The Barley Whine

Beer debates, more civil than sober

Best Coffee Beer Part 2

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No Really, What Is The Best Coffee Beer?

More Coffee Beers
Best Coffee Beer Part 2 Lineup

The Premise

After our first tasting of coffee beers, we realized that the surface had only been scratched by our efforts. With so many coffee flavored beers currently being brewed, our attempts to find the world’s best needed a much larger sample size. And any excuse to taste coffee beers in the cold months makes sense to the BW cabal. This is our effort to review more of the world’s coffee beer population. So why are there so many beers using coffee? And what is the origin of coffee in beer? Who do you think we are, Woodward and Bernstein? You’r way off pal. Let’s get to tasting.

Methodology

At a recent party Dave and I moved furtively to the kitchen with a trio of fellow craft beer aficionados. We then poured (not 100% blind) mostly even drams into small sampling glasses. Starting from the most genteel amber ale with coffee and Sam Adams lackadaisical creation (the only repeat from part #1), we moved to heavier beers before finishing with bourbon barrel aged imperial stouts. Notes were taken but no scores were tallied.

The Best Coffee Beer?
The Best Coffee Beer?

The Beers

  • Goose Island – Bourbon County Coffee Stout 2011:  This is a super hyped beer. Brewed with Chicago’s own Intelligentsia Anjilanaka beans, a coffee geek choice, and barrel aged in Elijah Craig 18 year barrels, this beer uses world class ingredients in a style defining brand. Huge fruity coffee, massive vanilla and bourbon with roasted malt flavors with no bitterness. Lives up to the noise and then some. 14% ABV.
  • Founders – Kentucky Breakfast Stout:   Smelling of coffee and sweet chocolate, pours a khaki strong head with good retention. The taste is cold pressed coffee combined with semi-sweet chocolate. Finishes with a bitter chocolate/hoppy bite. The mouthfeel is thick but slick from the oatmeal, and well carbonated. A world class blending of flavors, brewed to perfection.
  • De Struise – Damnation II Mocha Bomb:  A dark chestnut pour with bubbly tan head. Smell is surprising mix of malts, coffee, and hops. Some sweetness, coffee, and hops with biscuity malts. Some astringency from the roasted malts and hops. Coffee is mostly in the finish. Body is creamy, smooth and thick. The 12% ABV is well hidden. Superb beer.
  • Long Trail – Brewmaster Series Coffee Stout:  An imperial stout at 8% ABV. Lots of chocolate roasted malt flavors and potent, smooth coffee. Good body, a bit of oil and only a hint of java bitterness. When we think of good coffee stout, this is it. Seek this out!
  • Fort Collins – Common Ground:  Tasted second. An American amber ale. Taste is Fat Tire with coffee from the well regarded Jackie’s Java. Nothing wrong with that. The big dark malts play to style and pair well with the coffee notes. An uncommon, but solid coffee beer admixture.
  • Dark Horse – Perkulator Coffee Dopplebock: “Hear that? The percolations are imminent. No need to come in… cease your ingress!” -Mr.Burns.  Strong coffee nose. Taste is of bad church coffee and huge sweet caramel malts, finishing bitterly.
  • Samuel Adams – Black and Brew: First beer we tasted. Still dark and smelling of coffee. Still bland and lacking much of the body or roasted elements of a stout or any fresh coffee. But check out the snake in this video review of this beer!!!
  • Cigar City – Cubano-Stlye Espresso Brown Ale: Appealing espresso roasted coffee nose. Unfortunately this beer was infected, very sour: drain pour.

Conclusion

Your morning caffeine fix does double duty after hours not just in dark beers but complementing dopplebocks, even amber ales. As a flavor additive to beer, coffee beans can add wonderful roasted tannins or harsh bitterness. Just as they do with with a straight cup O’ joe. But that seems almost a facile point. The true revelation from this second tasting is that we found even more great and mediocre coffee beers, and yet there are so many more to taste. So where is the Peche Mortel by Dieu Du Ciel or Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast? Where are Wake ‘n Bake or Victory at Sea or Wolavaer’s Alta Gracia? We hear you loud and clear. Tomorrow is another day, and with it we will need our coffee. And soon enough after that we will again need to do another tasting of coffee beers. All in the quest to find the world’s best coffee beer.

Best Coffee Beer Part 1

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What Is The Best Coffee Beer?

 

Founders Double Oatmeal Chocolate Stout
FOUNDERS BREAKFAST STOUT

The Premise

Each winter brings back together old friends in North East Ohio for the Tri-City Beer Club’s Annual Christmas party. In its 15th year the TCBC is a small group of beer fans who gather to blind taste test beers in a category. Getting older, the group has turned in Nirvana for NPR, and Cherry Coke for coffee. To reflect the maturing tastes, for the first time we decided to take on a hugely popular craft beer style; coffee beers.  So what is the best coffee beer? Round one of The Barley Whine’s research into this question puts some great beers up to the challenge.

Methodology

As always, we blind tasted brews of a similar style, rated between 1 and 10, with .5 as the only allowable decimal. The first beer was re-tasted at a random time to avoid position bias. Beers are ranked based on style, not their genetic closeness to Tim Tebow.

The Beers

Samuel Adams Coffee Stout

  • Founders – Breakfast Stout: #1 . Smelling of coffee and sweet chocolate, pours a khaki strong head with good retention. The taste is cold pressed coffee complexly combined with semi-sweet chocolate. Finishes with a bitter chocolate, hoppy bite. The mouthfeel is thick but slick from the oatmeal, and well carbonated. A world class blending of flavors, brewed to perfection.
  • Southern Tier – Mokah #2. Huge roasted coffee and chocolate nose. Do the Tootsie Roll! Milk Dud candy dominates the flavors. Lots of great chocolate, followed by the coffee, with cloying sweetness. The body is thick, less smooth than the Founders brew probably due to less oatmeal. Almost no bitterness in the finish. The 11% ABV is buried. The non-coffee drinks all gave this top marks.
  • Tröegs – Java Head: #3 . A dark chestnut pour with bubbly tan head. Smell is surprising mix of malts, coffee, and hops. Some sweetness, coffee, and hops with biscuity malts. Lots of astringency from the oats and hops. Coffee is mostly in the finish. Body is creamy, smooth and thick.
  • Surly  – Coffee Bender: #4. Burnt coffee nose. Sweet coffee taste, dark chocolate, espresso. Very tasty!
  • AleSmith – Speedway Stout: #5. Guess what? It’s black. Potent caramel/toffee nose. Taste is of a great imperial stout, with subtle java and chocolate, a bit of soy sauce.
  • Bell’s – Java Stout: #6 (tie).  Day old coffee grounds and vegetable smell. Lots of nice roasted malts, milk chocolate and burnt coffee hit the palette. The mouthfeel is nice and think. True to a stout but better with coffee, this beer suffers against sweeter, less chocolaty beers.
  • Samuel Adams – Black and Brew: #6 (tie). Dark brown color. Caramel nose with subtle coffee. Taste has a creamy coffee element, with only very little malt or hops. Body is a bit thin, well carbonated. Drinkable, but just too one note and bland to stand out against others.
  • Midnight Sun – Arctic Rhino: #8. Coffee and caramel notes with some alkaline odors. Tasted of roasted malts, mild coffee and a bit astringent. The body is really thin, with decent carbonation. Not as strong a java flavor, and much less thick than the others.

Conclusion

With stouts and porters, roasted malts, coffee and chocolate are a natural combination to play out in dark beers. If you like coffee, the addition of it to a good stout can make for a more complex, satisfying, even phenomenal brew. Chocolate is a very popular addition to dark beers and for those that do not like coffee’s bitterness, chocolate and a bit of additional sweetness turns them around on the style. Some of the best stouts fall in the coffee beer category so even if you’re not a 6 cup a day Starbucks addict, give any one of these a try in place of your Guinness or Baileys and you will be joyously surprised.