Cosmic Cold Brew: Maple Cream
Block 15 Brewing - Southtown Tap Room

Bottle at share. Coffee beers are hit or miss with me, as I don't drink coffee. The maple notes make this one a hit.Enough sweetness to balance the coffee bitterness.. A solid stout underneath carries all of these flavors through.

 

Beautiful soft espresso head sits atop a dark cola body. Not overly fluffy initially, nevertheless it seems content to remain on its perch, with excellent retention and showing drapes of sticky lacing.

Nose is primarily gentle black coffee with a little bit of an almost fruit sweet polka dot flitting behind.

Flavour carries that sweeter note a bit more and it's less fruit more sweet sweet cream... condensed milk. But in conjunction with the black coffee beans it almost gives it a green character, like young underroasted beans. I don't get any maple to speak of.
Finish is the distillation of creamy and coffee. Sticky sweet body and a blanket of ultrafine carbonation.

Overall this is solid and enjoyable, but I had hoped for more maple, and the interplay of the condensed milk sweetness and coffee bitter didn't manifest quite as I'd hoped. Not bad by any means, just not stellar.

Appearance is very dark brown with a loose, dark khaki head that recedes quickly leaving no lacing. The aroma has some subtle maple notes but is predominantly coffee. The taste, for me at least, is missing the maple element. The coffee is again foremost in both the initial taste and in the lingering aftertaste. There is also a slightly bitter, maybe even tart, quality from either the hops or the coffee, or both.

 

 

 

 

 

Poured into a Fremont small snifter. Pours a very dark mahogany brown, appearing nearly opaque black in the glass with a half finger dark khaki head with great retention and nice lacing. Aroma of coffee, dark toasted malt, cocoa and a little graham cracker. Flavor is coffee, cocoa, dark malt, mild maple and vanilla. Medium bodied with moderate creaminess, sharp carbonation and great mouth feel. Wow, this is the closest I've tasted to a mocha coffee flavor in a stout, with both high quality coffee and rich milk chocolate. The maple is very subtle, but adds a semi-sweet syrup note that fits in very well with the malt base. Although the coffee is quite forward and subsumes the malt somewhat, there are nice dark toasted components too. An excellent coffee stout and tastes like something with a much bigger ABV. Well done.