Northwoods Poplar Porter

Brewed by Northwoods Brew Pub
Style: Porter
Eau Claire, Wisconsin USA

Dark red/brown color with no head. Just the ever so small hint of sour malt in the aroma. Then there’s just a pinch of malt in the taste... how dull.

Dark Brown Coloring with White Ring. Sweet Malt, Roasts and Chocolate...Nice Aroma and Taste But Very Subtle, if Even Hard to Detect at All and The Watey-ness Really Tones Down Any Chance of it Being a Nice Porter.

Light coffe hints plus a little chocolate. But watery and no aftertaste. For 2.25 these beers here i guess are worth it but give no real punch.

Sample at the brewpub. Gets a point for great head retention but loses a couple for being very light and transparent brown...not very porter-like...roasty-sweet choocolate and faint nuts in the nose is a good step towards tolerable from this place, but the moderately roasty body is undone somewhat like all of these products by the damn hard water and alkaline/metallic texture. Tolerable.

Nice Porter. Pours black with a small diminishing head. Aroma of cocoa and light espresso. Flavour is chocolate but rather thin. Nice smooth creamy finish.

Once again, I have to average my rating between the stuff on draft and their problematic bottling line:
Draft, at Northwoods: 7 - 4 - 6 - 3 - 11
Bottled: 1 - 3 - 3 - 2 - 6
Draft: Pleasing chocolate porter taste is somewhat spoiled by the fact that it’s force carbonated to the same pressure as all their beers at the tap. This may have benefitted from a hand pump, cask conditioning, or at least a lower pressure. But judging from the good-sized crowd of locals there, I’m guessing they’re at least trying different tastes, but would want the same mouthfeel of a mega beer.

Bottled: As with most of their packaged beers, there’s a very distracting aroma of wet salted peanut shells. This time, at least, the porter is can overpower it. Pours a repectable porter-type head on an attractive body. Again, the peanut shell aspect is in the taste, but so is a well-roasted chocolately porter taste, and a noticeable load of hop bitterness. Clearly, if they can just work out thier bottling problems, they might have some winners here.

Bad. Cloying. No porter character. Thin.

Roasted malt aroma. Very dark color. Not very chocolatey (as advertised).