Chocolate Belgian Porter - Blue Mountain Brewery

CrellMoset

Virginia

4/5  rDev -4.5%
look: 4 | smell: 4 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

Chocolate Belgian Porter, 20 IBUs, 6.7% abv. Served on nitro tap in a pint glass at thr brewery.

Pours a dark and nearly opaque mahogany-bodied brew that lets tiny slivers of light in when held up to the sparse lumination provided by BMBs tasting room and restaurant. The nitro tap provides a persistent and uniformly dense-looking head, about half a finger tall, that leaves some nice nitro-esque lacing on the sides of the glass. Standard nitro-appearance deduction applies.

Bitter cocoa is actually the dominant note, managing to break through the nitro head pretty effectively. Its not so much bitter as it is earthy, and that mingles well with the other earthy porter notes - dry toast, dark toffee, and faint kisses of char. A few hints of dark fruit hint at the yeast strain and what's to come, but don't suggest anything strongly beyond what you might normally find in an English Porter with a solid malt foundation and an active yeast strain.

More Belgiany here. Slight quasi-spicy phenols mingle with a lot of moderately tart stone fruit notes, mostly plums and black cherries, with hints of both darker fruits (likely shades of the malt base) as well as lighter ones (courtesy of the yeast). The underlying porter is traditional and dry, toasty, earthy, hitting all the traditional porter notes one expects to get, and the cocoa augments a lot of that earthyness, taking more of a secondary role to the other elements going on here.

Smooth, creamy, a little thicker, but not sticky. A pretty good feeling beer, but with the standard nitro deduction again.

A pretty confused (to quote the menu) beer, but a pretty tasty one too. Its not groundbreaking - the fruits are a little tart in places, and the whole thing a little medicinal - but its unique, enjoyable, and pretty drinkable at 6.7% abv for a unique and enjoyable brew. Recommended.

Serving type: nitro-tap

09-15-2010 00:30:09 | More by CrellMoset

blackie

Virginia

3.78/5  rDev -9.8%
look: 4 | smell: 4 | taste: 3.5 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

a: shaker pint, deep brown in color, nearly black, with a persistent thin head set on the surface

s: nose of roast, dry cocoa, and baker's chocolate heavily accented with a spicy belgian yeast, mostly clove, lightly hopped with some metallic notes

m: body around medium with a smooth, medium-full carbonation

t: roasted barley, bitter baker's chocolate, dry dark cocoa, not heavy on the chocolate - more of a background flavor, mostly dry, wit-style belgian yeast flavors, somewhat metallic hop presence

d: just fine, personally don't really care for what a belgian yeast does to a dark roasty beer, but it's an interesting try

pint at Galaxy Hut, Arlington, VA

Serving type: on-tap

09-13-2010 01:56:58 | More by blackie