The Koehler Brewery – Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia, quam rara sunt.

A couple weeks ago I reviewed some Bell’s Two Hearted Ale that Colin had brought back from a trip to visit his parents’ in St. Louis. The other beer Colin brought me was O’Fallon Smoke, a smoked porter brewed in Missouri by O’Fallon Brewery. Porters and stouts are not normally my thing, but I have been trying to expand my beer drinking and brewing repertoire. There’s a lot of beer out there to try luckily.

Stephanie and I split the bottle for the tasting. Like last time, I tasted the beer and recorded my thoughts about it before looking at anyone else’s comments about the beer online. I really want to form my own opinions about a beer and develop my palate. It’s interesting to see which flavors I identify and how I describe them as compared to others. After I’ve recorded my thoughts I normally take a look at Rate Beer, read a variety of opinions, and then taste the beer again to see if I can taste anything mentioned that I missed.

Smoke poured a dark black with a red or even purple tinge near the edges and very little to no head. The aroma is of roasted coffee and smoke from a campfire made with very dry hardwood. The smokiness is not as prevalent in the aroma as I would have expected and smells far more like actual smoke than I would have guessed possible. I have never had a smoked beer before, so I have nothing on which to base this expectation. I guess I’ve tasted too many things flavored with liquid smoke. The roasted coffee aroma I associate with porters was the dominant aroma however. The beer opens with the flavors of dark roasted malt you expect from a porter. The flavor was certainly deeper than the aroma suggested. The body was surprisingly light. I envisioned something a little creamier perhaps, though it had more body than most light pale ales. The aftertaste is of strong campfire smoke on the middle of the tongue. It tasted rather like my clothing smells after I stand too long in the smoke from a backyard fire at Kathleen & Lynarra’s. After a few sips, the smoke flavor became more dominant in the early drink. It was never overpowering and the beer still tastes primarily like a porter, but the smoke is definitely readily noticeable.

Overall, I wasn’t particularly fond of the beer and Stephanie disliked it and poured hers out. Like I mentioned, I’m not a huge fan of porters or stouts, so it’s not surprising that I wouldn’t much like a porter variant. But mostly I didn’t enjoy the smoke flavor and the more I drank of my half beer, the more the smoke stood out to me. As a beer, I thought the aroma was lacking based on the flavor, but perhaps my ability to smell maltiness or smoke is not as developed as my ability to detect and differentiate hop aroma, with which I have much more experience and which are probably more easily detected. I’d probably decline another pint as a drink, but I might try it again sometime once I have more experience with porters or smoked beers.

In other beer drinking news, Stephanie spent last weekend in Mattoon, IL and brought me back 3 beers not available in Nashville: another O’Fallon beer, 5 Day IPA; Goose Island’s Honker’s Ale; and Two Brothers’ Domaine DuPage, a Bier de Garde. More tasting notes to come.