Berkshire Brewing Company - Dean's Beans coffeehouse porter

Due to some apartment mishaps (it flooded recently) I've been a bit quiet in regards to my blog. Sorry about that! Lately I've been enjoying 21st Amendment Brewing's Sneak Attack saison (introduced to me by colleague and friend Dave Slavick) as well as some tasty West Coast brews sent to me by my brother Dan. But now that I'm at my mother's house in Connecticut for the holidays, I can turn my attention to blogging tasty things, including nice wines.

Today's beer is from Massachusetts-based Berkshire Brewing Company, or BBC. I've had their stuff before and enjoyed it. I'm not sure how far they distribute, but it's pretty common up in here my native New England. They have about a dozen beers, all of which come in bombers and are reasonably priced. I'm reviewing their 6.2% ABV coffeehouse porter, "Dean's Beans." The beer is actually a mixture of another of their beers, Drayman's Porter, mixed with some coffee sourced from Orange, MA-based Dean's Beans coffeehouse.

Please excuse the poor quality of photos - I'm using my phone's camera since my DSLR is back in Washington.

The beer pours nicely, with a dark color much as you'd expect a porter to be. The beer is dark, with some odd suspended particles. Looks like yeast remnants. Odd - but I'm not worried. Some beers have lots of sediment in them, as does wine. Having your beer chunky isn't ALWAYS a bad thing.

The taste is nice - the beer is sweet, a bit watery, with big coffee notes. There's a little bit of chocolate in there, but predominantly the taste is toasted malts and coffee.

This beer is smoother and sweeter than some other coffee beers I've had. Maybe it's a function of it being a porter and not a stout (as many coffee beers are,) but it's nonetheless tasty and good. I think it also could use warming up a bit - I served it very cold and I think I prefer it to be a little warmer. So in short, I recommend this beer. I think this it would appeal to novice beer drinkers, since it's more approachable and not has heavy / burnt as some of the darker coffee stouts. Coffee is a common ingredient in beers this time of year, and I think Berkshire does a good job in marrying an unseasonably-light porter with coffee tastes. It's also not terribly expensive, so it's fine to drink often. 

For all your wine lovers, stay tuned - now that I'm in Connecticut, I have access to my wine cellar that I've cultivated since 2009. So there will be (hopefully) quite a few posts coming this week reviewing some fine, aged wines.