Cubano-Style Espresso Brown Ale - Cigar City Brewing

Pahn

New York

3.93/5  rDev -4.4%
look: 3.5 | smell: 4 | taste: 4 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 4

12oz bottle into Duvel tulip. Thanks to BA shufon for including this as a generous extra in a recent trade.

Missed my morning coffee today, so figured it was time to try this beer.

Appearance: Free pour yields a one inch, fizzy and rocky offwhite head. Pours a very dark brown that's clear red brown at the edges. Not much lacing.

Smell: Espresso and a strange sweet apple aroma. What? Like the espresso. Very sharp aromas. Lots of grape, apple, berry... what are these doing here? Are they complexities of the espresso? Mild vanilla in the background. Not really any discernible malt aroma.

Wait, is that Cascade hops? It's sort of piny and grapefruity. It smells like it... strange choice for a beer like this if so.

All told, the aroma is complex, pleasant, and persistent, which immediately places it well above the average brown ale. The aromas don't seem to make much sense to me, but they're good.

Taste: Coffee and mild malt flavor up front. Nice bready backbone that blossoms into tasting like sourdough bread with espresso poured all over it. Never thought of doing that before, but it actually tastes quite good.

Great coffee/espresso flavor up front. Has a real airy quality to it, as well as a mild nuttiness. Further in, the blend of coffee and base beer is different than any other coffee beer I've ever had. It's not really better or worse and it's hard to describe, but definitely unique.

Fair amount of hop flavor up front as well (again, like Cascade, which is weird), along with a bit of ashy flavor. With warmth, the coffee does take on a bit of a creamy vanilla character that I very much enjoy.

Mouthfeel: Light side of medium bodied. A little more than a touch overcarbonated. Would like it to be creamier.

Overall: This beer isn't "coming together" for me... I don't really understand the overall flavor or aroma, and there isn't much balance. It's not even that it's "out of balance" as in coffee hits you over the head or not enough malt flavor or anything like that, it's that I can't see what all these equally prominent and rather well done flavors are doing together.

Even so, good beer. Lesser than the sum of its parts perhaps, but its parts are all very very good.

Serving type: bottle

12-04-2011 23:52:13 | More by Pahn

mmink27

Florida

4.5/5  rDev +9.5%

06-19-2013 17:14:08 | More by mmink27

Aleks_P

Florida

4/5  rDev -2.7%

06-17-2013 02:52:11 | More by Aleks_P

illy0sis

Texas

4.5/5  rDev +9.5%

06-17-2013 01:25:31 | More by illy0sis

AltBock

Ohio

3.85/5  rDev -6.3%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 3.5

On tap at the Cigar City Tasting Room on 15 June. They served it to me in a standard American Cigar City pint glass.

I could tell right off the bat that it didn't pour a pitch dark coffee black color. Instead it poured a hearty dark mahogany brown with a cool looking cranberry red center. On top was a thick beige head of foam. It was a good 3/4 of inch in height. This tall head of foam had excellent retention that left behind a skim of foam and a ton of sticky beige streaks of lace around the glass. Beautiful!!

The aroma was straight up espresso! You could tell that they used quality coffee beans in this beer. They smelled really good. My nose couldn't pick up much behind the espresso. I got a whiff of roasted malt and a tiny speck of dark chocolate. It's nice to have a variety, but the rich scent of espresso was good enough for my nose.

It was pretty much the same story for the taste. The taste was all about the roasted espresso beans. For some reason, the quality of the beans was better in the aroma then what they were in the taste. They tasted dumbed down and slightly bitter. There was more roasted malt and dark chocolate in the taste as well as a tiny speck of caramel. These flavors didn't counter the dumbed down espresso bean taste. It was good, but it could have been better.

This was a straight up medium bodied coffee/espresso beer with a decent level of carbonation and a weak espresso aftertaste. There was only the taste of weakened espresso beans in the aftertaste. They won't linger. That's a good thing.

I had this beer in the bottles before and thought it was better than this. The draft really brought out the weak espresso beans. Really nice appearance, rich espresso aroma, but weak taste. I'll stick to the bottles.

Serving type: on-tap

06-16-2013 22:49:01 | More by AltBock

TheDoak

Florida

4.25/5  rDev +3.4%

06-14-2013 04:41:25 | More by TheDoak

Hubarooski

Florida

3.5/5  rDev -14.8%

06-13-2013 22:14:05 | More by Hubarooski

Zonian1

Ohio

3/5  rDev -27%

06-13-2013 00:54:44 | More by Zonian1

ediaz

Florida

4.25/5  rDev +3.4%

06-12-2013 01:58:49 | More by ediaz

hopkrid

Florida

4/5  rDev -2.7%

06-12-2013 01:14:39 | More by hopkrid

TheRuss9585

Vermont

4.25/5  rDev +3.4%

06-10-2013 17:54:51 | More by TheRuss9585

mecummins

Illinois

4.75/5  rDev +15.6%

06-10-2013 03:09:41 | More by mecummins

alltakn

Florida

4.25/5  rDev +3.4%

06-09-2013 02:55:51 | More by alltakn

Rhettroactive

Virginia

4.5/5  rDev +9.5%

06-08-2013 05:09:26 | More by Rhettroactive

SDStoneEnthusiast

California

4.25/5  rDev +3.4%

06-08-2013 00:14:13 | More by SDStoneEnthusiast

wyatt13

Illinois

3.5/5  rDev -14.8%

06-07-2013 04:34:33 | More by wyatt13

csparace

Illinois

4.25/5  rDev +3.4%

06-07-2013 02:11:57 | More by csparace

pisano

Massachusetts

3.75/5  rDev -8.8%

06-05-2013 12:51:02 | More by pisano

mobius387

Florida

4.03/5  rDev -1.9%
look: 3.5 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

appearance: rusty brown, very opaque, thin vanilla head, minimal carbonation

aroma: a nice nose, toffee hits the hardest with some great coffee aromas, some cream and sweet roasty notes to round it out. very well done.

palate: super smooth, medium bodied, flavor distributes evenly, not very boozy (duh, its 5.5%), not very bitter

taste: the malt and coffee blend very well together. nothing overpowering; this is not a coffee forward beer, but its nice and smooth making it a very drinkable brown. and im not a huge brown ale guy. its a little lighter bodied than what ive come to expect from most browns, but its also got a nice sweetness to it which is a good twist. overall, very well done and very enjoyable!

Serving type: bottle

06-04-2013 17:19:47 | More by mobius387

Rau71

California

4/5  rDev -2.7%

06-04-2013 15:03:26 | More by Rau71

craftbeerasian

Florida

4.5/5  rDev +9.5%

05-30-2013 22:18:07 | More by craftbeerasian

CanMan79

Ohio

4/5  rDev -2.7%

05-29-2013 05:18:46 | More by CanMan79

BillHem

Florida

4/5  rDev -2.7%

05-28-2013 13:22:19 | More by BillHem

AndrewScottPentland

Florida

4.25/5  rDev +3.4%

05-27-2013 19:32:49 | More by AndrewScottPentland

Thedrizzle

Florida

4.75/5  rDev +15.6%

05-26-2013 23:24:06 | More by Thedrizzle