Southern Tier Porter

355ml bottle (Hilpea Hauki, Helsinki)
Red glints, but nearly black. Tan head. Sour malty roast aroma, a touch too sour. Anna gets hops too, I don’t - the sourness wins. Smooth palate, but decent carbonation and crisp tingly hops. Finish is roasty - it’s a decent roast, but it’s heading towards ashy, and also some porridgey malts. Well balanced and smooth. Good one.

Very dark light off white head. Bottles lately. Aroma is simple with some malt sweetness and some roasty. Taste is balance and pretty solid. Some coffee dominating the dark bittersweet chocolate. On tap: Nice creamy mouthfeel. Sweet with a hint of bittersweet cocoa and some roasted coffee. Pretty good.

Poured dark brown with a fizzy head. Aroma of coffee and some chocolate. Fizzy carbonation kind of dulled the flavors. Mostly coffee. Ok.

Bottle. Pours opaque black with a modest tan head with some ruby and amber highlights. Aroma is caramel, woody, vanilla, grape, licorice, roast coffee, and subtle dark chocolate. Flavor is predominantly woody and roasty caramel, vanilla, dark chocolate, and coffee seem to swirl around the palate while a light fruity licorice note hits the top of your tongue, and further back some hops come in to round out the sweetness with some citrus and then reinforce the bitterness of the roast malt. Palate has some weight to it but isn’t heavy and is rather smooth but does have a sort of tannin feel to it while carbonation remains lightly peppery.

(Bottle at Hilpeä Hauki, Helsinki, on 2009-04-17) Very dark brown and clear. Small white head. Liquorice and coffee in aroma. Full bodied and dry palate with medium carbonation. Liquorice, burntness, ash, roastedness, light sweetness and bitterness in taste. Burnt and bitter aftertaste.

Nearly perfectly black cola like body with a little garnet at the edges when held to light. A decent, relatively thin khaki head. The aroma is nicely roasted coffee with some dark chocolate and raisins. The taste has some heavy plum and dark syrup notes. Then it finishes with sweetened coffee. While good, the roast is a little strange and I would like a little less sweetness. In appearance it is like a robust porter, while in taste, it is like a brown porter.

very thin black pour. pretty roasty aroma, a bit plasticy. flavor is somewhat chocolatey, definitely plasticy. guess roasty. really nothing special at all.

Bottle - Pours an opaque, very dark black/brown in color with almost no head and very little carbonation. Aroma is very strong of darkly roasted malts... almost what you would expect from a darker stout. Flavor is not what I would expect from a porter... bitter, very darkly roasted malts with some coffee. This definitely is more like a stout. Bitter almost astringent... unfortunately the flavor, although dark, is watery and thin. Disappointing...