Kittywampus Reserve
Foreign Exchange Brewing Company

Roasty, flavorful, and sweet. Definitely a vanilla forward Porter. Almost barrel aged in character, especially the booziness. The milk sugar may not have been necessary, however.

 

Shimmering black pour with a brown ring. Smells is chock full of dark roast coffee, fudge, vanilla beans, and kisses of caramel. Taste is less complex than the original, huge coffee bomb, vanilla and caramel filled chocolates relegated to the aftertaste. Feel is highly percolated, very sticky yet lighter bodied, very drinkable. Coffee lovers rejoice! As for me, give me the more subtle and complex orignal though this is not bad by any means

No canning date (released on 11/9/20, so presumably canned within a few days of that date); consumed on 12/17/20

Pours a thick, nearly glistening jet-black body capped with a sliver of creamy, mocha foam fading almost immediately to a nonexistent cap, thin though frothy collar, and minimal strands of webby lacing holding temporarily to the walls of the glass.

Aroma flows with an almost overwhelming coffee roast intertwined with softer tones of milk chocolate upfront; roasted grain and sparse dark fruits develop from the persistent coffee dominance across the bouquet, while touches of vanilla cream and further enhancing charred grain fade with the close.

Taste opens with building coffee roast cut with toasty malts, guiding into milk chocolate and suggestions of hazelnut into the mid-palate as rounded, creamy vanillin develops a sweetness into the back end; a touch of coffee roast surges once more as charry malt advances through the finish.

Mouthfeel is creamy and full-bodied, with lower-end carbonation peeking through into a silky, increasingly sticky mid-palate; a spritzy grit progresses toward the back end, where a more rounded, charry grit leaves an increasingly hefty, established impression through the finish.

An imperial porter succeeding in an intense presentation of coffee while maintaining its lactic expressions in a more supplementary capacity, and while a touch too creamy-sweet in spots, there's just enough balance to avoid one-dimensionality; overall, a level expression of coffee in a porter executed cleanly, but without much nuance beyond the initial, flavorful bursts.

Aroma is coffee, chocolate, dark malts/grains and a hint of spices. The flavor is chocolate/almost ice cream, dark malts, coffee and a thick/mildly sweet/acidic finish.

 

 

Wow, lots of coffee in this one. The coffee dominates the smell and the taste. That's not a bad thing. Some mild bitterness in the taste, possibly from the coffee? Has some sweetness to it too, almost syrupy. Had to take a lactaid to drink this but it was a really good porter.