Ridgeway Santas Butt Winter Porter

50 cl bottle. This beer is a wonderful Christmas brew, and it is a fantastic example of what a great porter should taste like. Pours to a beautiful, bright, deep brown to black color, with a soapy white head, and a moderate carbonation. The nose on this beer is excellent, with really good aromas of dark chocolate, coffee, and light roast. The palate is firm, with good dark malt, dark chocolate, coffee, and light roasty flavor on the tongue. This beer finishes with more good dark chocolate and malty up front, then ends dry and roasty, with some coffee/roast flavors that lingers. Delicious, drinkable, porter, perfect as a session brew, and a natural with oysters, or any other shell fish. This beer borders on being a stout, and a good one at that. Hope Santa will put a few of these under the tree for me this Christmas.

Upon the pour the beer presents a deep brown with considerable ruby highlights, head is average in size, about two fingers, light tan in color and frothy in texture as it fades quickly, the lace make a very thin sheet. Nose has a nice toasty malt sweetness, hints of caramel, and light butterscotch tones also present, a pleasant sniff. Start has a nice toasted grain presence, hints of burnt toast bitterness, top is light to almost medium in feel. Finish is lightly acidic, hops and toasted malt bite adds a pleasing end to the sampling, dry and a nice drinking beer, not over powering, just a good English Porter.

Not as impressive as lump of coal. Where the stout was simplistic, the porter is more complex. More hoppy but I’m not one for hoppy beers.

THOUGHTS: Very easy to drink. Aroma was nice but weak. Not the greatest porter, but a really nice beer. It didn’t really say "Christmas" to me, but it is very easy to drink. I know I said it twice, but it really was. TECHNICAL: Bottle. Poured a dark brown, which was nearly black in the glass, with red highlights and a small, light tan head that mostly diminished. The aroma was light milk chocolate and very light banana or bubble gum. The initial flavor was lightly sweet, while the finish was heavily sweet and lighlty bitter with a short duration. The flavor was mostly chocolate. It was a little watered down but still very nice. The light to medium body was oily with lightly fizzy carbonation and a lighlty astringent finish if any.

Dark, opaque, walnut brown-black color. Medium head that sticks around for a bit. Nicely forward roasted (and toasted) malt aroma. Hints of sweet molasses. Flavor is nice malts (roasted and toasted). Molasses. Hints of wood or roots. Negligible hops, really just supportive. Good stuff. Merry Christmas…2005. Not usre why this is rated so low??