Best Coffee Beers...

This ^^^

 

I am a fan of Dark Horse's Perkulators. For me they really capture the subtle taste difference of percolated coffee.

 

Coffee Bender is a fine beer.

 

Agree. This year KBS is very coffee forward... IMO BCBCS is one of the best beers I've come across.

 

my favorite.

 

Carton Regular Coffee is my #1
followed by:
Elysian Split Shot
Thunderstruck Coffee Porter - Hihgland
Surly Coffee Bender
Bells Java Stout

and of course, the others listed above.

 

Victory at Sea, Coffee Bender.

 

Noble - Naughty Sauce
Stone - Espresso Imperial Russian Stout.

 

Peche Mortel
Trillium Pot & Kettle (my current favorite)
Victory at Sea

 

Bomb! was fantastic.

 

Blueprint LSD is one of the better non BA coffee beers.

 

BCBCS
Starr Hill Little Red Roostarr
Long Trail Culmination

Not a coffee drinker normally. FBS and WnB are too much for me when fresh, but once the bottles hit that 6-8 month age range they drink so well. Gonna open each of these plus KBS next weekend when my brother visits.

 

Elysian Split Shot is very tasty I thought. A new favorite

 

Now those two are a fair fight. I like both better than BCBS for what it's worth.

 

I'd assume it'd be best with just non BA beers or just BA beers.

Victory at Sea, Beer Geek Brunch, Peche.

 

If that's true, prior vintages must've had little to no coffee because I was struggling to find a lot of coffee notes in the flavor and aroma of this year's. What I did find was luscious chocolate and really nice vanilla notes from the oak. Was my first time having it and I loved it but, as far as coffee beers go, it's not as coffee heavy as some of the best (i.e. MBCP, Coffee Bender, Speedway) IMO.

 

Surly Coffee Bender is great!

 

To respond to the OP, when I do side-by-sides I try to make sure the treatments and styles are similar if not identical because, as one poster said already, it's not really a fair fight if they aren't. I did a side-by-side with FBS, WnB and CCB Cubano Espresso with the only differences being that FBS contained chocolate and Cubano was a brown ale instead of a stout, plus it contained vanilla. The Cubano just beat out FBS for me because of the vanilla sweetness and fresh coffee presence. FBS came in second because the WnB was the harshest due to the straight black coffee flavor and booziness. It was sort of like sweet iced coffee vs. mocha vs. black coffee so it wasn't perfectly fair but fun all the same. I also did Victory at Sea side-by-side with WnB once and Victory at Sea won but, once again, the addition of vanilla in VaS makes it not that definitive. Anyways, here are my favorites in loose descending order:

FB Maple Bacon Coffee Porter
Alesmith Speedway
BP Victory at Sea
CCB Cubano Espresso
Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel - Cognac Edition
Stone Dayman Coffee IPA (Can't believe no one's mentioned this yet, it was fantastic!)
Crooked Letter Mystery Romp (Small Mississippi brewery, makes one of the greatest coffee beers ever)
Mikkeller Black Hole
FBS
GD Espresso Oak Aged Yeti
Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel
Surly Coffee Bender
Sixpoint 3beans
Terrapin WnB
Epic Big Bad Baptist
Stone Espresso IRS
Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast
DDC Peche Mortel (Very good but a bit overrated IMO. I prefer Aphrodite even though it contains no coffee)
Pisgah Valdez (Had this for the first time recently. I haven't had a beer by this brewery that I liked until this and it was great)

Honorable mention goes to Founders KBS (As I stated in a previous post, excellent beer, but it doesn't have as much coffee presence as all the other beers I've mentioned so far), DFH Chicory Stout (Haven't had it in a long time and it's not primarily a coffee beer but it was one of the first beers containing coffee I'd ever had and actually liked), Hi-Wire Strongman Coffee Milk Stout (New Asheville brewery doing some really cool stuff), Abita Select Macchiato Espresso Milk Stout, Elysian Split Shot Espresso Milk Stout, Evil Twin Aun Mas Cafe Jesus (Good, but not worth the money), Bell's Java Stout, Highland Thunderstruck Coffee Porter, To Ol BBA Goliat

And hell, while I'm at it, the coffee beers I don't like are Lakefront Fuel Cafe, Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout, Laughing Dog Anubis Imperial Coffee Porter, Emelisse Espresso Stout, 8 Wired C4 Double Coffee Brown (Possibly was an old bottle), Victory Village Coffee (Barely any coffee presence).

Hope I'm not forgetting any Oh, and I've never had BCBCS I have some KBS if anyone's willing to trade!

 

A few thoughts...

It's not just the bourbon barrel aging that makes comparison hard with stuff like BCBCS/Big Bad Baptist/KBS/etc., it's the fact that, as someone referenced above, those high ABV brews *typically* have a completely different mouthfeel than what you can coax out of the lighter stuff. I think that's half of what I love about some of the big boys -- they're just so darn rich and viscous.

All that to say, I suggest you try to track down any coffee-based offering your best/favorite local breweries come up with. I had a locally brewed coffee ESB recently that, quite frankly, knocked the socks off a lot of the coffee beers I can get commercially -- WnB, FBS, and so on. Coffee beers toe a thin line between rich and complementary tastes and harsh, overly acidic flavors. Best way to counteract that? Get the stuff as absolutely fresh as possible.

 

Can't believe I'm the first in the thread to suggest this one:

Evil Twin Imperial Biscotti Break.