Atwater Vanilla Java Porter

Brewed by Atwater Block Brewery
Style: Porter
Detroit, Michigan USA

12 oz bottle. Ugh. Just terrible all around. Pours a deep brown with amber highlights and a cola- like sptrizy head to nothing,. Aroma is lactic sour and harsh bittersweet chocolate and light diacetyl- vanilla is harsh and dirty. Thin isipid chocolate with lots of lactic sourness and just harsh and crackery raw with light toast and acrid burnt malts. Thin and acidic finish. Gross.

Reading the other reviews here I think I might have gotten an off bottle. But I’ll rate it like I see it. Olives. Olives in the smell and Olives in the flavor, green olives sans pimento. With some mild coffee and vanilla flavors, and some pronounced roastyness, but mainly olives. This is absolutely ridiculous.

12oz bottle into my d’addario pint glass. The vanilla and coffee flavors are so strong that I have vanilla beans and coffee grounds stuck in my teeth. I like it, but I understand why others do not. It has a thin mouthfeel and the vanilla and java flavors are the only flavs present.

12oz bottel poured into a tumbler. AVJP pours very dark brown with a quickly settling head. it smells like coffee and vanilla. The vanilla is pretty over-the-top and the coffee tastes more like grounds than beans or the drink itself. This is a perfectly fine beer to drink in a hotel in a strange city (like I’m doing now) but it isn’t something I’d want to have around the house on a regular basis.

On tap at Magoos. Nice straightforward, not much head or lacing, dark amber, vanilla is present and a roght balance, a little sweet but fairly clean finish.

Incredibly sweet, almost too much so. The vanilla is more subtle than I expected, and I’m not entirely crazy about the coffee aspect. But it’s pleasant and not bad, and it does smell pretty awesome. The lacing looks good and is thin but grippy. The thin mouthfeel was initially a little unexpected, since all the porters I’ve had in the past were thicker, but I’ve since found some good ones that were thin too. I’ve warmed up to the flavor balance on my second tasting. Although very sweet, it’s good, and the coffee notes really work. It’s like the vanilla coffee equivilant of Young’s Double Chocolate Stout.

What the hell went wrong here? Vanilla Java porter, pretty run of the mill drink here, but did they use sour milk? Strong in appearance and palate but really below average in every other regard, down right terrible tasting.

Dark red-black pour with a tan head. Weird spicy aroma, almost hot sauce like. Flavor of wood, roasted malts, and spices. Slight sourness. Strange flavor with light body. Gets worse as I drink it. Acidic finish.