Probably enough porters for a little while
This beer comes from Maine, the mysterious land of lobsters, Stephen King novels and murders happening whenever Angela Lansbury is around. Shipyard, besides their own line is also a contract brewer for a handful of other New England brands, and the few notes I’ve bothered to read on Internet say that they’re pretty good at it. This particular beer has a big paragraph on the back of the bottle that talks about hop selection and original gravity and other brewer-nerd kinds of things, and in all it seems like it’s made by someone who really digs making beer. That sounds like a good base, and I like porters, so why not.
This beer is on the stronger side (7.1% ABV), but that’s really the only suggestion of “Imperial” that I get from it. It smells pretty normal, and the the taste is big on chocolate malts, but other than that seems pretty regular. Which isn’t to say that it’s not tasty. The chocolate and roasted malts balance well with the hops, and the sour porter twang comes in around the edges toward the finish. The bottle says to serve it at 55°F, and I probably started a little colder than that. As it warmed up a little, the sour taste comes more into the foreground and the bite from the carbonation faded into a slightly more creamy taste and feel. As it warmed up a little more some other taste started to come out a little, something sort of like artificial vanilla. Don’t let it warm up that much.
I dunno. This is an ok porter. I wouldn’t call it an imperial porter. And it got a little weird toward the end. I just don’t feel strongly either way about it.