Butte Creek Organic Porter

Brewed by Butte Creek Brewing Company
Style: Porter
Chico, California USA

Bottle: Deep cola brown with a small fading head and little lace. The aroma has notes of mocha, caramalized malts, aromatic and floral hops, dusty yeast esters, smoke, and freeze dried coffee. The taste is sweet and chalky up front with a minor fruit inclusion. Gets close to papery and earthy in the middle and the finish is just a bland light bitterness and burnt espresso beans. The feel lacks depth and is also very bland. A less than stellar porter with some major flaws. Again, is it the organic thing? Almost all organic beers seem to have little or no depth of palate. Almost all the good ratings for this beer occured in 2001 and 2002, recipe change?

Brown. Dry as hell in the nose with notes of wet cardboard, coffee beans, dark fruits and bitter chocolate. Dryness continues with a lackluster malt accented flavor profile of caramel, bitter chocolate and coffee beans. Complete lack of body. Astringent and somewhat moldy.

Dark brown with a thin head. Sharp aroma of chocolate, smoke, coffee and fermented fruit. Aroma and characteristics build for a while after pouring. Flavourful and mildly sweet. Roasted coffee and bitter chocolate linger. A trace of fruit as the beer sweeps across the tongue.

(12 oz bottle) Uhm, this is an okay porter, but probably below average as it’s the least enjoyable of the 5 porters I’ve rated this evening; Flavorful, quite yeasty, lightly smoky and only mildly sweet, with less of a dominant dark roasted flavor than typical American porters; Only mildly bitter for a porter, and actually, it’s kind of floral; The late finish is the most "porter-like", as that’s where the wimpy dark roasted malt finally shows a little backbone; Peppery, yeasty, floral nose is odd for a porter, but if I try hard enough, I can maybe detect some dark roasted aromas, or maybe it’s just wishful thinking? Yeah, probably; Fairly dry on the palate, and medium bodied; Dark brown rather than black and not fully opaque; Little carbonation or head in an earlier tasting back in May, 2000, but this bottle was so massively heady, the glass was 2/3 filled with head and took many minutes and several sips before I was able to empty the rest of the bottle into the glass, so we’re talking extreme ends of the spectrum here; Retention is excellent, but the foamy head just slides down the glass like water off a duck’s back, so there’s no lacing at all

Milky roasted oat and malt nose. Flavor is like a regular porter... light milky notes with a dry malt overtone. Decent but not special.

Dark brown body with red highlights, thick, puffy tan head. A hint of detergent in the aroma as well as dry roast, dry chocolate, and bitter hops. Very thin body with light roasted malts and an almost woody quality, soapy and toasty, with a dry chocolate and floral hops finish. Too thin for my liking.

Bottle Pours very dark brown with little head and no lacing to speak of. Aroma is typical dark roast smokey coffee. Taste is more of the burnt charcoal with a little dark coffee. This porter is lacking the thick smooth heavy feel of some of the better one I’ve had. Flavore is nice but the feel and the palate are thin, watery, and a bit dissapointing. Lingering sense of wet cardboard. Maybe it’s just an organic thing ...hippies...

Deep, dark, brown with red highlights. Foamy tan head. Roasted coffee, caramel, chocolate nose. Soy sauce? I swear I smell a little soy sauce. Anyway, Medium body, watery texture, moderate carbonation. Flavor was coffee and candy and, and, and, soy sauce. Damn. Where is that soy sauce coming from? Why do I smell and taste touches of it? Oh well.