Shipyard Brewers Choice Special Ale Honey Porter (2007)

Formerly brewed at Shipyard Brewing Company
Style: Porter
Portland, Maine USA

Pours dark brown with a tan head. Smells of syrup, some chocolate, earthy. Tastes sweet and earthy with some spice hints on the finish.

Pours a deep reddish brown with an enormous loose khaki head. Aroma is fruity with notes of chocolate and a slight peaty character, pretty nice. Flavor is a little oxidized but this does not detract too much from the other flavors. Notes of licorice, chocolate, and plenty of roasty and fruity flavors balancing each other very nicely. The mouthfeel is kind of watery. This is ok.

Dark red, near black colored with huge light brown head. Sweet aroma with roastiness and rich licorice. Medium bodied, crispy palate. Flavor is more berryish with slight licorice and sweet caramel, somehow short ending with slight licorice. Well, good aroma, flavor is somehow empty and carbonated.

Bottle; pours a dark, cola brown. Large head. Aroma of toffee, honey, roasted malt with some vegetable and milk notes. Palate ws weak; too much carbonation created an undesirable harshness. The flavor was just ok; roasted malt and toffee. Below average for the style.

Jägermeister in cola. Sweet, carbonated, faintly syrupy malts. Overly carbonated which dominates the flavour.

12 oz bottle enjoyed at haukur’s tasting on 1 May 2008. Not sure how supplied this one. Pour is brown-black with a huge, fizzy out of control off white head. Aroma of dirty milk with some honey sweetness. Taste is porter-coffee, some milk, slight sweetness near the end. Just OK, overly carbonated for the style.

"amble body and smooth mouthfeel" .. what? this is so far from being that! Cola-ish looks, explosive head. Palate is.. well.. VERY carbonated! There is some sweetness but overall it´s just carbonation with some hints of medicine. Not entirely bad, interesting to sample but nothing I would ever buy

12 ounce bottle from the Corner Market next door to where I live in Richmond, VT, BBD March ’08 but purchased in late April 2008, served in a Unibroue glass a little below cellar temperature. Well, I’m always excited by a new (semi-local) beer, even one from this less-than-stellar factory, but seeing as how it’s date, hmm...could be even worse than the usual. Well....it pours nicely, deep and nearly opaque black with a respectably persistant tan creamy head and a bit of lacing....there’s more than a bit of honey in the nose, and some light roastiness, perhaps a bit of apple, so far so good....the body offers nicely balanced honey-orange sweetness, a fair bit of roasty coffee-bitterness, a full mouthfeel, low to moderate natural-feeling carbonation.....no trace of the typical diacetyl infection, no bad brewing here. It’s not exciting, exactly, but it’s decently crafted and is the first Shipyard beer I’ve had in years that I’d buy again. Well done guys.