Niigata Espresso Beer
Niigata Beer Co.

 

310ml bottle poured into a little hotel tumbler. Bottle doesn't look like the photo in this listing; label is similar, but the name on the label is Espresso de la nuit noire. Bottle appears to show 7% (of course I don't know if that's abv, abw, or something else entirely since I read no Japanese).

Pours dark, opaque, basically black. Small light tan head. Some slow, fine carbonation. Smell is amazingly absent. Unoffensive. It doesn't smell bad, but I can't really smell anything. Maybe just the slightest hint of coffee.

Taste is fortunately more interesting. Fruitier, fairly sweet, not bitter enough, but clear coffee flavor.

Mouthfeel is medium bodied, surprisingly effervescent, slightly gritty. Overall, it's not a bad beer. Not intense at all, though.

A pitch black beer with an off-white head that settles into a small layer of foam.

Smell is interesting, it smells like soy sauce, maybe some molasses. Sounds crazy but there is a dark, salty and lightly sour smell that is soy sauce. Any resemblance with coffee is absent.

Taste is dark and has hints of soy sauce. The roast is subtle and has some maltbitterness. The beer is not sweet or syrupy, mouthfeel is medium. There are hints of molasses. Bitterness is not too high. The coffee in this beer is not tasted.
Overall the beer is very interesting and leaves the standard path RISs ussually walk.

Perhaps a slight change in recipe has been made, as this beer has now dipped to 7% ABV. Picked up a bottle in Hiroshima and drank it back at the room.

Pitch black pour with a huge mocha head and generous sticky lacing. Chocolate, treacle and (of course) coffee dominate a heavy aroma. Good balance between bitter roast and sweet malts in the flavour, which comprises of dark roasted coffee, cocoa and brown sugar. Its a little like a coffee mocha with some alcohol thrown in. The mouthfeel is somewhat sticky and slick, which works well with the sweet coffee flavours, and helps to pull things together.

I found this to be one of the better all-round coffee beers I've had so far. There was nice balance in the flavour, visually she's a beaut, and all other elements are nicely tied in. Pretty cool.

Picked up this bottle at the Shochu Authority in Tokyo Station. Btw, the pizza place near the Shochu Authority is amazingly delicious. Best pizza I have had outside of Italia.

Ingredients: Hops and barley.

A - Pitch black with small very dark brown head. Wine like "legs" rather than any lacing. I suppose that comes from the 8% abv.
S - No aroma to speak of.
T - Extremely restrained flavor. Where is the espresso like bitterness or intensity? Not here. No sweetness either. There is a nice mild long lasting bitterness though, with a simple light coffee flavor.
M - Medium carbonation, well integrated with the alcohol.
D - A nice simple beer, I dont know how they packed all the alcohol in this beer so nicely while keeping the flavor so mild.

350 mL brown bottle, capped. "Bottled on" date on label. Purchased in Tokyo.

This espresso stout(?) poured an almost opaque black (brown highlights near the edges if held to the light) color with tan foam that settled. The smell was rather modest but increased upon warming to room temperature: faint coffee and roasted malt aromas. That taste was a tad on the sour side with only a faint flavor of coffee. There were hints of caramel and hops. The mouthfeel was a bit sour but was smooth. The body and carbonation were medium with low hop presence. This espresso beer was OK, and was definitely better if served less cold, but overall the flavor was a bit thin.