Shot In The Dark Stout
West Brothers Brewery

Sampled from a 22oz bottle prepared for entry into the WBC (Steward glory, ya know?)

Beer pours a deep dark black with a fine bubbledbeige head that disapates rapidly.

Aroma is big acrid roasted black coffee beans. The reality is that smelling this brew is like holding a cold demiglass of espresso to one's nose.

Taste is of burnt roast espresso coffee with a tough bitey edge from a hop enhanced by the coffee and the CO2 in the brew.

I like the notion of coffee stouts and all, but this one seems wickedly unbalanced towards the coffee tones while hiding all of the flavors of a stout. Even though they're in different categories, I can't help but compare this to the Alesmith Speedway Stout, which has a defter hand with the espresso and more balance to the palate than this beer.

This has a great coffee nose on it, which you'd expect from a beer conditioned with espresso beans. The aroma carries over into the flavor, but the coffee isn't backed up enough by the malts, which leaves this coffee stout a little light. Still, it'd make an excellent breakfast beer with that eye-opening coffee aroma and the lightness keeping it from being too heavy for bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed drinking.