Arbor Espresso Love Breakfast Stout

Brewed by Arbor Brewing Company Pub & Eatery
Style: Stout
Ann Arbor, Michigan USA

12oz bottle 7/24/09 (Siciliano’s Market-Grand Rapids)-Pours a dark brown almost black with a small tan head. Aroma of coffee, malt, and slight chocolate. Taste of malt, slight bitterness, and slight tart. Tastes like it is infected. This medium to full bodied brew is another so so brew from these guys.

Bottle. A super dark brown color pour with a huge lasting tan head , some light spotty lacing left , medium carbonation. Aroma of coffee,dark roasted malt, and sweet dark chocolate. Flavor is a nice balance of malt ,strong coffee,and bittersweet chocolate , no apparent hop flavors. Medium to full body , creamy mouthfeel with a light bitter coffee/chocolate finish , very drinkable and something I would buy again , better than expected .

12oz bottle. Pours dark brown with a brown head. Lots of sediment floating around in the beer. Didn’t expect that. Nice head retention. Aroma is of chocolate, roasted malt, coffee, dark fruit, and nuts. Taste starts off with a very sharp coffee bite. Aside from the coffee bite, there is a decent amount of chocolate and dark fruit. The backbone is of dry, caramel malt. Lingering chocolate and nut taste. Mouthfeel is creamy, and very sticky. Kind of dissapointed by this one, nothing too special.

Bottle from Siciliano’s, Grand Rapids, MI. Opaque black with medium to full burnt beige/tan head. Sweeter espresso, chocolate aroma with a nice amount of maltiness. Sweeter chocolate flavor with burnt coffee, a little cherry oxidation but not too prevalent yet, a little ashy, a little tobacco, a little lactose. Medium body with creaminess, active carbonation. Pretty tasty, but the burnt coffee and ashiness is a little offputting.

Bottle was a huge gusher when it opened and spilled out all over my desk. Black color with a short lived tan head. Lacto sour aroma with lots of sweet chocolate and coffee and a hint of dark fruit. More lacto sourness in the flavor with a cloyingly sweet coffee and chocolate character. Medium-thin and over carbonated body.

Bottle fresh from Oadees. Why the haters? It’s a decent coffee stout. Yeah, I know you can find me better out here in MI. But why hate this beer? It’s got coffee, it’s got stout, it’s got some chocolate notes, it ends on a bitter finish. Straight up. Boring, yes. Hateable, I don’t know.

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. What an absolute abomonation of a beer. How can a brewer take something so beautiful, which is a coffee infused stout, and crank out something so obscenely awful and distasteful it’s embarrassing? Not sure exactly, but that’s exactly what was found lurking inside this bottle.

If the show started and stopped with just smelling the beer, I think everything would be rosey. A nice choco/mocha nose with a touch of black walnuts. Perhaps I should have been concerned with the eruptive head that appeared with this beer. Very large, 4-5 inches thick with a color of dark biege with medium sized bubbles. First sip and it was all over. It’s like someone figured out a way to melt sweet tarts and dump a gallon or two into the fermenter, because tart and acidic was exactly what this was. Sure, there was some underlying coffee notes but this was no espresso love. This was infected love and quite nasty at that. Embarrassing was the word, because I shared this with 4 other guys and they both looked at me like I had snakes coming out my nose after I explained to them about coffee stouts. Just plain awful.

Bottle - Pours deep black with a big, tan, bubbly head. Aroma is milky malt with a little coffee and chocolate--a little sweet. Flavor is lot of sour lactic maltiness, a little roasty, and surpisingly little coffee. It’s a little bitter on the end, and not in a good way. Pretty creamy on the mouth, but with distracting harsh carbonation. Bleh.