Breakfast By The River
Riverside Brewing Company

Pours a brown colour, quite cloudy. Head is just invisible, it's not there at all. That's a big downside because the colour of the beer is quite nice.

Big sourdough character on the nose, with a touch of rye and a big coffee hit. Spicy notes on the coffee with star anise and licorice adding piquancy and sweetness. Pleasant.

Taste is more of the same; coffee, spice. Sourdough malty notes with more licorice and spice tending towards clove and coriander for a little more savoury character. Coffee is dominant, but complex and interesting.

Nice body; for something with no head it's surprisingly well-textured and fluid.

Yeah, very nice coffee porter. Delivers what it promises.

With great thanks to Dave from Riverside for the growler, and thanks to MrKennedy and spicelab for transporting it to me :)

Served from 1.89L Platinum Liquor growler.

Pours black (toasty gold brown when held up to light). Nice lacing, head has help up fine.

Smell is lots and lots of coffee. Some nice roast malt notes. I like to think I get a fair dose of the maple syrup too. Nice potency and depth in the aroma.

Taste is great. Lots of coffee and roast. And sweet-tasting malt/maple. Finishes with a delightful smokiness and is on the whole a dry beer. The coffee has a great "three-dimensionality" to it.

Mouthfeel is about medium and very nice for the ABV- feels almost like milky oats which are also reminiscent of breakfast. Below average carbonation (quite likely due to the growler not being completely filled to the top, as the keg kicked in the process). This actually helps the drinkability as the beer goes down very easily.

Just a really, really tasty and flavoursome beer, and represents its theme (breakfast) extremely well. Will have zero problems drinking this whole growler myself (except for tomorrow morning).

 

A smoked coffee porter, according to their description, brewed with oats, maple syrup and smoked malt, and then dry-hopped (or equivalent) with coffee beans that had been recently roasted and ground on site at the brewery. That's quite a story behind it. Tried on-tap at the GABS festival in Melbourne (and from a hand-pump since—this review is from my GABS notes, however).

Pours a deep brown colour, with a surprisingly good clarity to it. Body is a little light, and it holds almost no head, just a few loose bubbles around the rim. It's an inauspicious start.

Pleasant aromas though: coffee, waffle and certainly the fragrance of maple syrup. There's a slight roasted malt character, but the coffee dominates this space. There's also a slightly meaty note like grilled chicken—perhaps the smoked malt making an appearance. It's nice.

Taste is a little lighter however: clean entry on the palate with some coffee characters balanced with a smooth malt not. Finish drops out quickly though, leaving it clean and light, but also a bit weak. Surprisingly, an aftertaste of maple syrup sticks around on the back after everything else has felen out. Feel is light but relatively bright.

Overall, this was a relatively tasty drop. Unfortunately, to date Riverside's beers have just had me squealing with excitement and so this is a relative disappointment. Don't be fooled by my saying that though: this is still a really nice beer.