Smoked Porter
Bastone Brewery

 

 

 

This beer was served from the tap at Bastone in Royal Oak, Michigan. It arrived in a generic pint glass, showing the deepest brown coloring, with only the littlest light let up at the bottom, even in the noon sun. It held a half finger tall head of light brown bubbles, showing okay retention, and leaving thick rings of lacing around our glasses. No haze or sediment was noted, and carbonation appeared to be moderate. The aroma gave your standard roasty porter malts, with big coffee and faint caramel. To mix were notes of light figgy fruitiness, lactics, white cracker breadiness, nickel, walnut, soft booziness, and limey sourness with warmth. Our first impression was that the flavoring was nice, with the smokiness adding nicely to it without going overboard. As we sipped, the taste opened with charred brown and coffee malts with good roast, sweat, and definite smokiness. Red cherry sweetness, raw plantain, licorice, and coffee acidity helped to balance. The peak came with chocolate malty sweetness, flashes of brown sugar, salmon meatiness, steel, and continued roast of coffee malts. Washing through the finish was that dark and roasty grain background overlaid with interesting sweetness of banana esters, cheaper pilsner malts, charred caramel, tobacco smokiness, and apricot syrups. The aftertaste breathed of mineral, magic marker phenols, charcoal, bittered coffee malts, white vinegar, and cold molasses. The body was medium, and the carbonation was high. Each sip gave nice slurp and smack, with okay froth and cream. The body actually did thin a bit with warmth, but kept the mouth cooled and wetly coated. A slight chalky dryness lightly touched the hard palate, but only after quite a while. The abv was appropriate, and the beer drank easily.

Overall, what we enjoyed most about this beer was the flavoring. We were given a solid porter base to start, with the smokiness weaving throughout, and never becoming too much to handle. Everything else is well done, with good acidity to the snout, and decent slurp on the sip. While this guy isn’t knock-you-down amazing, it is a welcome introduction to this newly local brewery for us.