Maumasi
Anchorage Brewing Company

 

 

 

A very flavorful, very sweet, pretty well balanced beer. A virtual oil slick of coconut floaties is the most striking thing about the appearance. Smell is a burst of coffee, coconut, roasted dark malt, and bourbon. Taste is extremely sweet-coconut and chocolate are the most prevalent, but there’s a tasty coffee undercurrent that asserts itself throughout, as does the barrel and roasted dark malt. Bold boozy, and my only complaint is a bit of an oily finish. Overall, very good.

 

 

Pours out a nightmarish dark brown like the Midnight Mother herself. No foam formation. This is my 9th, 10th, 30th?, Anchorage stout. I already know what to expect in regards to tye appearance.

Now on the nose is where the show kicks off. Very roasty coffee riggt off the rip. So roasty it gets to that green, vegetal quality. Almost like red or green bell peppers and spicy like a rye. Quite the impact. The coffee is dominant but you can smell the sweet coconut that permeates throughout. The lifeblood of a lot of these Anchorage stouts.

The taste is tamer than I expected it to be. The coffee surges forward, but is actually rounded out by the coconut. The barrel influence is there with perhaps the strongest amount of tannin presence that I've ever seen in these stouts. Typically it is an accent rather than the predominant factor. But here its showing some teeth. This is a hot brew. Oak and booze almost overwhelm the sweetness from the coconut. It also tastes more like a rye barrel than a bourbon, but that is probably the coffee playing tricks.

Mouthfeel is fullbodied. Thick, mouthcoating, cloying, and rather hot. The booze hits hard on this one. Drying and effervescent. Its that unique situation where a brew can be very cloying and drying. Like an ink that coats and then evaporates. There's only a handful of brews that do this. High ABV and high adjunct density typically lead to this.

I always enjoy cracking an Anchorage stout. A little treat to myself. That being said, this is definitely not my favorite of this collection. This would be great for lovers of highly roasted coffee. I feel like this is similar to Doomed, but not quite as good. Doomed delivers with the coffee flavor for the fanatics, but this seems a little tame in some regards and overbearing on others. Perhaps I should have aged this one for a year or so. It may have smoothed the edges. Oh well.

 

Anchorage is a warlord on the stout front. They are dedicated to the craft and are a must watch any special release is announced. Here we have an extraordinary story to go along with a great beer. If you can, search out the connection between the artist that inspired this brew and how it is incorporated into his work, as well as the beer. It is too fascinating to try and fit in this review. For the beer itself, a barrel focused, dry wood, thin stout (for Anchorage’s standards). The smell is deeply roasted coffee, as that was their plan all along. The barrel seems to impart a wilder, yeasty profile. Always something unique from these guys.

Midnight oily black pour with a brown cap that fades into ring almost immediately. Smells of oak, coffee, coconut, and huge dark chocolate fudge. Taste has earthy smoke and slight vanilla bean added to the mix, the rich oak with coffee and dark chocolate is decadently deep. Thick, warm, chewy, smooth but booze warmth grows as you sip, so tread slowly, both coffee and earthy oak poke free here and there

Flipped from “not drinking tonight” to “perhaps just one 16% stout”. This is it, clothed in a white-waxed 375ML bottle. Mine. All mine.

The pour is black with a bit of a head that fled rapidly when examined. The nose is bourbon aged for months in ripe coconut.

Maumasi is like a coat of bourbon paint applied internally. Hoooooooo. Hard, oaked bourbon sloshes & touches everything (& eats some of them away). Full, bracing malts back the barrels & the coconut comes in underneath with less than a shout, more than a Gordy. Bits of lactose, sweet chocolate. The coffee is lost in the stampede. Thicker than my head, but far more drinkable. Despite the big booze hit, this begs to be sipped for three episodes of The Last Kingdom.

This fuckin’ brewery. The ridiculous prices for their top-level barrel aged stuff rub me raw (in a bad way) but quite often they back it up with a stunningly magnificent beer. This is another. Knock it off or put this in affordable four packs please, pretty please!

 

 

 

 

Look - black thick nice rimming
Smell -so much coconut and coffee slight chocolate
Taste -chocolate coconut coffee, blends really well with a nice barrel taste
Feel -thick and creamy
Overall - pre bottled from the barrel. So good! Anchorage is awesome!!!