Coffee Fathead
Nebraska Brewing Company

I've had many barleywines, but never one infused with coffee. It made for a unique experience. Beer was cloudy, muddy. Coffee flavor was a strong part of the mix, and blended well with Nebraska's flagship barleywine. Not overdone, but in the mix. Overall though, coffee doesn't seem the best partner for a barleywine. So A for experimentation, B-minus for taste.

 

 

Out of all the coffee beers I've had this is probably the one with the most imperceptible amount of coffee. I would've thought they gave me the regular fathead if the bartender didn't clearly know his stuff and agree that it really isn't much different from the regular. More of a problem is that the flavor simply isn't that great regardless.

09/26/2016

other variants of this have been far more prominent with the extra ingredient. this one is incredibly light on the coffee, especially right next to the vanilla edition, which is really intense on that. the coffee here seems to cut some of the sweetness of the base beer, which is heavy on toffee and whiskey notes, already vanilla forward, brown sugar, its a lot, and the java here seems to smooth it out, cut it down a few notches, which is needed, but i dont taste much coffee. its more about the feel it contributes, thinning this out a little bit and adding some much needed balancing bitterness and roast. they could definitely stand to ramp it up a little bit in my opinion, although i am pretty heavy into coffee right now, so i may have a bias. overall i think i prefer the regular fathead to any of the variations i have had of it. they got it right with the base beer, no need to mess around with it at this point. these guys do a great job with these strong ales, and this is one of their better beers before the coffee. more coffee would improve this.