Surf’s Up!
I was going through my beer fridge when I came across a bottle of Kona Brewing Company’s Pipeline Porter. I bought it back in February and had forgotten about it. I decided I’d better drink/review it so here it is:
Appearance: The beer pours a very dark coffee color with a hint of red in it. The head is slightly creamy and has a “dirty white” color.
Smell: Coffee, coffee, and more coffee. That pretty much describes it. There is a hint of malt and chocolate as well.
Taste: There is a definite coffee taste going on in this beer. It is a strong roasted flavor and has a little bit of bite to it. I also got some chocolate (more bitter than sweet) and a bit of malt. The slightly “over roasted” coffee detracted some from the overall taste.
Drinkability: The beer drinks pretty good. This is a medium bodied beer with OK carbonation. It goes down pretty smooth and the relatively low ABV of 5.4% helps in that regard. There is a bit of hop/acid bite at the end that impacts the score a little.
Overall this is a pretty good beer. I like coffee so the overriding coffee flavor was fine. If you don’t like coffee you probably won’t like this beer. The only glitch I found was in the taste/aftertaste where I got a bit “too much” of the roasted coffee. It was a little acidic, like a coffee is when it’s brewed very strong. This was most prominent in the taste.
Here’s my score:
1. Appearance- 7 points (out of 10)
2. Smell- 7 points (out of 10)
3. Taste- 14 points (out of 20)
4. Drinkability- 7 points (out of 10)
Total 35 (out of 50) Points- 3 Mugs
