Shorts Publican Porter

Brewed by Shorts Brewing Co.
Style: Imperial/Strong Porter
Bellaire, Michigan USA

Pours dark black with tan head. Smell is rich and lightly smoky and roasty. Taste is slightly complex with ashy, roasty, fruity, cherry and other interesting stuff. Medium body. Full flavor, soft to normal carbonation. Pretty good stuff but gets a bit sweet at the end.

Bottle at the RBSG09 grand tasting. Black with a tan head. Dark chocolate and lightly oxidized sherry aroma. The flavor has plenty of dark chocolate and a light tart cherry touch. Light bodied considering the style, with medium carbonation. I think this was an aged bottle, and I really liked the character that it developed.

RBSG09 bottle at the grand tasting. Dark brown color with mahogany highlights and a tan head. Some coffee aroma, chocolate malt balls. Typical well-balanced chocolate and coffee with surprising notes of sherry and light vinegar. Clean dry finish, interesting beer.

Rich black. An amazingly vinous and soft aroma. Pillowy in texture, offering truffles, raspberries, honey, and roasted nuts. Having sat for a little more than a year now, it feels settled and warmly complex, and not scattered. It has a damp feeling about it too, like a buttery graham cracker crust. Gorgeous, really. It’s a little hot, and there’s some sugary aspects to it that present in bright tropical and summery fruits, like watermelon especially. Underneath all this it’s just very, very chocolate-heavy.

It tastes now like a calm, english imperial stout, maybe it was like that to start with, but again it just feels so settled down to me. The malts are just smooth as velvet , rich with blackberry and deeply bitter anise flavors, swimming in chocolate and dark roasted coffee and christmas puddings. It’s really a pure anise taste. But, because the beer has such a fulsome, healthy malt flavor the bitter-spicy anise taste comes across only as a an accent touch, if a heavy one. It works fantastically. The underlying doughiness and soft spice of the yeast is what makes a well-made english imperial stout a thing to behold, and it’s what makes the flavor of this one so outstanding, accepting that it’s listed as it is.

The palate is delicate and rich, and it has an uncommon smoothness that ’velvety’ really doesn’t describe; it almost shimmers. It’s spectacularly clean for a beer of this kind; there’s not a trace of hollowed out malt bitterness; rather, this feels like every edge has been rubbed smooth.

If there’s one shortcoming, it’s that it tends to feel a little hollow right after swallowing; at this point its smoothness seems to taper briefly into thinness, if only slightly. Then, a peppery, red wine-like jamminess sits heavily in the back of my mouth, and some mineral-like tannic bitterness also settles in. Finally, as there has been throughout, there’s just a huge cavendish flavor; smoky, raisiny, and hot in a good, visceral way.

This would be an ideal autumn-and-pipe beer if I could get it easily. Thanks so much for the opportunity, to Derek, easily one of the very finest.

Bottle sampled on 5/22/08: Pours a mostly opaque black with dark mahogany edges and a lightly-lacing dark tan head. Sweet dark caramel and milk chocolate nose with some smoky notes. Body starts rich, sweet and chocolatey with a nice dark caramel and earthy smoky complexity. Finishes full and enjoyable with good dark fruity balance.

Bottle at Toncatchers. Thanks to whoever brought this. Pours a very dark brown with a big tan head. The aroma is big and bold with coffee, mocha and roasted malts. The flavor also features more complex coffee and espresso. The mouthfeel is full, smooth and creamy. Overall, a great porter.

Toncatchers tasting. Nose is warm and sweet. Vanilla and malt. Brown/black in the glass with orange highlights. Light lace. Theres a sharp fruity burst underneath a dark, thick maltiness. Sweet again.

Bottle, damn I wish I could remember who sent this, but who you are, thank you, maybe alexsdad. Pours black with a tan head. Nose is sweet, malty, sweet and rich with viscous thick qualities. Taste is wow, excellent! Sweet chocolate and yummy.