Labatt Porter

Brewed by Labatt Breweries (InBev)
Style: Porter
London, Canada

I thought that they retired this one. Found this a few years ago in Quebec at a gas station. An okay beer for Labatt, a generally sweet porter, thin and drying.

Bottle (341ml). Thanks to blankboy for digging up this living fossil in Québec. Poured dark bubbly reddish-brown with a decent rocky quick-diminishing very light tan head. Aroma sweet mildly roast malt, plenty of metal (steel, if you care), maybe a hint of chocolate milk, and very weirdly some rhubarb greens (sour). Taste - oh my god, this isn’t beer - reminds me of Yoohoo mixed even-up with root beer - sweet and sticky and fizzy and NOT BEER. At least I can’t taste the metal in the nose. Weird, not awful, but just a curiosity - and way too fizzy to be a porter.

Bottle, thanks blankboy. Just love the "Velvet Labatt Cream" bottle cap. Dark brown / red appearance. Small tan head. Some roasted hints in subtle aroma - so far so good! Very watery mouthfeel. Taste is very sweet and cola like. There are some slight roasted hints that creep in, but at first this is pretty bland and flavourless - but offensive either. I preferred this to the recent Sleeman Porter - at first again. As this warms, this becomes so sickly sweet, like a warm flat cola, that the little neat macro tasting experiment becomes pretty miserable. Still pretty interesting to try though, only because it is so different than any other Labatt product I have tried.

Bottle - thanks to blankboy. Gotta love these strange, old school beers that the big boys keep alive in particular regions of the country. This one seems to be available only in Quebec, and I really can’t say that I’m envious. Pours a decent looking dark brown with a small tan head. Aroma is mild but not unpleasant - some sweet malt, a hint of roastiness. Mouthfeel is thin and sticky. Flavour is damn sweet - lots of cola as others have mentioned, along with a hint of chocolate syrup, and perhaps some toffee. Dead finish with no bitterness. This is OK by macro standards, I suppose, and back before the micro revolution of the 80s, this was probably an exotic treat. But nowadays, it’s a curiosity at best.

Bottled. Aroma of cola, toffee and a hint of roastiness. Black, beige head, few lace. Sweet, cola start that soon turns to toffee, hint of licorice and butterscotch. Who buys this stuff? Pilsnerdrinkers that like something ’special’ no and then? Old folkes like Oud Bruin in Holland?

carbonated soft drink. Carbonation initial hit and then tails off to Syrupy drink and dry syrupy sweet aftertaste. And actual porter. Maybe their best beer. Like malt beverage. Nice colour in glass. Decent bit of porter aroma. Could use something. And less sweetness.

Aroma: old coffee, and dirty butt (or cat)
Appearance: dark brown, small white head, some lacing
Flavor: strong nutrasweet flavor--like diet soda, also some sugary-fruit flavors (like off-brand Dr. Pepper soda)
Palate: very carbonated, leaves a strange sugary coating behind the front teeth, nasty aftertaste of warm diet soda
Overall: this one is bad and gets worse...just pass

I blame CapFlu. At the store he told me "Hey that one’s pretty good eh" - it’s not. Has some strange plastic sweetness in the aroma, grassy and moldy as well. The flavor is pure sweetness, with a maple syrup and vanilla taste that’s dominated by a nutrasweet/aspertaine nastyness everywhere.