Dark Beer Tasting

I went to a tasting tonight at The Rumpus Room put on by ilbmke.com.  The theme was "Dark Malts," and there was a pairing of homebrew made with and without dark malt, tasted side-by-side. 

We also tasted 3 Sheep's Baaad Boy black wheat ale, Aying's Celebrator Doppelbock, Brew Dog's Libertine black ale, Drie Fonteinen's Zwet.be sour porter, James Page's Casper white stout, Colectivo Coffee's Cortado stout, Evil Twin's Yin imperial Taiji stout, and Surly's Smoke. 

Beer Review: Big Wood Coffee Stout

I stopped in for an "haute dog" at the Black Sheep, and it was good.  Very good.  But that's not what this post was about.  

Among their extensive selection of libations, they had a bucket of bottles in bags.  Each bag was numbered, so you pick a number at random, and get whatever's in there.  6 doesn't usually let me down, and this time was no exception.  I pulled a Big Wood Brewing's Morning Wood Coffee Stout. 

16 oz. can, carbonated, no widget.  Definitely dark, but really more of a porter in terms of body and mouthfeel.  I'll have to google the alcohol content...  aaand... it's 5.5%, adding credence to my porter hypothesis.  It also claims to be a coffee stout, and there's some coffee roastiness in there, but I've never actually had a coffee stout that I thought tasted enough like coffee.  I would definitely recommend it to friends and stout lovers.

I think the next time I make a coffee stout, I'm going to brew 5 gallons of full-strength coffee, and use that as mash water.  Or maybe put an unholy amount of coffee in a muslin bag for the last 5 - 10 minutes of the boil.  I want a coffee stout that tastes like coffee, dammit.  I think if you made it big enough, it would taste like Irish coffee; sweet and creamy.  Oh man.