Mocha Java Porter
Uncle Buck's Brewery & Steakhouse

Mocha Java Porter is a beer I’ve seen before at the Grapevine Big Buck, but I’ve never remembered to ask Howard McMurry if this beer is a one-off brew, a seasonal or an occasional beer. I suspect it to be occasional, as I believe I had it as the cask-conditioned offering a few months before I bought a growler of it, though that may have been a coffee-flavored version of Big Buck’s tasty Black River Stout.

Anyway, Mocha Java Porter is pretty black, with a tannish head that lasts quite well. The coffee flavor comes through a bit on the nose, in addition to the dark fruitiness (raisins or dates) and there is a touch of mocha, though I couldn’t tell if it was coming from the kilned malts, the use of actual chocolate or the simple power of suggestion. My wife tasted it and said it tasted strongly of coffee.

The body was smooth and just on the force-C02 side of creamy. The flavor was totally predicted by the nose—roasty, coffeeish, mocha-like and then bitter. The bitterness, like in so many stouts and porters, seems to be contributed by equal parts astringent roasted malt and hops. The same dark fruitiness is manifested in the flavor, followed my the ubiquitous metallic taste that accompanies any porter or stout brewed with malts or barley that have been cooked to the point of intense, burnt carbonization.

Mocha Java Porter is a great example of a flavored beer. Typically, I find that flavor additions distract from the natural flavors of the beer, but in this case, the flavoring is done so well that it really compliments the native malt/hops/yeast flavor. It tasted like a packet of hot chocolate had been added to a cup of coffee, which was in turn, dumped into a keg of stout.