Take It Black
Olds College Teaching Brewery

16oz glass at the Underground YEGDT - apparently I won't find this brew anywhere else. Something tells me that if I were to check Untappd later, I will find that to be patently untrue.

This beer appears solid black void, with somewhat prominent red cola basal edges, and one finger of wispy and bubbly (the specialty around here, it would seem) beige head, which leaves some stringy webbed lace around the glass as things slowly move southwards.

It smells of bready, doughy caramel malt, some free-range ashiness, artisanal coffee, black licorice, further plain prairie cereals, and some leafy and weedy green hop bitters. The taste is bready and yeasty caramel malt, bittersweet chocolate, faint smokey notes, rather understated cafe-au-lait, fading black Twizzlers, wet breakfast cereal that my toddler has left out all morning, and a sense of hop love thoroughly unrequited.

The carbonation is quite plain in its uncaring frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and generally smooth, with a wee airy creaminess creeping in as things warm up a tad. It finishes off-dry, the wan roasted caramel malt doing us the honours.

Overall, I was certainly given the impression that this was going to be one hell of a coffee-heavy brew, but what do unfamiliar Millennial bartenders really know, anyway? Not the case, obviously, but still a quality brew, as usual from this operation, as it hides its 15-proof wowee sauce quotient well enough.