Kick Ass Coffee Cream Ale
Arrowhead Brewing Company

 

 

 

 

 

650ml bottle, one of the few Arrowhead products that were unavailable at the brewery when I visited there last August - and now it arrives at my most favouritest Edmonton bottleshop - all right, let's kick us some ass!

This beer pours a clear, very dark red-brick amber colour, with two flabby fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and sort of creamy beige head, which leaves some imploding bouncy castle lace in places around the glass as things slowly and evenly subside.

It smells of cold, luscious artisanal coffee, bready caramel malt, a bit of bruised black orchard fruit, and some soft earthy, weedy, and leafy hop bitterness. The taste is much thinner day-old coffee notes, gritty, grainy pale malt, a faint caramel sweetness, a twinge of wan yeast, more plain, if a tad sour dark fruitiness, and weak leafy, earthy and weedy hops, last seen in the nose.

The carbonation is quite low and makes it hard to get a reading on the trusty ol' frothometer, the body medium-light in weight (for the purported style), and generally smooth, I suppose, but with a small airy clamminess arising as things warm up a tad. It finishes well off-dry, the meek caramel malt now running the show, as the coffee essence seems nearly bled out.

Overall, an offering with much initial promise (an enticing aroma, well-laced with the guest ingredient), that falls flat rather quickly, and never really recovers. Cream ales are simple beasts to begin with, and trying to tart them up with one of the more common dark beer treatments of late was perhaps not the best of ideas.