Pisgah Valdez

Brewed by Pisgah Brewing Company
Style: Stout
Black Mountain, North Carolina USA

Serve in English pint

22 ounce bottle. Pours a pure black color with a medium brown head. A sweet roasted coffee nose, some fruit. The flavor is mostly a rich roasted coffee, milky, sweet, some vanilla. Very dry and well made.

Bottle provided by Nate, drank from my Hill Farmstead glass... Dark brown with a nice light tan head, good retention and lacing... The aroma is tons of fresh coffee, has the Intelligentsia of HBI... The taste is equally nice, good light coffee but its fresh. Super easy to drink.

Bottle from peabodies in Boone, NC. Dark brown pour with a beige head. Aroma is roasty, coffee, and chocolate. Silky body. Creamy with hints of bakers chocolate, coffee, and roast. Fresh coffee lingers. Very nice

Draft at brewer. Jet black pour with a brown head. Scent of coffee and roastiness! Taste of coffee and chocolate with a hint of vanilla. An outstanding porter! Can’t wait to open a bomber I got and compare!

Poured into a snifter. Not quite sure how 6.8% ABV justifies the "imperial" designation, but whatever. 4.0 A: Light black in color if that makes any sense. Two fingers of frothy light brown head with not quite average retention and not really any lacing. 5.0 S: Awesome! I had no idea this was a coffee stout. Given that, I’m bumping the appearance from a 3.5 to a 4 since I know how coffee does a number on head retention. Perfect coffee aroma - in my face, yet not overbearing. Instead of being balance with sweetness, there’s more roastiness behind it in the form of roasted barley. As it warms, semi-sweet chocolate and rich caramel come out. Excellent. 3.5 T: I’m loving the coffee in the taste, but it’s much more one dimensional than the nose. There just isn’t enough of anything else to balance the powerful coffee. This is understandable given my qualms with the mouthfeel. The coffee covers up whatever else is in there. 2.5 M: Light body. With a thicker body this one would have been a lot better. The extra residual sugar would also have balanced out the coffee taste. Carbonation is a bit higher than I’d like as well, but that is trivial compared to the body problem. 3.0 D: This beer could be fabulous if they upped the mouthfeel to a medium or thicker body. Although I love the strong coffee flavor, it needs some strong malts to supplement it. Serving type: bottle Reviewed on: 09-15-2010 02:05:08

Bottled. RBESG 2010. Black colour with a persistent tan head. Aroma from green pepper, coffee beans, chocolate and lastly tad licorice. Mouthfeel is very soft with suggestions of pepper and chocolate up front and then caramel and licorice in the background. The pepper is a bit disturbing to me personally.

Bottle. Aroma very coffee-forward, super fresh coffee, fresh enough that maybe it’s just my imagination (I don’t know how these things work), but I feel like I’m picking up complexities of vanilla and tobacco, amongst others that I’m too inept to name, from the coffee itself. If that’s actually the case, that’s some pretty bitchin’ coffee that retains its character so well in the beer. Flavor has a sweet roast and full (but not syrupy) body reminding me this is still beer. This must be a super fresh bottle, and it shows that they certainly know how to let the coffee shine, and sure picked some great coffee for the job.

Bottle. Pours black with a small tan head. Aroma of fresh coffee beans, peanut butter, burnt roasted malt. Flavor of roasted coffee beans, roasted and burnt malts, a touch of peanut butter and bitter chocolate, vanilla, mocha, light cream. Awesome coffee stout, this is what a coffee stout should be! Probably the best coffee stout I’ve ever had. (I am now seriously regretting only buying 1 bottle of this) 9/4/10/5/19 [4.7/5]