Tag: Coffee Stout

Beer Review: Toms River Brewing’s Top O’ the Morning Coffee Stout

Beer Review

Name: Top O’ the Morning Coffee Stout
Brewing Company: Toms River Brewing
Location: Toms River, NJ
Style: Stout – Coffee
ABV: 5.1%

“A smooth, extremely drinkable and balanced Coffee Stout – one of the better I’ve had, especially of the non-barrel-aged variety.”

From Tom River Brewing’s beer list/untappd description:

Coffee before beer or sometimes (if it’s that kind of day) beer before coffee. In that spirit, we collaborated with Bubby’s Beanery right here in Toms River to create Top O’ The Morning. This beer was brewed with Bubby’s blend of Honduran roasts, lending flavors of sweet milk chocolate, cashew and caramel. We then added lactose to carry the acidity of the coffee and to provide heft and mouthfeel. The infusion of robust coffee flavors provides a jump start to your day…morning, noon or night.

Toms River Brewing is a NJ brewery I’ve touched upon briefly here at the Tap Takeover and will again in the future. (Hint: I’ll be posting one of my “brewery spotlight” posts later in the week.) I’ve been seeing cans of their beer in some of my local stores over the better part of the last year and I finally stopped at their brewery recently, during a rainy day on the way back from Chegg’s in Beach Haven. The second beer I had that day is what asserted itself in my taste buds with a pint of deliciousness and has me here writing about it.

On to the beer…

I knew I wanted something a little darker, I saw what Toms River had available via untappd before we even left our trip and the description above really had me intrigued.

The beer I was given in the very interesting glass is dark as dark can be. Only if you look very closely can you see the black Toms River Brewing logo on glass. In other words, the beer looked the part of coffee stout. The aroma of roasted malts that wafted from the glass to my nose was another good sign.

Sometimes you can tell from the first sip of beer everything you need to know about it. That’s exactly what happened with Top O’ the Morning, I got the full flavor of stout and coffee in that first sip and it was delightful. The lactose brings a very welcome sweetness to the beer, adding to the sweetness from the roasted malts and balancing the coffee’s natural bitter elements. There’s also a pleasant lacing of chocolate throughout each sip of beer.  All these flavors blend very well together.

Image courtesy of Toms River Brewing’s Facebook

I’ve had plenty of coffee stouts where the bitterness from the coffee, or overly roasted beans and malts are very off-putting. Toms River skirted that issue completely. The finish on this beer was so good, I found it a little difficult not to consume it in one quick gulp. If I can really level any criticism at the beer (and it is very minor at that), a smidge more bitterness would have been welcome. However, I tend to drink my coffee fairly sweet, so the sweetness in this beer from the lactose is a nice mirror to how I typically drink my coffee.

The beer has the perfect density and feel for the style, too. That element, coupled with the balanced taste, make this one of the more enjoyable coffee stouts I’ve had in quite a while. The craftsmanship and quality of this beer have me eager to try more beers from Toms River Brewing in the future

Beer and coffee are two of my favorite beverages, which is why I love a good coffee stout. With Top O’ the Morning, Toms River Brewing blended the flavors of these two beverages together in great harmony.

Recommended, link to Untappd 4.25-bottle cap rating.

 

Beer Review: Modern Times’s Black House

Beer Review

Name: Black House
Brewing Company: Modern Times Brewing
Location: San Diego, CA
Style: Stout – Coffee
ABV: 5.8%

One of the best coffee stouts you’ll have. Period.

One of the most perfect of pours I’ve ever poured.

From Modern Times’s page for the beer:

It’s so great that you like coffee. I just love that about you. Speaking of which, you’re holding an oatmeal coffee stout positively redolent with coffee aroma and flavor. It kind of tastes like a chocolate-covered espresso bean, only drier and more like beer. Nifty fact: we’re one of the only breweries in the world to roast our own coffee, which allows us to be extremely persnickety about which beans we buy and how we roast them. Taste the persnicketiness!

Coffee and beer, a liquid amalgamation that brings together two of the most popular beverages in the world. Modern Times is one of the more well-regarded San Diego area breweries and they’ve recently begun distributing their beer into NJ. This entry into New Jersey features their core line up: a Pale Wheat Ale (Fortunate Islands) a New England IPA (Orderville), a Gose (Fruitlands Passion Fruit), a straight-forward/West Coast IPA (City of the Sun), and this wonderful Coffee Stout, Black House. In other words, a good sampling of styles. I’d been in the mood for a stout that wasn’t too high in ABV, so I grabbed a four pack as soon as I saw the liquor store on my way home from work had it in stock.

As a person could likely infer from a coffee stout named Black House, the beer pours a very dark black. Given the relatively sessionable ABV of 5.8%, the beer pours from the can into the glass thicker than I’d expect. I don’t always manage to pull off a good head on my pours, but the head on this one is damned near perfect. Fluffy, almost like a whipped batch of malted chocolate milk. The beer was canned late January and I had it almost exactly two months after the canning date so the beer was relatively fresh, at least by stout standards.

The beer smells delicious. Hints of coffee, with a bit of sweetness, and some roast. I think to myself, “I’m going to like this beer.”

That internal thought was correct….

That first sip is just what I’d hope – a near perfect blending of coffee and stout flavors. Like the best beers, the first sip just encourages you to drink more.

As I continue to enjoy the beer, I notice the wonderful sweet coffee flavors on the backend of the beer. I generally drink my morning coffee a little on the sweet side, so the level of sweetness in the coffee portion of the show perfectly evokes my ideal cup of coffee. The coffee flavor is omnipresent, pleasant, and not overpowering.

Another great element of the beer is the lack of bitterness on the finish. Some coffee stouts I’ve had, and the ones I tend not to like, have a bitter, almost burnt coffee taste on the finish. That burnt bitterness is like a badly written ending to a novel or television finale you may have otherwise enjoyed, it makes what came before almost irrelevant. Thankfully for my tastes, that burnt bitterness is not present in Black House. In fact, the opposite is true. The delicious taste makes me want to have more.

Black House is one of the best coffee stouts I’ve ever had. I think I’ll have to give some of Modern Times’s other offerings a try.

Recommended link to Untappd 4.25-Bottle Cap rating.

Beer Review: Two Evil Saigon Scooter Selfie

Beer Review

Name: Twin Evil Saigon Scooter Selfie
Brewing Company: Two Roads Brewing Company / Evil Twin Brewing Company
Location: Stratford, CT / Copenhagen, Denmark
Style: Stout – Coffee
ABV: 9.5%

From Two Roads Brewing’sWeb site:

For our latest Two Evil collaborative brew, Two Roads’ Phil and Evil Twin’s Jeppe sampled and became enamored with a popular Vietnamese coffee drink called “Ca Phe Sua Da” (cah-fe sah dah). Thick & decadent, like a coffee milkshake, it was the inspiration for this Vietnamese-style Coffee Stout. They then traveled to the chaotic, scooter packed streets of Saigon to meet up with good friends at Heart Of Darkness Brewery. It was there that the brewers created the first batch of this collaborative beer.

So raise a glass (or can), snap a selfie and enjoy a taste of Vietnam!

Two Roads is one of the most consistent breweries in the Northeast, maybe in the United States. Of the nearly 20 distinct beers I’ve had from them, the lowest untappd rating from me was 3.5 bottle caps and that was only one beer, while the vast majority are 4 bottle caps and above. Evil Twin is just as respectable in the beer world and the two companies (mainly Phil Markowski from Two Roads and Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø from Evil Twin) have collaborated multiple times under the “Two Evil” banner to brew some great beers. This coffee stout; however, might be their best collaboration yet. At least it is my favorite.

Coffee stouts are a popular style and one of my favorites so knowing what I stated above, I had to get my hands on this one. On the other hand, sometimes a coffee stout can be far too bitter, largely from the over-roasted coffee. So what about this beer?

As you’d expect from a stout made with coffee, the beer pours very black and I appreciate the thick body from the beer as it filled up my Two Roads pint glass. The head is a little creamy looking, too. Or, to put it another way, on quick glance and in a different glass, one might think this is coffee. There’s a nice sweet coffee aroma coming off the beer and I settle into the couch and take a sip. This. Is. Good.

This beer is everything a stout, specifically a coffee stout, should be. For my palette, it hits all the pleasing notes a coffee stout ought to hit, while managing to strum a few new chords and notes. The coffee flavor doesn’t overtake the beer, it is a harmonious marriage. The presence of brown sugar could potentially make this cloyingly sweet, but nope. The sweetness is perfect. Add in the cream / condensed milk flavor from the Ca Phe Sua Da the beer is attempting to mimic or evoke in one’s palette and you have a stout that is the perfect marriage of familiar and new.

I had just worked a very long day (13 hours for a quarter end) and considering the time of year (cold weather January), I couldn’t think of a more perfect beer to enjoy for dessert.

Recommended, link to Untappd 4.25-bottle cap rating.

Untapped badges earned with this beer:

Better Together (Level 8)

What happens when you take two or more amazing breweries, throw them into the tank and let them ferment together? An amazing collaboration beer, that’s what! Cheers to working together to create the perfect flavor. That’s 40 different beers that have been brewed as a collaboration.

Beer Review: AleSmith’s Speedway Stout

Beer Review

Name: Speedway Stout

Brewing Company: Alesmith Brewing Company)
Location: San Diego, CA
Style: Stout – American Imperial/Double
ABV: 12%

From AleSmith’s page for the beer:

Speedway Stout’s ominous, pitch-black appearance has become a hallmark of this modern-day classic. Chocolate and roasted malts dominate the flavor, supported by notes of dark fruit, toffee, and caramel. A healthy dose of locally-roasted coffee from Ryan Bros. Coffee, Inc. added to each batch brings out the beer’s dark chocolate flavors and enhances its drinkability. Despite its intensity, Speedway Stout’s fine carbonation and creamy mouthfeel make it very smooth and surprisingly easy to drink. This beer ages very well and will continue to mature for many years to come.

AleSmith is one of the great California craft breweries, having established itself as a presence in San Diego over twenty years ago in 1995. Their beers have won acclaim and loyal fans from their IPAs, their San Diego Pale Ale .394 (named in honor of Tony Gwynn) and this, perhaps their most popular beer with over 100,000 check-ins in untappd. I’ve wanted to try it (or one of its variants) for a while and I’m pleased I finally did.

I’ve seen the beer in large bottles and pint cans, with the pint cans sold singly for about $7, which may be pricey for a single pint in a liquor store but compared to a pint in a bar, it is a bargain. Be that as it may, I popped open the can and out came a thick black beer that was quite dark. As the head formed, there was a little bit of a deep brown at the top and in the foam – the color was reminiscent of a lightly creamed coffee. In other words, this looked like my kind of stout. With an aroma of coffee coming from the glass along with the roasted malts, I barely sat down before taking the first sip.

Whoa-Damn!

This beer is a flavor assault, in a good way. The the typical stout-like flavors are present: roasted malts, extra hops since this an imperial stout and an ample amount of coffee. Usually stouts this high in alcohol with this complex of a flavor profile are barrel-aged. The brewmaster(s) at AleSmith coaxes plenty of flavor without the addition of the stout having aged in barrels and that is quite impressive. While the hops are definitely present as I said, they were just one component of the flavor profile and not overly dominant like I’ve had in some other stouts from West Coast breweries.

As much as the flavor profile is potent and delicious, one thing that is deceiving is the ABV. While you do get some of the alcohol and slight booziness, I would never guess this beer is 12% ABV.

After some friends and coworkers talked up this beer, I had fairly high hopes for it. I was a little cautious because some the hops can be far too dominant on some of these stouts, but that was far from the case with Speedway Stout.

Highly recommended. Now I just need to try some of the variants.

Recommended, link to Untappd 4.25-star rating.

Untapped badges earned with this beer: Heavy Weight (Level 58)

Heavy Weight (Level 58)

You like it thick and dark. Your beer! What did you think we were talking about? That’s 290 different beers with the style of Porter or Stout.

2X (Level 29)

When a single isn’t enough, make it a double. Doubling the hops and malts in a recipe results in a higher ABV and can pack quite a boozey punch. That’s 145 different beers with the style that contains Imperial / Double in its style name.

 

 

Beer Review: Epic Brewing’s Son of a Baptist

Beer Review

Name: Son of a Baptist
Brewing Company: Epic Brewing Company
Location: Salt Lake City, UT and Denver, CO
Style: Stout – Imperial/Double
ABV: 8%

From the beer’s description on Epic Brewing Company’s landing page for the beer:

Son of a Baptist is an 8% ABV imperial stout. It is not barrel aged like its father, Big Bad Baptist; instead its flavor profile was designed to highlight the complex and often unique flavors of small batch coffees. Instead of sourcing a coffee that would play well in a beer we sought out creative and innovative roasters, then asked them which beans they’re passionate about. Each resulting release of Son of a Baptist is widely different depending on the coffee selected. Some are fruity and sweet with notes of jam and chocolate, others are rich and earthy with a big roasted finish. Each limited release will return to the Roaster’s home market where the beer and the coffee can be sampled side by side.

Stouts, truly my favorite style of beer. Add coffee to the beer in the appropriate amount, and I like the beer even more since coffee is probably the beverage I drink at least as much as or more than beer. Coffee may be the most prevalent adjunct flavor element in stouts and given that large swath of coffee stouts on the market, they vary in quality. For some of those coffee stouts, the coffee overpowers the beer. In other coffee stouts, the coffee is barely noticeable. With Epic’s Son of a Baptist, harmony is achieved.

As the beer pours from the can into the glass, I realize this is one of the blackest beers I’ve ever had. A combination of the roasted malts and coffee add to this, I suspect, but the aroma hints at coffee rather than blasting your senses with the coffee.

That first sip sets the tone for the delicious 12 oz that will be consumed. The standard stout flavors of roasted malt, a bit of hops are prevalent but the coffee slides in to give a wonderful, balanced flavor. There’s an added layer of sweetness not all coffee stouts exhibit. I do tend to put a little more sugar in my coffee so I’m accustomed to sweetened coffee. Whatever the fine folks at Epic did with the coffee matches just about perfectly with the level of sweetness I try to achieve every morning in my own mug of coffee.

For a non-barrel-aged stout, Son of a Baptist packs a decent punch at 8%. The closest comparison I can think of is Founders’ vaunted Breakfast Stout, a beer I love and get quite regularly. Son of a Baptist compares extremely favorably against Founders’ brew, so I’d highly recommend seeking out Son of a Baptist.

One of my co-workers was talking about this beer for the last few days before I picked up the six pack at my favorite beer shop. In other words, he convinced me to give this one a try and I’m very happy I did.

The particular six pack I purchased used beans from Novo Coffee. There are about at least another dozen variants to Son of a Baptist with beans from other local roasters so I may have to give each of those a try.

The “Baptist” line of stouts from Epic is very well regarded. In addition to the Son of a Baptist, there’s the Big Bad Baptist, which is aged in whiskey barrels as well as Triple Barrel Big Bad Baptist with coconut aged in rum and whisky barrels.

Recommended, link to Untappd 4.5-star rating.

Untapped badges earned with this beer:

Heavy Weight (Level 53)

You like it thick and dark. Your beer! What did you think we were talking about? That’s 265 different beers with the style of Porter or Stout.

2X (Level 26)

When a single isn’t enough, make it a double. Doubling the hops and malts in a recipe results in a higher ABV and can pack quite a boozey punch. That’s 130 different beers with the style that contains Imperial / Double in its style name.

 

Beer Review: Flounder Iced Coffee Stout

Beer Review

Name: Iced Coffee Stout
Brewing Company: Flounder Brewing
Location: Hillsborough, NJ
Style: Stout
ABV: 4.6.%

From the beer’s description on untappd:

Iced black coffee has become sort of a staple during our morning brews. We figured, why not make a beer that tastes just like one? Perfect for desert, or a quick pick-me-up in the morning!

A 4.6% light bodied Stout conditioned on a custom cold brew roast coffee from our friends Fieldstone Coffee Roasters in Milford, NJ.

A stout? In Summer? A stout as a summer-time seasonal beer? Crazy, I know. But listen, I drink coffee every day and in the summer, like many people (and possibly a major reason Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks make so much money) I prefer Iced Coffee to the piping hot Joe in the morning. Same reason I typically won’t have soup on a hot summer day. Our friends at Flounder hit upon that idea with this beer and it was even better than I expected.

Flounder Brewing has been around for a few years now. I recall one of their beers winning the Fan Favorite beer at one of the first Brewfests I attended. I have to be up front, this brewery is the next town over from me, on the way from work (if I go one of the half dozen ways home) and I know one of the brewers from our day job together. On the other hand, I was enjoying their beers before I started working at the company where we both work so if anything, any partial “bias” here comes from the proximity and Garden State roots of the brewery but mostly from the quality of the beer they create. I will likely go into more detail about the great things Flounder has done and the accolades they’ve received in a future Draught Diversions post.

So, what about their Iced Coffee Stout?

Although I’ve said Hefeweizen is my favorite style, I’d be lying if I said Stouts weren’t a close second or even tied for that top spot. Since joining untappd in February 2014, I’ve had over 150 different stouts compared to the 50 or so different Hefeweizens. Then again, there is a far wider variety of stouts and many more flavor enhancements that can be added to stouts or variations on the style than a Hefeweizen. For example, brewing a stout to evoke the same flavor profile as one would get from Iced Coffee.

Sometimes coffee stouts can carry over the bitterness of coffee, which doesn’t always make for either a pleasing overall flavor profile, or may impart an aftertaste that could offset the initial taste of the beer. I didn’t find that to be the case with Flounder’s take on what has become a staple of the stout variety. I’ll notch that up to the beans and what seems to be more sweetness. At least when I have iced coffee, I tend to have it with more sugar than hot coffee. Whatever secrets the brewers at Flounder have put into this recipe, it works very well.

Stout, as a style, is one that sometimes tastes better as the beer warms to room temperature. This one, as the Iced Coffee name implies, doesn’t benefit quite as much as do the higher ABV barrel-aged stouts. This beer, you want fresh from the tap or just as it is poured from the growler you had in your fridge. Speaking of the ABV, this one is nice and low at 4.6% making for a nice sessionable beer, one where a couple in an hour wouldn’t unsettle you too much. Again, if you have more than that, make sure you aren’t driving anywhere and so forth.

Flounder has played with beer expectations and given craft beer drinkers lucky enough to live near the brewery the chance to enjoy a summertime stout, something that is outside of conventional beer brewing and drinking.

Flounder hasn’t yet bottled or canned their beer for store availability, so you’ll either have to go to a bar where their beer is on tap or stop in the brewery located in Hillsborough and fill up your growler. I filled up a growler on a Friday in May and it didn’t last the weekend. They tapped another keg this past weekend and the beer is just fantastic.

Recommended, link to Untappd 4.25-star rating.