otter creek brewing company

Febrewary: Alta Gracia Coffee Porter

~ LobaBlanca

07-febrewary-agcp

Brewer: Otter Creek BrewingCompany
Location: Middlebury, Vermont
Type: American Porter
ABV: 5%

Let this be a lesson to us all, denizens. Always read the full label before making a purchase. Had I done this with the “Wolaver’s Fine Organic Ales” coffee porter that I’m here to review now…well, let’s just say that I would have probably thought twice about actually buying it. Wolaver’s is a line brewed by Vermont’s Otter Creek Brewing Company. I gave their Stovepipe Porter a less than enthusiastic review back in Darktober.

And so it goes with this beer. It seems as if the only real hat trick that this Wolaver beer has is that it is an “unfiltered and unpasteurized porter brewed with Vermont grown organic coffee and aged on organic vanilla beans.” Wonderful It’s an organic beer. But it claims to use excellent coffee and vanilla beans, which when combined, should make a fantabulous beer…something right up my alley, so to speak.

This beer barely fizzled as I poured it, even though I did try to encourage some sign of carbonated life. Regardless of my attempts at carbonation resuscitation, this beer was practically DOA. Drinking it was an equally lifeless experience, each swallow going down like flat bargain bin soda left out on the table for hours.

With hardly any carbonation also came the disappointing realization that this porter had hardly any nose whatsoever. It smelled kind of like a cup of watered-down coffee, but nothing extraordinarily noteworthy beyond that. Limp, weak mouth feel and a taste that I can only describe as my sad attempt as a child to make a chocolate soda by squeezing Hershey’s syrup into a glass of Pepsi. I can report that this experiment was an unequivocal failure.

Kind of like this porter.

Were I in a more charitable mood (which I suppose I should be in, considering the holiday and all), I would say that I plan on giving this beer another try. However, combined with my previously unenthusiastic experience with Otter Creek, I’m going to say no. No to this beer and no to Otter Creek. Again, there is no lack of dark beer goodness out there. I really don’t see the point in subjecting myself to beers this lackluster.

Darktober 25: Stovepipe Porter

~ LobaBlanca

Brewer: Otter Creek Brewing Company
Location: Middlebury, Vermont
Type: American Porter
ABV: 4.4%

Dropping down from Canada, we land at the shores of Vermont’s Otter Creek for some of their Stovepipe Porter.

Ruby-tinted blackness with a smudge of carbonation, this porter delivers familiar albeit slightly floral smells but comes in slightly drier, slightly more bitter than many of the other porters to have made a Darktober appearance. Although not nearly as bitter as Boxcar’s Pumpkin Porter, Stovepipe definitely does not tickle the sweet senses of your palate in any way.

I also detected a stronger hops presence in this porter, which might have accentuated the dry, bitter flavor profile. While deducting points from my personal enjoyment scale, I think that this porter strikes a nice balance between the malts and hops that could appeal to the more hoppy minded beer drinker. Of course, I could be completely off on this assumption. It would not be the first time.

Not a terrible beer, but definitely not a stand-out. If I’ve shown anything this month, there is no dearth of exceptional choices for dark beer drinkers. Why, then, would I choose a middle-of-the-road beer if I could choose a better option?