Snow Doubt
Town Hall Brewery

 

This beer was served from nitro at Minneapolis Town Hall Brewery in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It arrived in a house pint glass, showing hues of metallic dark chocolate. This base supported a one and a half finger tall head of light cappuccino bubbles, showing that characteristic nitrogen-fueled retention and activity. Lacing was eventual and spotty. No haze or sediment was appreciated, and carbonation appeared to be minimally active. Once the top settled, aromatic notes of deeply charred black, chocolate, and oaty malts, hints of steeped coffee, sour yeasty mash, tinny metallics, tobacco leafiness, cigarette and smoldering campfire smokiness, oily fried sweet potatoes, sticky molasses, Scotched woodiness, dried lemon seed, white flour, and lemon pound cake began to blossom. The flavoring consisted of smoked peatiness, dark chocolate and coffee maltiness, powdery and floury black malts, hints of bittered cacao, black pepper spiciness, smoothing heavy cream, Cadbury egg creaminess, cherry flesh, wood lacquer, sweaty dog, chlorine chemicals, dried molasses, burnt creme brûlée, sugary sweet tiramisu, and coffee liqueur. The body was medium, but stretched thin around the edges, especially as you swirled it repeatedly around your mouth. Carbonation was reasonably medium, but thinned and sparse secondary to the nitro. This feeling also permeated to the flavoring, which washed at times with the mouthfeel. Cream, slurp, smack, and froth were all accounted for, but the beer lacked a certain softness to it. The mouth was otherwise warmed and lightly puckered with a touch of chalky dryness. The abv was appropriate, and the beer drank way easily enough.

Overall, although we found a friendly and approachably aromatic and flavorful beer, with equal parts roasty depth and sugary sweetness, we felt the beer lacked fundamentally on feel. That said, we are assessing a beer served from nitro, so we obviously have to take that into account. As far as that went, the look was certainly there, but the feel fell off a cliff. The carbonation seemed intensely flattened out, and greatly affected how the drinker experienced any creaminess or frothiness on the sip. The moustache was there from the sip, due to that big head, but it seemed primarily for show. Although this was not the last beer we would sample at Town Hall on our forays through Minnesota, it unfortunately sticks out in our mind as our least favorite. That’s okay though, because they have so many great and varied offerings on tap we would never get bored there!!

 

Black color big head. Smokey and sweet flavors. Big hints of chocolate, with big body.