Viking Brewing Whole Stein

Brewed by Viking Brewing Company
Style: Porter
Dallas, Wisconsin USA

<b>11/16/2008</b>: Viking Whole Stein has a dark brown color (like coffee) with a generous, brown-colored head. The aroma has semi-sweet chocolate, a hint of coffee and cream, and a touch of the sourish lactose quality. The flavor is malty and semi-sweet in the front with lots of caramlized and roasted malt with a splash of coffee. The middle and dry finish is yeasty with more of the slighly sour and metallic-like lactose flavor coming through. Roasty malt/char and coffee lingers on the palate. The milky bitterness has an earthy tone. The coffee starts to come through more as the beer warms and the the lactose harshness starts to calm down somewhat as well. This beer has a medium body, is smooth, and has ample carbonation (a little too much for my taste for this style). Overall this is a tasty porter that keeps getting better and better as it warms. The smooth coffee and roasted malts really start to come together in good harmony along with a good dark chocolate flavor and bitterness. However, the yeastiness persists in the aroma and flavor which is a similar characteristic that I attribute to nearly all of the Viking brews. Regardless, the coffee flavor is quite impressive if no coffee is actually used in creating this beer.

<i>12 fl. oz. twist-off bottle ("A Coffee, Oatmeal, Milk Porter") from buckybeer. Thanks Mark! Rating #115 for this beer...</i>

This beer didn’t leave much of an impression on me. My prominent reaction was one of disappointment; this beer has some nice qualities, most notably a pleasant smell, but lacks much else and has a very flat mouthfeel which really detracted from my enjoyment of this beer and would lead me to not recommend it. Whole Stein pours black and lifeless, with virtually no head and a bit of thinness in the body detectable as early as the pour from the bottle to the glass. Aroma is a pleasant sweet coffee smell. Flavor is preceded by a hit-over-the-head of flatness and lack of carbonation or mouthfeel complexity. This beer is flat and thin, and that ruined most of what came after it (the taste). There was some reasonably intense coffee notes, but those weren’t enough to make me re-try this very understated beer. I would not recommend this beer. I got my bottle at Three Cellars in Franklin, WI.

Short twist-off 12oz bottle. Dark brown pour. Floral, sweet, coffee nose. Lots of dark chocolate. Smoke with a bit of espresso bean in a watery textured body. Not impressed.

From a brown 12oz bottle - Pours a clear light root beer brown color with a slight head and below average carbonation. Smells of roasted malts, and coffee. There is a slight dusty taste too. First sip is sweet then it is all coffee. COFFEE, COFFEE, and more COFFEE, Very light bodied. Decent mouthfeel but a tad under carbonated. Pretty good.

Bottle. A darker porter with a nearly white head, this brew has the typical porter aroms of roasted malt/coffee. There are solid notes of coffee/espresso and dark chocolate. The body on this one is thin for the style, almost watery. It finishes with a solid hop presence and a slight metallic finish that I seem to get from all of this company’s beers. This is a decent porter and one of the better beers from this brewer.

Pours dark brown with off-white head. Typical aroma of roasted malt and caramel with a flavor to match. Slightly bitter finish.

Dark brown with tiny beige head. Aroma has fairly hard roasted malt, caramel and coffee notes. Sweet flavor with hard roasted malt, caramel, coffee and liquerice notes. Ends mild bitter.

Pours a dark creamy black colour with a medium tan head. Aroma is nutty, chocolate, soy, peanut butter on the nose. Flavors are semi sweet, milk, oatmeal and chocolate with a touch of brown sugar in the finish.