Cisco Captain Swains Extra Stout

Brewed by Cisco Brewers
Style: Stout
Nantucket, Massachusetts USA

Pitch black body, brownish, cardboard colored bubbles. Smell is exactly like latex paint, I feel like I’m out working for my dad right now. Along with that , a little bit of chocolate and roasted malt. Taste is sweet and a little sour, also smokey barbeque, molasses, chocolate. Aftertaste is sweet chocolate and roasted coffee and nuts. Interesting palate, some flavors that you will not usually find in stouts and porters but everytime I pick up the glass I smell paint and it ruins it. Still, a novel beer and I’d recommend a try.

Pitch black body with a dense off-white head. Aroma of paint (as jon mentions), roasted malt, cherries, coffee and a bit of chocolate. Medium-bodied; Strong roasty malt flavour up front with a cherry tartness-wierd! Very light bodied for the style, and the flavour lasts only a short period of time. Aftertaste is mild and roasty, also sweet and tart from the cherries. A wierd and complex beer, but not the best fo the style at all. Overall, good to try, but i’d rather have Whale’s Tale instead of this. I sampled this 75 cL bottle purchased at Chevy Chase Wine & Liquors in Washington, D.C. on 14-November-2004 with good friend jon[r888710].

Poured a dark brown with a flat tan colored head and spotty lacing. Burnt, chocolate roast aroma. Taste was sour cherry and grapes. Little to no roast in the taste. Very yeasty, almost reminded me of a Belgian dubbel. First taste hit me as really bad, but when I decided that it wasn’t a stout, it tasted better.

This bottle got off to a rollicking start, for it exploded on uncapping, creating a head that’s a thick morass of cocoa, and leaving me with a little mess to clean up on the floor! When I returned from my scrubbing and blotting, I marveled at the pitch-black color, a deep, stygian sea. Aroma: rich and dark, thick as molasses, swimming with myriad connotations, bits of coffee, brown sugar, dark Jamaican rum, devilish spices,...I was tempted to postpone the consumption of the stout itself, and luxuriate with my nose in this forever! Taste: as I eventually start to sip, we encounter some powerful hops up on top, and rich, full texture, with a strain of spiciness that plays on the tongue and continues all the way down. Gritty, earthy, bittersweet as well, but still smooth and easy. Somehow, the body isn’t quite as thick as I’d like, but maybe that delectable nose had me hungering for an Imperial stout, which this is not. Doesn’t quite last long enough in the mouth. Very mellow, actuall, while still rich and tasty. Despite petering out on the initial promise (or what I read into it), this is a top-notch foreign extra and I’d turn to often, if I were so lucky.

Thanks Jeremy for blessing me with this for my birthday! Ooppps on the pour. The head just sprang out of nowhere. Deep black with a thick, tan, frothy head. Decent malty aroma. Dark chocolate as well. Dry taste. Extremely dry. Too much for my liking, which I believe takes away from its true taste. But still an alright beer.

Big rocky light brown head and very dark black. Chocolate, roasted aroma. A little light. Flavor is light chocolate and some sour tang like an old English IS. Medium bodied.

Deep black in color. Huge beautiful head. Uh, oh- butterscotch nose. Turned out that this had to be infected. Though, at this point in the night, it was nearly drinkable!!

Butterscotch! Oh dear, diacetyl (sp?). Roasted and toasty but not enough to overwhelm that flavor. Huge frothy head, 100% opaque. Has potential but a pity it doesn’t seem to be quite right. As others have noted, this may be a problem that more general than my bottle.