Hero Status Cold Brew Coffee Ale
Silver City Brewery & Taproom

 

 

tasty new coffee brown that just hit idaho on tap, seeing it pop up all over this week, and have really been enjoying their beers of late, glad to have them. this is real tasty, smooth and frothy and well proportioned, good chocolate malt depth to the base beer and some body and creaminess, maybe oats involved too, but its neither too bitter from roasted grain nor too heavy to be drinkable, and its good and dry so the coffee really stands out. i truly think the mouthfeel is a huge reason this works so well. the other obvious element is the coffee, its fresh, good quality, done with a modern not too dark roast, and added pretty liberally. a hint of darker chocolate, a note of smoke in the very background, subtle raisin in the middle but no real caramel character or anything, a sudsy and frothy on the palate the whole way, pretty fast finishing for the style too, which i like. not the darkest brown ale, but the coffee brings the low end nicely. smooth and flavorful, a good food beer too for being flavored, and overall of very good quality. i will drink my share of this one for sure, although i have not seen it in packaged form yet, hopefully soon!

22oz bottle split into glasses.

A: Dark brown, fairly clear from what I can see, with a small but creamy off-khaki head.

S: Toasty and earthy coffee and espresso; smell of dirt (not a bad thing) and some bitterness, with a brown bread and malty undertones.

T: Follows the nose, with that present ground coffee component in a very earthy and natural espresso flavor. Moderate toasted nuttiness.

MF: Lighter bodied. Carries some coffee bitterness but definitely not roasted malt bitterness or char.

O: Just fine as a coffee brown, but I had hoped for a little more. It is straightforward; I would like to see more nutty, bready character in a brown ale though.

Hero Status Cold Brew Coffee Ale from Silver City takes a robust and flavorful brown ale and adds locally roasted cold-pressed coffee. Or so they say. The beer pours from a 22oz bottle into a curved stout glass and appears dark brown in color, unclouded, with minimal head formation. Aroma is slightly malty and rich, with a pretty mild hint of unbrewed ground coffee. The flavor develops on my tongue from cold and refreshing, to aggressively carbonated, to a pure note of coffee. Bitterness is very restrained and probably attributes as much to C-hops as cold brewed coffee. A good beer for a mid-day Sunday, this is all the way on the coffee pale / coffee brown ale end of the spectrum, rather than coffee stout.