Night Visions - Vanilla Latte
Melvin Brewing

really solid, so glad to see this in idaho, might be from their eureka location, i didnt totally get the scoop, but this is delicious, coffee forward with a lot of fancy real vanilla bean character, sweet enough to be desserty, but not reliant on sugar to be flavorful either, and with a lot of body, roasted character, chocolate fudge decadence, and frankly authenticity, which you can pretty much always count on from melvin, yeah its an adjunct stout, but its also sort of no frills to me, in a good way. no doubt the coffee is high end, roasted deep but still earthy and fruity and full of minerals, maybe african in origin, robustly dosed. a hint of smoke in the flavor, everything seems fresh too, and the vanilla is concentrated toward the finish with the residual sugar, brown sugar and molasses to me, only slightly alcoholic too, just warm, works beautifully in here. fuller bodied but not heavy to drink, and not so flavored that it cant also be a food beer, tastefully built i think, well refined, not too much milk sugar, and overall just a fun one to slowly sip on, it warms up great. sits on my teeth just a bit, but the finishing flavors are great. more innovation coming around from melvin lately than ever, and i love it! get some of this at prefunk before its gone!

 

Pours black with three fingers of burly caramel-khaki tan foam. Head retention is good. Aroma is vanilla bean right off the nose. Coffee, chocolate, and roasty and toasty malts form the rest of the nose. It's staccato, hitting quick, then receding. Flavor profile is a little better developed, smoothly transitioning from vanilla bean at the onset to coffee to chocolate. Roasty and toasty malts form an underlying base, with the thickness and sweetness of the flavor profile beefed up by lactose. Together it has a latte-esque flavor profile with support via dark malts. Alcohol is not prevalent in the aroma or flavor profile, despite this being above 10%. Mouth feel is medium-thick falling just a bit shy of full bodied. Consistency is creamy, mimicking a full latte sip. Overall, the label suggests exactly where this beer is headed, and the beer follows that same path - no misnomers here.

Served in a 15.5oz Speigalau tulip from a 16oz can.