Imperial Coffee Porter
Mill Street Brew Pub

355 ml bottle served cool into a pint glass. Bottle 6 of 6 of the Mill Street Winter pack. Thanks to John for this sample.

Appearance - Dark cola brown coloured beer with red highlights. Aggressive pour yielded two fingers of fluffy light tan head. The staying power is good and lots of lacing. What;s not to like?

Smell - An abundance of coffee initially, some fresh brewed with wet coffee grounds as well. Possibly some vanilla, but definitely coffee focused. Can almost smell the astringency that comes with a good cup of joe. A touch one dimensional though.

Taste - Plenty of coffee, some dark chocolate and not a whole lot else. Quite enjoyable, albeit lacking dimensions. Roastiness is a little heavy handed and over played. Also flavors don't really build here, once the coffee has covered your tongue there's little progression.

Mouthfeel - Thin bodied, some creaminess and high carbonation. Not as slick as a bigger porter although at 7%, it's toeing the line for even being considered "imperial".

Overall - A little less than the sum of it's parts, this is still a nice little addition to a taster's pack. One of the better Mill Street beers, although with the landscape changing so much over the past 5 years or so, that no longer puts this beer in a position of strength. Worth a tipple and probably one of the better beers in the 6 pack.

355ml bottle - part of Mill Street's current (winter, I guess) mixer pack. Apparently this is 'beer brewed with coffee', as if the marketing department doesn't trust itself.

This beer pours a fairly solid black, with a halo-like southern edge of amber highlights, and four fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and somewhat bubbly brown head, which leaves some jagged coral reef atoll pattern lace around the glass as it slowly but surely dissipates.

It smells of bready and doughy caramel malt, some laid-back bittersweet cocoa powder, rather inert-seeming cafe-au-lait notes, a hint of earthy yeastiness, and some weak leafy, musty, and herbal 'green' hops. The taste is lightly roasted caramel malt, medium dark chocolate wafers, still kind of ephemeral day-old coffee grounds, some muddled bruised pome fruitiness, thin brown sugar syrup, and more underwhelming earthy, musty, and dead floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is average in its palate-disappointing frothiness, the body a so-so middleweight, and mostly smooth, nothing in particular getting in the way of normality here. It finishes off-dry, the now sort of meaty malt not making any new friends, as it were.

Overall - yeah, if you didn't tell me that there was coffee in this offering (but ya did, three or four times on the label), I would probably not have 'detected' it. At any rate, there is more than that rotting in this specific Denmark, and I don't believe that I shall be pining for another one anytime soon.

 

355 mL bottle from the LCBO; one of two new brews included in their latest mixed sixer. The bottling date is a bit smudged but it looks like K3017 (Oct 30 2017). Served slightly chilled.

Pours a dark cola brown colour; not quite black, but more or less opaque either way. One finger of loose, khaki-tinged foam collects at the surface, but recedes away in under two minutes' time; a bubbly collar is the only survivor, with no lacing or cap to speak of. On the nose, the roasted malts dominate - I am getting a lot of baker's chocolate and cocoa powder, of course interspersed with the mandatory coffee bean notes. Hints of treacle sweetness and dates come through as it warms, but sorry to say there's not a lot of depth here.

A passable strong porter, yet a bit lacking in some respects. Roasted malts are the name of the game here, with cocoa powder and bittersweet baker's chocolate characterizing much of the profile. There are sweeter notes of molasses and caramelized sugars beneath the surface, but in terms of prominence they are a distant third behind the (predominant) coffee and dark malts. Even less discernible are the hints, of earthy, herbal hops on the back end; there's some 'leftover coffee grounds' astringency in the aftertaste, which is probably the most satisfying part of the sip (but I'm a coffee addict, so your mileage may vary). Medium in body, with lively carbonation that prickles the palate assertively with each sip - a little too much bite for this sort of thing IMO, but I can deal with it. If you like the taste of coffee, drinking this should be an effortless ordeal.

FInal Grade: 3.69, a B grade. I've always been a bit lukewarm on Mill Street's regular strength Coffee Porter - so perhaps it isn't very surprising that I find its Imperial variant to be on the underwhelming side. This one does have a stronger coffee taste than its little brother, but the fact that I've even mentioned that suggests that I'm reaching for compliments. This is a drinkable, approachable beer with no off-putting qualities, but for a so-called imperial porter it seems a bit too safe. It works fine in the context of a mixed six-pack, but I doubt I'd pay for a single.