The Porter Formerly Known As
Olds College Teaching Brewery

650ml bottle - formerly known as what? Black Widow? Was there some sort of trademark infringement with the original? There's only a couple dozen or so other beers on here with the same name!

This beer pours a fairly solid black, with subtle red cola basal edges, and four fingers of puffy, rocky, and somewhat creamy brown head, which leaves some stellar frosted windshield pattern lace around the glass as it evenly subsides.

It smells of roasted caramel malt, bittersweet cocoa powder, dry cafe-au-lait, some further free-range ashiness, and very tame earthy, musty, and floral noble hops. The taste is gritty and grainy pale malt, a faint caramel sweetness, wet char, medium chocolate, day-old coffee grounds, a hint of cold cream, and more understated earthy, weedy, and musky floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly laid-back in its quotidian frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and generally smooth, with just a touch of smoke getting a tad handsy with my typically forgiving palate. It finishes off-dry, the cocoa, malt, and milky essences prevailing.

Overall - I'm not sure if the recipe changed along with the renaming of this offering, but looking back at old reviews seems to indicate that it might very well have. Still a nicely-flavoured version of the style, and worth checking out, no matter what it's called.