The Lagunitas Brewing Co. - Cappuccino Stout

Today's beer is a brew my brother Dan has recommended for quite some time - it's a 9.2% ABV limited-release coffee stout by The Lagunitas Brewing Company.

Lagunitas is based in Petaluma, CA - a city in Sonoma County, just north of San Francisco. Petaluma is pretty. In the first half of the last decade, I used to travel to the Bay Area quite often, and we used to hike the open areas around Petaluma:

Yep, that's me. Look at those fashionable chukka boots.

As for the beer's genre, coffee infusions are not new to beer. Some of the ones I've reviewed on this blog are Berkshire Brewing's Dean's Beans, and Stone's Russian Imperial Espresso Stout. All were tasty, and the combination of dark beer and coffee flavors is a natural pairing. But the downside here is that there are a LOT of variants, some better than others. Some, like this one and BBC's Dean's Beans, use local coffee shops as the contributor for their beans.

Lagunitas makes some good stuff, indeed, but I don't recall ever having a coffee beer from them. So when my brother Dan recommended this, and I came across it at Irving Wine and Spirits in Mt. Pleasant, naturally I needed to give it a try. It wasn't too expensive - roughly $8 for a 22oz bomber.

As you can tell, it's a dark beer. The pour is deep chocolate color, with an interesting brown color when held to the light.

The nose - thin chocolate / coffee. Very typical, not impressed yet.

The taste is rather good. It's got a surprisingly-strong coffee taste up front, lots of rich black coffee flavors with very little chocolate and some roasted bean tastes as the beer tapers off. Ground coffee aftertaste.  Both the finish and aftertaste of this beer is strong and surprisingly persistent.

Interesting thing here: all the flavors are polished, which is different from a lot of the coffee beers I've had. A lot of coffee beers either taste like gas station espresso mixed with beer, or are super gravelly and espresso-like as the brewers struggle to outdo themselves in making a beer more coffee-like. This beer is very polished, with smooth coffee flavors couched in a respectable ABV stout.

I'd say, this beer is worth trying. There are dozens of coffee-infused beers out there, so if you're into coffee (as I am) and you're into beer (as I am) it pays to seek out a marriage of the two. This one is available anywhere craft brews are sold, but since it's a limited release, it's only available certain times of the year.