Big River Grille Espresso Stout

Brewed by Big River Grille & Brewing Works Chattanooga (Gordon Biersch)
Style: Sweet Stout
Chattanooga, Tennessee USA

Recommended by Shag and Cheri I was anxious to try this one. This is great! It tastes just like an espresso. I can tell there is some chocolate in there as well. What a concept! Too bad this is only for a limited time.

One of my first coffee stouts. And it’s actually made with espresso, not coffee, from a local coffee shop in Chattanooga. Looks black with just a little bit of light shining through, not completely opaque. Smell is of roasted espresso(coffee) and chocolate, hops are barely detectable. Taste has a lot of espresso in the front of it with chocolate and malty goodness going on. Really good taste. Lots of roasted qualities. Moutfeel is definitely thin for this, especially for a stout, but it’s not weightless, just needs some more body. Even though the mouthfeel is lacking, I drank about 6 of these in a night and could have had more. I love coffee stouts. So if you don’t like coffee or espresso, stay away, but otherwise, this a good choice.

I was impressed with this stout...though it is a bit thin, it has a wonderful aroma and taste of fresh coffee that I believe distinguishes itself from other run-of-the-mill stouts. I definitely want more of this!

What an interesting beer! The aroma is of freshly brewed espresso. Apperance is dark with a small head. The flavor is espresso and roasted malt. Overall its not a very complex beer but it has a very good taste. I recommend it.

Draught at 11th Southern Brewers Festival in Chattanooga. Pours black with caramel brown hints at the extreme edges of the beer where light begs to pass through. Dark roasted coffee bean aroma hits you like a freshly roasted cup of coffee and then some sweet caramel malt notes pass by your nose long enough to doubt that coffee is the only ingredient. Carbonated coffee flavor is well balanced with a caramel to toffee flavor and very low acidity. Dark and thin, almost watery palate, silky smooth.

Had on tap at the Chattanooga location - served as the nightcap to a fun evening with Shag and Cheri and my pick for a pint out of the sampler I had. Dark black appearance with a decent mocha head. Has a hard to describe,"creamy" aroma. Has some coffee notes - yes, leans toward espresso. Also has some chocolate and some creamy milkiness. Bitterness in the back end rounds it out nicely. Very good brewpub stout - according to the waiter - it is brewed with beans from a local coffee company.

This is really more of a coffee porter than a coffee stout. It's not quite opaque but dark brown enough to look black at a casual glance. It has a nice light tan head. The flavor is nicely roasty with little to no chocolate or sweetness. There is a nice lingering coffee bitterness in finish. The coffee actually improves what is normally a fairly thin stout (it's based on the Big River Iron Horse Stout), but the coffee flavor is mild and seems to have used a more common morning coffee bean instead of a more flavor espresso bean.

Draft sample at the Southern Brewers Festival (9/05). It actually took me a while to find this brew in the data base. I almost reentered it under another name. At any rate, this beer is supposedly brewed with coffee from the Stone Cup Roasting Company. Pours a dark brown with minimal head, clear. The aroma is nutty, malty, and heavy on the coffee/espresso notes. The flavor is (duh) coffee! Quite heavy on the coffee actually. There is also what I will describe as a toffee-ish character but mostly a roasted malt presence and a light sweetness. The body is light-medium but crisp, just like you might describe an iced coffee. Really not a bad brew, but I found my self thinking that I could not drink too much of it.