Sunday River Black Bear Porter

Brewed by Sunday River Brewpub and Restaurant
Style: Porter
Bethel, Maine USA

Pours a dark, dark brown with ruby highlights. Big creamy tan head. Lots of lace throughout the pint. Smell is roasted malt and lightly bitter. Taste is full of flavors. Coffee flavors up front followed by bitter-sweet chocolate then smooths out at the finish. Smoky flavors and a decent hop finish. Very well balanced and pretty complex for a porter. Nice and tasty! These go down smooth even with all the flavor. one of the best porters I’ve ever had on draft.

Black pour with a nice creamy thin head of cream. Aroma is mildly roasty and some nice chocolate. Flavor is well blended and smooth. A great porter.

Poured a dark brown, red color, with a small, light tan head that left nice lacing on the glass. Aroma of chocolate, roasted malts, smoke, wood, and vanilla beans. Taste of more smoke, nuts, chocolate, and roasted malts.

This beer came to me in my beer club - I am not familiar with the brewer. Sampled from a 12 oz brown bottle this beer poured a black color with a medium sized dark brown head. The aroma is sweet, roasty, toasty and has a moderate chocolate element. The flavor is very malty and sweet with roasty and toasty malt elements, chocolate and a hint of coffee. The finish is a bit dry and gritty. A very nice porter.

12 ounce bottle from Beers of the World in Rochester, NY (June 2007), served from a Unibroue glass at cellar temperature. Beautiful snowflake lacing results as the thick, medium-bubbled dark tan head slowly recedes atop the dark translucent purple-black liquid….terrific caramel-overlaying milk and dark chocolates and light roasty espresso, just dynamite if you like a sweet porter in the aroma….pretty wonderful on the tongue as well, the roasty-bitter characteristics are quite muted at first in favor of thick milky vanilla-chocolate, but they come to the fore midpalate along with a surprisingly bitter, oily hop texture for a very dry, almost mouthpuckering, burnt and potent finish….carbonation is low and natural, and there’s a faint hint of grit in the mouthfeel….a hint of grape and blackberry comes in with half the glass done….this is terrific stuff, bravo.

Thanks to egajdzis for this... Appears a dark brown with a black body and red edges. A one finger, tan head slowly fades out into a cap that refuses to yield. The smell is of roasty malt, cream, chocolate, nuts, and vanilla. Taste is of the same aromas. Perhaps a hint of coffee as well. Mouthfeel is medium bodied, with roasted malts, and bitter cocoa clinging to the palate. It’s slightly thin but hardly noticeable.

Courtesy of Porterhouse <!-- P --> Mildly roasted coffee and cream aroma with even more mild milk chocolate notes and an assertive hop aroma. Dark brown to black with a diminishing thumb thick mocha head. Fore is quite hoppy and bitter with hearty, mildly sweet and nutty, malts in the middle. This gives it a bit of a brown ale flavor, but without the fruity sweetness. Nice level of roastiness to this and a perfect mouthfeel for a robust porter. The finish is a very cream, coffee and toffee cake affair and a nice contrast to the earlier flavor progressions. This is a pretty damn good porter.

Deep garnet pour with medium tan head. Malty, roasted malt aroma. Faint hints of chocolate. Roasty, toasty malt, sweetness, milky flavors as well. Smooth, well made porter.