Showing posts with label deschutes brewery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deschutes brewery. Show all posts

Monday, September 19, 2011

Day 52-56 (9/14 - 9/18/2011): Getting caught up with reviews!

As I said earlier, I really need to get caught up on reviews. I'm going to blow through five days really quick here so I can get back up to date and write some more thorough reviews for you all. Here we go!


A surprisingly tasty milk stout. It's on the sweeter side and is a tad bit thin, but there are a ton of stouts this beats every day of the week. Bonus points for being packaged in a pint can and for being locally available. Not going to blow anyone away, but I wouldn't mind if someone handed me one. B.


They promise hops and that is certainly what you get. I didn't particularly care for this at all, but I think my bottle was old. Bitter and astringent; the hops don't particularly taste good and doesn't transition into the malt finish well. It overall was a trainwreck of flavors in my mouth. I'll try again when I can be assured of a fresh bottle. C-.


Somehow my first ever pumpkin ale and I picked a good one. I even had an appropriate glass for it. Poured the most ridiculous head I've ever seen. It was as close to stiff whipped cream as you could imagine. I actually had to take it off with a spoon so I could drink the beer. The typical pumpkin spice scent and taste is there, but it's not obnoxious and is countered well with a good hop presence. A very good beer and if all pumpkin beers I get to try are this good, I'll be disappointed I took this long to try them. B+.

(Also, I had a Founders Breakfast Stout this night and it is my belief that it is much better from a bottle than draft. Coffee in a beer!)


A solid barleywine. It nails the style points, but doesn't really do much creative to put it among the upper tier. A good balance of sweet caramel malt and citrus hops work together to make this barley wine American. Some maple syrup and vanilla flavor is also there. Perhaps the most amazing thing is that though Old Horizontal is 11%, the alcohol is hidden masterfully. I'd love to hang onto a few bottles and see how it tastes after the hops fade a bit. B+.


This was a nice, balanced stout. Not too sweet, not too much roast. Gets better and better as it warms up. I enjoyed this much more than Deschute's Black Butte Porter. It's not going to blow your mind, but sometimes beer is just for drinking, not ruminating over for hours. I wish I could get this here. A-.

There we go, folks. All back up to date. Hopefully things will calm down a tad and I can get back to daily updates. Can't promise, but it's worth a shot!

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Day 48 (9/10/2011): Black Butte Porter by Deschutes Brewery

I had heard that Black Butte Porter is one of the best American porter out there; on the same level as Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald and Founders Porter. Obviously I'm wanting to get my hands on anything that people claim is the best or darn near it and I was lucky enough to receive a bottle of it recently. Knowing that it was brewed by Deschutes, one of America's best breweries, definitely raised my expectations.

Black Butte pours a dark, dark brown with a couple fingers of very light tan head. The smell is primarily roasty, with dark chocolate, coffee, and a slight hint of hops in the background.


The taste, like the smell, is dominated by the roast. It is almost tart from the roasted malts. There is some sweetness to counter it, but this is definitely roasty. I also get some coffee on the finish, along with some hops, but it all second to the roast. I don't care for this at all. The carbonation is medium and a body that is a tad too thin for a porter.

Overall, I'm not impressed. The taste and smell is one-dimensional with the roastiness overwhelming everything else. I'm not sure if this is an out of the ordinary bottle or what, but I have no idea how people rate this so highly. I just don't get it. I would like to try another bottle of this at some point to see what the deal is. Surely my palette can't be that different from pretty much everyone else's. At this point, however, after trying only one bottle of this, I give Black Butte Porter by Deschutes Brewery a B-.

Style: American Porter
ABV: 5.2%
IBU:
Beer Advocate: A-/A+
Ratebeer: 97/98