The Tap Bootblacks Extra Stout

Formerly brewed at Haverhill Brewery, Inc / The Tap
Style: Foreign Stout
Haverhill, Massachusetts USA

Pours a clear dark brown color with no head. Aroma of coffee and leather. Flavor of coffee and leather with lingering sweetness. The palate is light and oily and the carbonation is soft.

Mildly smokey and fairly roasty aroma. Opaque brown-black with initially decent though short-lived, white, fully diminishing head. Smokey flavour with fair roastiness but salty in the finish. Somewhat sticky in texture though body feels a bit light and watery with low carbonation. Sampled at the brewpub with ClarkVV, MartinT, muzzlehatch and Rastacouere.

New England Road Trip Easter ’05 with MartinT, tiggmtl and Rastacouere, beer #24. Sample at the brewpub, joined by the locquacious and sagacious ClarkVV. Solid black, little head...roasty nose, bit of tar and smoke...fairly thin body does not well support the roastiness and coffee...very little sweetness, most of it upfront...dry, plain finish with a touch of Concord grape. Major disappointment.

Black, short-lasting beige head. Somehow soapy hops takes you aback coming from a dark beer. Strong dark malts feel not too clean. It is not very sweet at all if this intended to be a foreign stout at all. Smokey, a bit watery, coffe-ish and mostly beany toward the finish. Not very enjoyable at all, one of those beers that has something unenjoyable you just can’t put your finger on. Medium bodied, softly carbonated.

Grapes in dark chocolate roam freely in a slick, tarry body...Steamy roast sticking to anise sweetness, plunging into a dry fade out of flavors...I guess this was a bit too drinkable and slippery for my tastes...

CO2 draught at The Tap, 3/25/05 with Tiggmtl, MartinT, Muzzlehatch and Rastacouere. Dark black body is opaque and the head is initially about one finger high. Tan and fizzy, it quickly recedes to nothing. Aroma smells strongly of debittered black malt. Quite intense, so much so that the concentrated coffee/roast smell gives off soapy or almost metallic notes. Not much aroma behind the roast. Upon first sip, I’m greatly disappointed by the body, which is watery, to say the least. Notes of cappucino, mocha, light chocolate and slight roasted malt all wash over the palate, and there’s no lack of flavor, but I was expecting some sweet malt flavors, maybe some bananas, caramelized sugar, or something along the lines of, say, Lion Stout or even Coopers. The body denies all possibility of any chewiness or fat malt. Loose and ever thinner, as it warms and breathes, I am getting more of a dry stout, certainly in texture, with the requisite coffee bean and light barley flavors. It’s very drinkable and thirst quenching, being so light of body, and the alcohol is masterfully hidden, but I was looking for something more substantial. Low carbonation, rather lifeless body. 5/3/6/3/11.
Nitro draught later the same night. Yikes, this dosent seem well-suited to nitro. The already watery nature of the beer is hugely exacerbated by the thinning nature of the nitrogen. The flavor is dulled and it’s just a watery, thin mess of light coffee and a hint of chocolate. Little, if any, aroma. The light tan head is retained, this time, due to the nitrogen, but that’s about all this has going for it. 4/4/4/2/7

Pours jet black with a big tan head. Taste is big on coffee. Probably the most coffee I’ve tasted in a beer. Well done.