Opus Dei

About 5 years ago, I was given a gift of two bottles of very special beer: Sam Adams Triple Bock 1995 Reserve, brewed with maple syrup. 10 year old bottles of beer. At the time I didn't fully appreciate what I had been given, but I didn't squander it either. They were buried and forgotten from time to time, peeking through piles in our storage room to remind me that I had these incredible-yet-mysterious bottles of whatever, waiting for god-knows-what before I finally drank them. The Pope? The end of the universe? Who knew.

Five years of seeing and forgetting these beers passed by. But finally, unearthed yet again under piles of useless junk I'll never use, I decided this was the time. Why wait any longer? What magic could possibly happen that hasn't already?

Fighting reluctance and embracing anticipation, tonight became the night. It was time. A 15 year old beer was to meet its fate, brewed to be consumed, not cherished like a collectors' item or ignored.

First, a glimpse of the bottle. The container alone created an atmosphere; dark blue bottle made black by beer, gold script and a cork are the details that Jim Koch uses to let people know that while he cares about his beers, this is one he really cares about.

As I peeled the wrapper from around he cork, I could smell Samuel Adams Triple Bock before I even removed the stopper. Already, hints of chocolate, plums and molasses peeked from around the cork and reminded me more of a cognac than a beer. The anticipation was almost too much.

I finally uncorked the bottle (notice the cork, dark with molasses-y beer), pouring it with a certain amount of reverence into my pint glass. Triple Bock poured like syrup (funny, it's brewed with maple syrup), leaving wine-like legs down the sides of the glass. There was no head; too much malt. Opaque dark brown, no foam, no effervescence, this beer was more liqueur than brew.

The aroma nearly knocked me off my feet. Brown sugar met molasses and chocolate, lingering long and beautifully. Plums and dried cherries worked around a cloyingly sweet malt backbone, telling me to forget hops. There were better things afoot here.

With the same emotion reserved for Christmas morning, I hoisted the glass to my lips, hesitated, and drank. The taste was almost overwhelming; had I not figured in my own mind the power of this beer, I might have been overpowered by it. The flavors weren't delicate hints at tastes. They were full-on robust flavors. A huge aged-beef steak dinner to other beers' fish dish. Maple syrup coated brown sugar. Fine cocoa melted over dried sweet cherries. Smokey grains bathed in thick, sticky-sweet caramel malt. No bitterness tried to shine; any attempt at it would have been a farce to this massive malt monster. Even long after each drink, plummy malts and chocolate clung to my tongue like a sweet memory.

Like a full-bodied cognac without the alcohol burn, each flavor simply got deeper and more complex as Triple Bock warmed. The beer was everything I anticipated and more. Massive flavors didn't compete, they complimented. They were each a part of a whole picture and honestly not one flavor dominated over the others. The whole beer was dominant as a whole.

Part of the magic of this beer was the wait; time only added complexity to a master work. Would it have been the same beer 5 years ago? 10? Ultimately, it doesn't matter. Triple Bock is so well-brewed that accidentally choosing now to open the bottle only added to the whole experience. It's an experience I'm glad I had.

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Left-Handed Behavior

About 3 years ago, I tried and failed miserably at brewing a milk stout. By adding lactose, a milk-derived sugar, a beer gains a creamy feel and a residual sugary sweetness (lactose is unfermentable by beer yeast). On an especially roasty stout, the addition of lactose gives a coffee-and-cream impression that is just astounding when done right. This is what I failed to do!


That said, a brewery that has been quite successful at a milk stout is the Left Hand Brewing Company about 30 miles outside of Denver, CO, in the town of Longmont. I am generally quite happy with many of their selections, but my favorite one overall is their delicious Milk Stout. I don't think I'm alone in my enjoyment of their offering; they won the World Beer Cup in 2006 and 2008 for this delicious selection.

To the tasting.

Oh look! Another really dark beer in my fridge! Unsurprisingly, Left Hand Milk Stout pours a brown dark enough to be mistaken for black in my pint glass. Even in my basement's modest lighting, I saw lovely ruby-red highlights in the beer around the edges of the brown-black concoction. It was capped with a thick finger of creamy cappuccino foam. The beer as a whole could have been a glass of high-end latte as much as a fine beer. And as I drank, it left rivulets of lovely lace down the sides of my glass; sticky-sweet reminders of my too-quick progress through this pint!

So the beer looks, so the beer smells. The first aroma that hit my nose are coffee and cream. Left Hand gave me a big, bold roasted malt character topped with unmistakable sweet cream and chocolate. The sweetness didn't compete with the generous roasted character as much as cut it just enough to not be overwhelming. The aromas finished chocolaty and even just a little bready. But my nose can only play with beer for so long before my mouth wants a piece of the action (was that maybe a little dirty?).

While the roasted-coffee aromas played the dominant role on the nose, it's the cream and chocolate that play prominently on the taste. Beautiful sweet cream and chocolate malt play on top of the roasted coffee flavor like a cappuccino sprinkled with dark chocolate. Left Hand Milk Stout becomes a beery mocha latte; my tongue rejoices in its two favorite drinks becoming one! The stout finishes with hints of bready yeast and malts and a bitterness that comes from dark roasted malts more than from hops. I dare say that I didn't really detect much in the way of hops (there must be some in there somewhere!), but I didn't want them and I didn't miss them. The bitterness is like the kind you get from coffee; it comes from the roast and not some other foreign ingredient.

The silky, milky creaminess added a ton of body to this beer, making it borderline heavy, but without a heavy impression. Thick and creamy, not heavy and syrupy. The higher carbonation in this stout backs the body off just enough that this beer becomes easily sessionable without being too filling.

Everything in this beer just works right. Nothing seems out of balance and the shift from coffee aroma to creamy-sweet taste is pleasant enough that people hesitant to drink "dark beer" actually enjoy this one because it's not a huge challenge to the taste buds. Even novice beer drinkers are impressed with Left Hand Milk Stout's recognizable flavors and aromas. Pro drinkers (you know, everyone on this blog) love it for its complexity and adherence to a classic British style of beer so "nutritious" that it was historically given to nursing mothers. It has milk in it after all!

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If Only Winter Tasted This Good

A gold-standard of brewing prowess for me is Samuel Smiths brewery in North Yorkshire in the UK. When I attempt to brew British-style ales, I use Samuel Smiths as my template. If only I could emulate their taste...I could open a brewery.

For Christmas, I was the lucky recipient of a four-pack of some of Sam Smith's best beers. Most of these beers, including the one today, are locally available at most "good beer" stores. You can't very well call yourself a good beer store without carrying Sam Smith's.

The lovely concoction I sampled this week is Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome Ale. This is the style of beer commonly called a winter warmer. You drink it because it gives you that lovely warm alcohol spice that warms the stomach and the spirit.

Winter Welcome poured an enticing dark honey, crystal clear and refreshing. As the thick, creamy-white head settled, an inviting effervescence bubbled up from the bottom of the Imperial pint glass. Each quaff left thick lacing down the sides of the glass and spoke of heavy malts yet to come.

The aroma held all those flavors you find in grandma's candy jar when you visit for the holidays: sweet caramel, toffee, and creamy, sticky butterscotch. The malty sweetness blended perfectly with a light, crisp grassy hop character. Under it all was a luscious honey sweetness. The hops, though light, kept this from being an overly-sweet malt bomb. They really pulled the beer towards a pleasant crispness that just became more inviting despite the cold.

The flavor stands up and delivers everything the aroma promised, and then some. Big honey-sweet malt blend with a gorgeous grain savor. Bready yeast, like rolls, balanced with a gorgeous buttery flavor that just makes the beer drip with sweetness and a thick impression. Cinnamon and brown sugar and plums, scant hints thereof, are in a delicate balance with light hops. The thing that brings it all home is this lovely alcohol warmth, which adds a peppery spice to all the sweet, bready flavors that Sam Smith's beers are known for.

Winter Welcome's medium body gives a soothing, refreshing impression despite the frigid temperatures outside my window. Crisp but smooth, refreshing but warming, Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome is the right way to enjoy Michigan's winters.

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God Bless Texas

A wise man once screamed something at the top of his lungs that Texas primarily produces two completely unrelated products that rhyme.

One of those two products that the gentleman alluded to was not beer, though strangely, that also rhymes with the other two primary Texan products. And after trying this week's beer that ATK-occasional Joel sent me, I think "beers" should definitely be added to the wise gentleman's list of Texan products/exports.

This week, we taste Real Ale Brewing Company's (Blanco, TX) Coffee Porter, a robust porter brewed with coffee.

Coffee Porter pours a medium brown, tending even a little towards red like some coffees I am familiar with and enjoy. The pour gave a thin parchment-colored head with tons of tight, effervescent bubbles. The head dissipated rather quickly (I am betting from the coffee's acidity), leaving a slight pool of bubbles that swam on top.

Even 6 inches away from my nose, there is no mistaking the coffee in this beer. I guess nobody ever accused anyone in Texas of being subtle or small...so I would go as far as saying (and it pains a Yankee to say it) that the coffee aroma isn't just big, it's (sigh) Texas big. Roasted malts are trying really hard to compete with the earthy, smoky, slightly vegetal aroma of the organic coffee that powers this pint. Chocolate and a scant whisper of vanilla are begging for rescue under the coffee avalanche.

Like my favorite A.M. pick-me-ups, Coffee Porter is bitter. Coffee bitter. The coffee itself is from Katz coffee in Houston, TX. Of that coffee, the Katz Coffee Company says:

This dark roasted Mexico Organic Fair Trade coffee is exactly what Real Ale uses in their seasonal Coffee Porter beer. This coffee tantalizes the taste buds with a slight smokiness. The full body and good acidity allow you to enjoy the lingering soft caramelized sugar aftertaste. The least robust of our Dark Profiles, this is a cup of coffee you can drink all day.

I imagine to get the soft caramelized sugar, you need to drink it coffee-hot. But the other flavors of this roast are there in droves: acidic, a hint of smoke, and a full-bodied coffee bitterness that I crave for my personal morning cuppa Joe.

There is also a lingering bitterness to this porter from roasted barley, which also gives the beer a sight grainy aspect. Though the bitter flavors are slightly out of balance with the sweet and roasted malty flavors normally found in a "robust porter," there is still a friendly ghost of chocolate throughout and a maltiness that begs for attention (were the not subject to a severe beat-down by the coffee!) The aftertaste calms down a bit and reminds you that indeed, this is a beer.

The body is slightly watery-thin with a lot of carbonation. It's not so much a palate-cleanser as it is a reassurance that I grabbed a beer and not an iced frappacappumochacino.

Instead of a porter with some coffee, this is like a gourmet iced coffee with some fizz and alcohol, and I would understand that some people would consider this beer markedly out of balance towards the coffee and bitter. Now, as a coffee drinker addict, I really dig the big acidity and bitterness of this beer, and the bitterness isn't the over-hopped Tripple IPA bitterness either; it's that dark-roasted-everything bitter you get in coffee and big stouts that don't rely on tons of hops. That kind of bitter isn't as invasive as some brewer's Extreme Beers. If you're adventuresome, or a coffee drinker, here's your beer. It's an homage to the beverage that makes mornings possible. But if you're not a coffee connoisseur, maybe try Atwater Block Brewing Company's (Detroit, MI) Vanilla Java Porter, an homage to porter with just a hint of coffee to make it interesting.

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Tony the Tiger Never Knew What Hit Him

The Great American Beer Fest is so much more than a chance to try beers you've never had before; what's the point of a ridiculously-huge beer fest if you just drink what you know? That's like going to Per Se in New York and asking for a burger. No, the GABF also hosts a competition that separates the wheat from the chaff.

One of this year's winners is Michigan-born Cereal Killer. From Arcadia Brewing Company in Battle Creek, Michigan (home of Kellogg's), this huge barleywine promises to go homocidal on your tastebuds.
I'll avoid the temptation of saying that Cereal Killer pours a slight blood-red color, and instead go with this: Cereal Killer pours a hazy red cherry color (harbinger of things to come, perhaps) that deepens to a cloudy brown from the bottom of the glass towards the top. The thin egg-shell head dissipates quickly, yielding effervescent bubbles that form on the surface. This is a beautiful beer.

Sorry, Tony, but Frosted Flakes aren't so Grrrrrrrreat when it comes to the Killer. Sure this beer shares some of Cereal City's trademark roasted grain aroma (it just seems to float in the air in Battle Creek), but beats it and buries it under layers of juicy caramel, unsweetened cocoa powder, a hint of citrus and a heavy, sticky malt. If my breakfast cereal smelled like this, I'd have had trouble making it through school.

Cereal Killer hones-in on the tongue as much as it did the nose. Immediately, the tongue is battered about by a blend of heavy, rich caramel and syrupy-sticky malt. Mixed in to the malty syrup was roasted nuts, dried cherries and even some honey. Funny that something that reminds me of a happy, friendly ice cream sundae would be called cereal killer! At the end, a bit of bitterness peeked out of the cloyingly-sweet body of the beer, not so much from hops but more of a citrusy bitterness. The beer finished with a beautiful milk chocolate note that along with the hint of bitter was like oranges dipped in a fountain of cacao.

Cereal Killer finishes dry, and the moderately-high carbonation cleanses the tongue between sips. Yes, sips. This is no quaffing beer. This is a beer like a thick port or sherry wine; enjoy it among several people after dinner lest the whole bottle tire out your mouth. It is drinkable and enjoyable for a barleywine. I had to resist writing this up using murder euphemisms, because that is apart from the spirit of this beer. Cereal Killer, despite its name, is a sweet after dinner treat. Maybe the hipsters at Arcadia were going for the ironic thing? Perhaps, but whatever their goal in naming the beer, they certainly made a great barleywine, worthy of its recognition on a national stage.

Or perhaps the judges simply feared for their tongues.

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The Best Of Both Worlds

One of my very best friends recently took a well-deserved vacation with his lovely wife, and returned with beers for me to sample!

See, folks, this is the way to assure my undying loyalty. Greg figured it out.

At any rate, among the beers he handed me for review are a couple of samples from Terrapin Beer in Athens, Georgia. I have often heard very good things about this brewery, so I was secretly thrilled to pieces that some of my upcoming beer samples will be from this brewery. I had to play it cool, though, and not act all giddy-kid-at-Christmas about it.

Enough about me. On to the beer!
Terrapin India Brown Ale bottle describes this beer as a "head-on collision between a hoppy west coast IPA and a malty, complex brown ale." Thats what I cal a specialty beer. Hoppy west coast IPA? Some of my favorite beers. Malty brown ale? My favorite kind of "session beer." But an IPA and a brown ale at the same time isn't just an Odd Couple mismatch. This is Mozart meets Nirvana.

It poured a nutty, deep brown into the glass with just a hint of a ruby hue as the light on my bar shone through it. The dense, rocky latte consistency head stayed the whole glass, clinging tightly to the sides drink after drink. Translucent due to the color, it was still a crystal-clear beer.

I don't even know where to begin with the aromas in this beer, given the confluence of two completely different beer styles, which the bottle boasts as 5 different hop varieties and 7 malts. It is a no-holds-barred duel of all of my favorite beery scents: pepper leads-off with a mano-a-mano fight with caramel malts. Chocolate grapples with grassy, earthy hops in a battle neither will win. Bright, orangey citrus gets in a shoving match with a sweet maltiness. But all of this aromatic melee is more like a well-choreographed judo match than a nasty brawl. It's all beautiful, lovely art.

The taste is like nothing I have ever had before. It would be crass to say it was like one mouthful of two beers like a cheap frat-house beer bong mixer. No, this beer is a dance between unlikely but graceful partners. The closest I can come to describing this beer is to say that hop-wise, it's a strong IPA. But instead of the bready, doughy, thick-sweet malt to back up all the hops, I get a beautiful Brit nut brown ale malt flavor of the highest caliber. If you've ever had one of those high-end chocolates mixed with some sort of exotic pepper, you have tasted one of the essences of this beer. Complex hop flavors found in my favorite west coast IPAs like citrus, pine and pepper waltz with a sweet nuttiness, chocolate, and dried prunes and apricots and leave me dizzy but oh so elated. One sip leaves me with chocolate covered oranges. Another with pepper-coated apricots. I just want more.

This medium-bodied, well-carbonated beer is a true pleasure to drink. There are so many flavors to enjoy, and Terrapin beautifully merged two beers that I love to pieces. Far from a disaster, this beer is a trend-setter. There's a little something for every beer lover here; for some, it will be unique and different. For others, it will be a true pleasure. I think it's pretty clear where this reviewer falls.

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10 Tons of Iron

I had the distinct pleasure of sampling another of ATK-Contributor Sopor's beer from Mt. Pleasant Brewery: Steam Engine Stout. I count myself lucky that a real pro shares his beers with me. He asks merely for an honest review.
The beer promises much through its appearance: a deep opaque black poured lazily into my pint glass, leaving sticky wine-like legs down the sides as it poured. The beer took-on a coffee complexion; dark black with russet-brown highlights. The head was a cappuccino-tan, thin, dissipating quickly but leaving patches of that tan head across the top of the beer.

The aroma held as much promise. The first to hit my nose was chocolate, fading immediately to roasted malt and coffee. As it warmed up, it took on a slight molassesy-sweet character and a touch of an alcohol burn. Very inviting stout, completely unintimidating.

The flavor started with a baked bread and roasted coffee theme, adding a hint of bitter chocolate and a little smoke. Though those flavors were present, they were thin. Under a veil of astringency and grain husk, they were a little more difficult to discern. But despite the slight medicinal taste, those flavors were indeed still there and hinted at a beer with huge potential to be a go-to beer.

The mouthfeel was a tad watery-thin, but had a slick oiliness that reminds me of my favorite Brit porters. The carbonation level was perfect; enough to clean my tongue between quaffs but not too much to sting or too little to fall flat.

All in all, the beer is drinkable. Its flaws ae not fatal nor are they insurmountable. As I said above, this beer really wants to be a go-to beer in my fridge. Maybe an oxidation issue, maybe a malt profile issue to boost the body a bit. I will drink this beer again as-is, and I know Colin seeks only to improve!

Thanks again...

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Not Just Your Average Fruit Beer

As some of the ATK regulars know, contributor Sopor was recently hired as a brewer at the Mt. Pleasant Brewing Company in Mt Pleasant, Michigan. We are, of course, thrilled that one of our own is officially in the big leagues.

Sopor graciously supplies me with some of their beers so that we can review them. I promised him to be objective; if a beer needs work, it needs work, and it yields a better product. If a beer is truly great, then they can run with it (not that my reviews mean much...). Sopor is also going to post some pieces and pictures about days in the life of a real brewer. That will be some great insight and I look forward to his posts.

At any rate, one of the beers he dropped off the other day is Mt. Pleasant Brewing Company's Coal Stokers Blackberry Ale, with real blackberry juice added to the brew. Let's begin!

Sopor's beer poured a hazy amber into my pint glass. It added a purple hue to that lovely amber and yielded a bit of a purplish-white head that settled quickly.

Coal Stokers had a nice berry aroma over the top of everything; not too much, and not so scant that it was supressed. What was nice about the aroma with this beer s that th sweet berry wasn't all-powerful, like those horrid imitation blueberry beers. This was balanced by a solid malt backbone. The malty roastiness and sweetness really shined along with the berry.

Pleasantly, this beer was balanced between berry and malt as I drank it. There is a touch of sweetness to this beer; the fruit character is evident, but like the aroma, it's not overwhelming. The beer is also slightly tart. I got malt and roast first, followed by a run of fruit flavor: blackberry jam and juice and even raspberry notes. I didn't get a hop presence at all, and I honestly would have liked some for just a little variation on the taste. Maybe a West Coast hop for some citrus or a German hop for some earthy/spicy flavors to add some complexity. This was a medium-bodied beer, a little watery-thin, with moderate amounts of carbonation. The carbonation was enough to let you know it's beer without being too scrubby-bubbles about it or without being, as some fruit beers are, tragically flat.

All in all, this is a really nice fruit beer. It is unmistakably the kind of fruit it says it is, but it's not cloying and actually tastes very natural. I did not get a sense that this is artificial or extract-like. There are so many fruit beers that are over-the-top in their fruit flavors (see my review about Founder's Cerise), but this one struck a decent balance. I gave a bottle to one of my neighbors, who shared it with his wife who normally dislikes beer. They really liked this beer and are interested in getting more. It pleased both the beer crowd and the non-beer crowd.

Great effort from the Mt. Pleasant Brewing folks! I liked it as much as Sammy A's Cherry Wheat (though with all honesty, one of the best fruit beers ever brewed is DFH's Aprihop).

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Strange Brew

My favorite in-state brewery is a close tie between New Holland and Founders. They each brew beers that are mainstays of my beer fridge. Founders, though, brews what is my favorite beer: the Breakfast Stout. There is, simply, nothing wrong with this beer. It is perfect in every way.

Then, on rare occasions, they brew their Kentucky Breakfast Stout, which is the very same stout aged in bourbon barrels. Clever, no? And muy delicioso.

In a recent conversation with their sales and marketing director, I found out that Founders is unveiling a line of specialty beers called "Founders Backstage." They make a limited amount of barrels of these beers (no bottles) and send them along to bars that are Founders-friendly. One of these beers is the Canadian Breakfast Stout. It's Breakfast Stout (oatmeal, double chocolate, coffee) with maple syrup added and aged, as I understand it, in maple syrup barrels. What's not to love?

And I found this elixir in one of my favorite beer bars, Dusty's Taproom, on my and Mrs. Smitty's anniversary evening this past Tuesday. Of course, we immediately each had a snifter. This stuff is incredible.

Our bartender handed each of us a pitch-black glass topped off with a rich, thick lather-like 3 finger head that yielded a lacing that stuck like glue to the glass as we drank it down. It just looked thick and heavy, and along with the lacing also left wine-like "legs" down the glass as we swirled it.

One long drawn breath was not enough to uncover all of the subtleties Canadian Breakfast Stout. I noticed the sticky-sweetness of the maple syrup right on top of everything. Along with it was root beer, vanilla, cinnamon, and cocoa. And of course, it wouldn't be Breakfast Stout with a nice load of coffee along with it. This beer just smelled like breakfast. It was inviting, warm, and comfortable. It didn't have aromas so heavy that it invoked fear. No...it was breakfast in a bottle. Bathrobe and slippers and a newspaper.

To say that the taste mirrored the aroma would be to minimize what this beer offered my tongue. Maybe because of the barrel-aging of the beer, there was a hint of bourbon throughout each drink. The maple syrup added a huge complexity to the beer. The maple flavor we all love on top of our pancakes and sausages was clear as day. But it really added a depth of flavor through sugary sweetness that gave this stout a dark fruit character (plums) that is otherwise missing in the flagship style of this beer. Cocoa, root beer, molasses, malted milk, and coffee all played along in this breakfast of champions, and a interesting caramel taste thrilled me on the finish. These flavors, especially the maple, really lingered on my tongue well after each drink, and as the beer warmed a bit, all the flavors get more pronounced. This is a beer for the ages.

From the oatmeal, this lovely beer is smooth as silk, except for a slightly dusty cocoa texture. At nearly 10% abv, I never felt the alcohol burn, nor did the alcohol take away from any of the other flavors. There was no "maple syrup mixed with jet fuel" feel to this beer. It was just smooth, sticky, sweet and delicious.

Canadian Breakfast Stout. Would I pour it over pancakes? I might. In fact, I may actually mix pancake batter with it. This is an after-dinner sipper. This is a beer to be as much contemplated as it is to be cherished and drank. This beer is a rich, thick stack of pancakes covered in pure syrup with a cup of black coffee.

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A Milestone Celebration

Some of the world's truly great breweries have been around a long time. The oldest that comes to mind for me is Weihenstephaner, which has been brewing since 1040. Yes, 26 years before William the Conquerer did all that conquering to create England, these guys were brewing beer and not giving a shit about what some Roman leftovers were doing fighting some guys named Norm.

And then there's Guinness. For 250 years now, Sir Alec Guinness....wait...wrong Guinness...Arthur Guinness' brewery continues to brew the beer that an entire country identifies with. 17 years before our founders drafted and read the Declaration of Independence, Arthur Guinness signed a 1,000-year lease on a brewery in Dublin and began producing the world's most recognizable stout.

And to celebrate a quarter of a millenium in existence, Guinness has brewed Guinness 250. And I was excited to try some.

Like its flagship beer, this stout poured coal-black at first glance, but interestingly showed a slight lightness; some ruby edges and russet-brown highlights. A bubbly, off-white head dissipated quickly to a half finger thickness, but left a good lacing down the glass.

250 smelled almost the same as a regular Guinness Stout: clean doughy yeast, coffee, roasted bitterness and a slight hint of sourness. I started to wonder if this was Guinness Lite...

The taste was different from a normal Guinness. It was as if I mixed Guinness Extra Stout and Guinness Foreign Extra Stout (the stuff with a yellow label available in the U.S. but not in Ireland). I got more of a chocolaty malt flavor the traditional Stout, and it had a bit more of a milky quality. It did not have Guinness' more powerful roasted and black-patent flavors.

It also didn't have Guinness' thickness. Normally Guinness is a thick, heavy-bodied beer. This beer is much lighter-bodied (though still medium bodied by contrast to other beers), and while it has a smooth, creamy quality to it, it is also pleasantly carbonated.

This is sort of a Guinness Lite. It is a "gateway" stout. It lacks some of the extremely powerful coffee/burned/roast attributes of a lot of stouts, instead having milder roasted and chocolate flavors. It is not as thick bodied, and gives a much lighter impression on the tongue. If I was introducing a mass-market drinker to different beers, I would take them to this beer right away. It's dark, it's out-of-the-ordinary for the ordinary beer drinker, but is very inoffensive. For the Guinness drinker? Drink it because you should have at least 1 to acknowledge the milestone. But stick with Guinness Extra Stout.

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