Highland Thunderstruck Coffee Porter

Brewed by Highland Brewing Company
Style: Porter
Asheville, North Carolina USA

Serve in English pint, Shaker

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(22oz bottle) Pours a dark brown body with a small beige head. Aroma of roasted malt, coffee, and some dark chocolate. Flavor of coffee, roasted malt, burn bread crust, and chocolate.

on tap-tight tan-black. A-coffee grounds/roasty-dk malt with some bite. T-coffee/roasty-dk malt, 2nd earthy hops. Not my taste.

Bottle, thanks ethan for sharing. Deep brown with a chocolate milk like sudsy head with plentiful lace against my mini imperial glass courtesy of Durham Central Park. Nose is cocoa, light coffee, light fruit. Nice, not overwhelming but nice. Roasty, dark chocolate, light espresso. very easy drinking, light bitterness in the finish. Solid and like everything Highland makes, English style so don’t go judging this against Hill Farmstead Everett or anything amazing like that.

Deep brown almost black color with nice tan lacing. Very roasted and nutty nose. The palate also has a pretty intense coffee and dark roasted characteristic. Hinges on being a little over the top. Definitely a good 12 oz beer to share. Drink in cool/cold weather.

Bottle. Pours black, thin brown head. Roasty coffee aroma, a little bit of dark chocolate and fruit. Taste is mild sweet. Medium full body, average carbonation, nice balance finish with the coffee and mild bitter hops. Overall flavor is pretty good, not as good as their Oatmeal Porter.

On tap @ProofBrewing. Pours black with small cream colored head. Aroma is obviously coffee, a little bit of toffee and chocolate in the background. Mouthful is suprsingly light bodied with mainly coffee and some other very minor spice notes. All in all a nice lighter coffee porter, but nothing special.

Pours very dark mahogany with only a little bit of head. Taste is mostly malty java flavor with a bit of sour bitterness. There is a bit of chalkiness to this beer that is slightly off-putting but this is still a pretty good beer. I am not the biggest porter fan but this one is definitely not bad.

Bottle to snifter (thanks jmborggren). Looks solid; a semi-opaque cola with off-white lacing. Smells and tastes of bitter coffee and dark malt. Average on the palate. Solid, but not spectacular.

Appearance Black, pours a modest but creamy head. Aroma Roasted coffee beans, hint of chocolate; not overpowering. Taste Coffee is evident, but it’s fairly mild. There’s not an awful lot of character or body to this beer. It’s satisfying though, and the hint of coffee (less than you might expect from the aroma) does give it a bit of something extra — I suspect that otherwise this might be a rather bland porter. Overall I’m sampling through the beers of Highland Brewing Company, a brewery which I had not heard before I came to North Carolina. They’re located in Asheville, and their beers are readily available in Chapel Hill. The branding is a bit silly, with a bearded guy armed with a back pipe and a pint in the label. So, they’re trying to be Scottish, and I guess that their beers are somewhat influenced by Scottish brewing traditions, but they’re no match really. Still, their range of products looks nice, and they do make some decent, affordable beers.

On tap at the Taco Mac in Peachtree City. A strong peat malt in a robust porter. Tasted similar to a Guinness, but not quite as smooth.