Sleight of Hand
Annex Ale Project

 

Appearance - Pours a dark mahogany brown with two fingers of foamy tan head.

Smell - roasted malts, cocoa, coffee bean, earthy and leafy hops, and hint of earthy yeast.

Taste - Starts of with the roasted malts then quickly transitions into the cocoa and coffee bean flavours. The earthy and leafy hops come into the mix next followed by the hint of earthy yeast. The malts, cocoa, and coffee bean flavours are the predominant flavours followed by the hops.

Mouthfeel - Medium bodied with moderate carbonation. Finishes smooth with the malts and other flavours lingering.

Overall - A porter that is highly drinkable and full of flavour. Could easily be a sessionable brew.

 

650ml bottle - an American-style porter, by the sounds of it, but it's not even represented on their website. And not sure what the name alludes to, either.

This beer pours a clear, dark orange-brick brown colour, with three flabby fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and mildly creamy beige head, which leaves some thick lightning strike pattern lace around the glass as it slowly sinks away.

It smells of gritty and grainy caramel malt, some free-range ashiness, bittersweet cocoa powder, dry mocha notes, a touch of generic citrus acridity, and some plain earthy, weedy, and floral green hop bitters. The taste is mildly roasted, bready and doughy caramel malt, a bit of lesser biscuity toffee sweetness, some pleasant muddled berry notes, medium chocolate, fading day-old coffee grounds, a hint of soured cream, and more understated leafy, earthy, and musty noble hoppiness.

The carbonation is quite laid-back in its after-hours frothiness, the body a solid medium weight, and generally smooth, with nothing really getting in the way of a burgeoning airy creaminess here. It finishes off-dry, the cocoa, caramel, and milky coffee making a day of it.

Overall - this is a pleasant enough sub-version of the style, the American stylings of boosted coffee and chocolate most notable. Easy to drink, and soft on the ol' palate, even one that has experienced an overabundance of leftover sweets of late, because Canadian trick-or-treaters (or more likely, their parents) can't handle a whiff of snow and zero degrees Celsius in late October.