Road Trip Brewing Sinister Rabbit

Brewed by Flying Monkey Brewing
Style: Porter
Olathe, Kansas USA

12-oz. Dark brown with caramel highlights. Biggish coffee nose. Watery body, light carb. Overdomination of coffee. Astringent finish.

12 ounce bottle. 10th rating. Pours dark brown with a fizzy but lasting brown head. Some lace. I’m getting a bit nose full of earthy hops, to go along with sort of a used coffee ground malt character. Wow. This tastes like shit. I’m not sure how to describe it, but really, this is bad. It makes me think of dirty soapy water. Just avoid this beer.

Pours an opaque dark brown with a pitted, creamy, tan head. The nose is an odd blend of roasted malt, earthy/herbal hops and light cocoa. On paper, it sounds nice, but in reality, it’s not particularly enticing. Light to medium-bodied with soft carbonation, transitioning to a heavily astringent, bitter, roasted finish. The flavor is of roasted malt with a plastic-like astringent and sour finish. The astringency overrides any pleasure that I would generally get from the roasted malt. I desperately want to like this brewer’s beers, as they are located just down the street from me, but this beer is just another example of why I struggle to do so. I tried it at a store tasting back when it first came out, in October, and remember it being a lot better than this sample. This bottle was just a train wreck. and I ended up pouring the second half down the drain. Normally, I wouldn’t rate an "off" bottle, but consistency seems to be a major challenge with FM’s bottled beer. Perhaps some day I’ll throw another bottle into a mix-a-six and give it another go. But after doing that twice with their Amber Ale and getting three different versions of the same beer (ranging from a modeling glue-awful to subpar), I doubt that I’ll repeat that experiment any time soon.

12oz. bottle. Aroma is fairly slight, just some cocoa and dark, roasty malts along with a touch of yeast. Opaque ebony color with a fine, subsiding tan head. Bottle-conditioned. Flavor is largely bitter and dry, both from the earthy hops and highly-kilned malt, very faint touches of dark chocolate sweetness present far in the background, otherwise the dark black, nearly charred roastiness reigns here. Palate is thin, sharp and has a rather pronounced bite to it, while the body is light-medium. Lingering leafy, spicy hoppy flavors late. Really pretty drinkable, for all that.

12 oz. bottle from my friend Connor. Pour is deep brown, almost black with a nice khaki head. Very nice looking in the glass. Aroma of roasted malt, a bit of hop. Taste features the roasted malt initially, with a snappy hop bitterness to the finish. Some smokiness comes through in the head as well. A touch on the dry side, a little thin on the palate. This was very drinkable.

Thanks to theisti for the bottle. I really didn’t expect this to be a porter; the label give no indication of style. Pours a dark brown color with a medium head; and watch out for the yeasty bottom.
Aroma of chocolate and dark roasted malts. Medium to light body. A bit of a chalky texture, and watery.

Reminds me quite a bit of Four Finger Stout, but a little less body and character. Pours a very dark brown, small but tight layer of khaki foam. Aroma is mostly roasty, touches of chocolate and molasses. Flavor much the same, soft carbonation, near velvety mouthfeel, slightly astringent finish with plenty of roast.

12oz bottle. Smells good; roast, chocolate, grain, and earthy with a touch of lactose. Pours very dark, looks black in low light with a huge three fingered head. Taste is roasty, kinda burnt, astringent, and rather harsh. Thin bodied. Not sure what the gravity of the beer is, but it tastes/feels way too small to be able to withstand lots of hops (I don’t really taste a lot of hops, nor is the bitterness apparent, but that is what the commercial description says) and a lot of roast character. I think I know what the brewer was going for, but the beer lacks a malt backbone to get it done.