I have many vices and addictions — beer, cigars, and television, just to name a few. I am also addicted to Diet Coke. My day does not officially begin until I crack my first one. I then go on to drink them throughout the day. I am afraid to add up how much I consume, so I never have. Twelve-packs and two liters do not last long. “Diet Coke,” along with how to order a beer, is one of the few things that I have learned to say in a foreign language (It normally is easy — “Coke Light” with an accent). Why am I telling you this? Because I do not drink coffee. I will have an espresso at a nice restaurant or will drink it to be polite when I visit, say, a coffee farm in Nicaragua. But for the most part I avoid it.
First off, I do not like hot drinks. They seem counter-productive to me. If I am drinking something, I hope to hydrate or refresh. Even when it is cold out I do not like hot chocolate or warm liquor drinks. Hot tea reminds me of being sick. Coffee, therefore, has a hurdle to cross just on the fact that it is hot. (Oh, for the record, I have had “iced” coffee and it is disgusting.) So when I learned that Flying Fish had a coffee beer I was skeptical.
For my last article, I was advocating Flying Fish’s beers because it is a local brewery (about 20 minutes from where I live). I was surprised to see a coffee beer that was made in connection with Crescent Moon, a local coffee roaster. So, true to my economic stimulus plan, I bought a four-pack. The cost was $10.50. Hmmm…coffee flavor and $2.65 per beer. I was not expecting much more than to be disgusted. The one thought that came to my mind as I was checking out was Laverne De Fazio mixing milk and Pepsi.
With Espresso Imperial Porter, Flying Fish enters its third year of making a coffee brew. It contains 8.4% alcohol by volume and the equivalent caffeine of two cups of coffee. So, this is a strong beer as well as a stimulant…pretty cool. The flavor was great. I noted some licorice and chocolate. It had a very nice finish and was not cloying or over-the-top. According to Flying Fish, it finishes with a “cherry/berry” flavor, but I did not note that. The porter worked as both a complement to food and on its own. I made a breakfast to try with it, and the match was perfect. This would be the ultimate kegs-and-eggs-beer. (Flying Fish, you can use that if you want.) They only brewed 1,000 cases, so be sure to snap it up.
I found out that the hard part of brewing beer with coffee is that the oils in coffee ruin a beer’s head and foam. The trick for Crescent Moon is to cold brew the coffee and let it sit overnight before Flying Fish adds it to ferment with the porter for two weeks. Flying Fish uses five malts to help obtain the perfect taste.
I tried several other coffee beers. I was glad that I had tasted the Flying Fish first because, if the others had come before it, I may not have gone any further. I tried a Vanilla Java Porter from Atwater Block brewery. It certainly tasted very vanilla-y, but not in a good way. More like a fake vanilla. It also smelled bad, and I believe it must have had the issue with the coffee oil, because this beer had no head or body. The next two coffee beers that I tried were Southern Tier’s Imperial Coffee Stout (called Jah-va) and Founders Breakfast Stout. Neither of these were up to Flying Fish’s standard, either. Founders' version (with a boy eating oatmeal on the label) was much darker, but the flavor seemed to be more chocolate and stout than coffee. Jah-va had a coffee flavor, but it was more cloying than the others. Almost fake, or maybe just too much. That was the nice part about Flying Fish’s version: It felt like just the right amount of flavor.
A final tasting note: All of these coffee beers should be served slightly warmer than normal beer. It allows the full flavors to show through. Don’t let them get hot — just get them out of the fridge for a few minutes before serving. I did put ice in one to make a sort of iced coffee. Bad idea. It tasted like a terrible Dunkin’ Donuts creation.
All of this coffee brew got me thinking…what if someone could just come up with a way to make a Diet Coke beer? (Maybe the Shotz Brewery is working on this?) Anyway, I would be in heaven.
Tyler Wilson drinks beer. Email him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Photographs by Mike Bucher, "The Brew" photograph from Flickmor via Flickr (Creative Commons), "Bottle" photograph from istockphoto.com.
