Tamper Tantrum
Whiplash Brewing

Deep chocolate brown with garnet highlight under loose but steady ochre froth; woody chips +stale coffee on the nose; carob, walnuts, muscovado sugar, medium roast beans and toffee finish; medium, low carb, sticky.

4 4 4.25 3.75 4.5

Collab with 3FE using their Christmas blend.

A couple of nifty moves out of this one:
Starts with a big roasty hit and a thread of dark sugar. Coffee then judiciously leaks through, followed by all the delicate biscuit and nut notes that make a good brown. Finally there’s a hit of caramel to end.
Coffee is hard even in a stout, where it’s got more to play against, so it’s impressive that it’s assertive here without overstaying its welcome - indeed, it dips in and out as the flavours shift on the palate. And it’s still got all the rich, comforting notes of a brown - WL never put the malt bill on their collabs, but I’d suspect a bunch of brown malt. The interplay is compelling; each keeping the other from overwhelming.
If there’s a quibble, it’s that it’s undercarbed. While it never cloys for a sweet beer, it sits heavy. I’d like to quaff it more than I am. But quibbles, like I said.

Satisfying both as a brown + a coffee beer; two Dublin institutions doing their best work.