Percy Mapleton Porter
Nita Beer Company

Appearance: Brown and not black and certainly not opaque. It does have some particulate in the body, but it's not thick as you can see very aggressive carbonation and you can see a clear black silhouette of things through the beer and thus far too bright in my eyes. Decent lacing though with a finger of head. It doesn't look like a Porter, it looks like a darker Brown Ale.

Smell: A very strong slightly burnt molasses smell dominates the nose with I think a touch of cherry blossom in the background that I suspect is the hops. It certainly needs warming to come out at which point more of a raw grain note seems to come forward.

Taste: Starts with some molasses in the background and a very light grainy malt, like far more then I would expect from a porter, as it has that kind of grain spiciness that you get in rye whisky (of which I later learned this beer has). It's very abnormal, especially for a style as it doesn't have the punch that chili would have and seems to take away from the dark roasted bitterness you'd expect from a darker beer. It seems to keep that mildness as some like licorice and an odd woody funk to it, before a touch of floral, bitter hops and a slight burnt note finish the job. It's odd, and again, not very much like a Porter.

Mouthfeel: The carbonation on this one is fairly aggressive here, and while I have had Porters like that, it's more common to try to let it bring creaminess to the brew. Here is accents the rye grain, and the licorice more the burnt molasses the barley is trying to bring. The transitioning isn't great either, as it seems to leave kind of a weak gap that the funk and licorice can't fill. I am frankly amazed that this is 6.4 as I don't catch even a whiff of it, despite a fairly mild experience, so I guess that is something.

Drinkability: Medium bodied but on the heavier side of it. Pretty much that absolute stretch where I would expect a Porter to be but where I'd expect a lot of other English styles to be. A bit too refreshing for the style as it comes across as very mild. It seems to find it's body when it settles down in your stomach though.

Final Thoughts: This is my second beer from Nita, the first being that awful Pineapple beer I had ages ago from them, and this is a disappointment but for a completely different reason. "EDIT: Correction, 3rd. Forgot I had a decent stout from them." The core issue I have here is, this isn't a Porter and I can't help but keep circling back to that fact. To be honest, given the name, used to call the beer, I was expecting some kind of Maple flavor to be at play here which isn't present. This beer drinks very much like an English Dark Ale or a Brown Ale which this would have fared far better had they labelled it as such. I tried to figure out what's that making that odd spice/funk and they did list the ingredients on the can which are "Water, malted barley, malted rye hops, yeast." looks like a comma was forgotten as one can't malt hops. That said, it does give me my answer, as the addition of Rye would explain grain spiciness. Further speaking of the can, they also wrote this story about Percy Mapleton which looks like someone pushed the "justify" option in whatever program they used to make it, to it's limit given how awkward the spacing looks. It's not relevant to the review, but it doesn't look very good.

On the positive side, and more relevant to this review is that also have this classification system under the main artwork of "Fun, Anytime, Adventure, Extreme" which I think actually would be something good and could like. This beer however is labelled as anytime, which is most certainly is not. Had they labelled this as "Fun" and branded it as the peculiarity that it is (A Strong English Dark Mild Ale? with Rye), I think this would have fared far better, probably around the 3.5-3.75 range here. As a Porter, though, this beer is far too mild and is a cautionary tale of how not to brand a beer correctly.