold drip coffee. It has very smooth but rounded coffee flavor and not too heavy body, though more bitter than I remember cold drip being.
There is a touch of dry chocolate from the base body, in a dry chocolate cake meets dry coffee cake kind of way. Though thankfully in a beer that works better than biting into actual dry cake, natch.
It’s quite smooth, not too heavy bodied, has a light chalk touch which is not my favorite element but not too intrusive. Over time a soft vanilla comes out which helps smooth the whole thing out.
Now head to head I prefer the similar coffee dark beer that is Electric Bears: Shennaigans, which is an epic coffee stout. But I think that is because of the stout vs porter style difference. I’m a fan of the extra body in a stout, while this emphasises the more porter characteristics. However as a coffee porter this is so very coffee, so I cannot complain at all.
Background: This was a gift from my sister, bought from the The Beer Mine as an example of the brewery Firebird brewing for me to try – thank sis. This was made with coffee from Surrey Hills Coffee and is described as a Baltic Porter infused twice with coffee as different stages. Looking at the can it says it is made using “Brazilian Peabody and Colubian Suarez Arabica Beans”, which will probably mean something to people who know more about coffee than me. It is also unpasturised, vegan and gluten free for people that helps. Music wise I went with a mix of stuff from the always excellent Svalbard.
