Monday Night Football wild card game, my Dallas Cowboys vs. Old Man Brady and his Tampa Bay Young Bucs. The Dallas defense took Buc passer Brady to school, it wasn’t the Cowboys first rodeo but it may be Brady’s last one. Never sure of the outcome of any game, I had lined up a special brew to either celebrate or commiserate, and happily it was the former. A tall bottle, with a big price, and a high alcohol level breakfast porter to be precise.
The term breakfast beer gets bandied around a lot these days. We answered the siren’s call for a breakfast stout, and noon was good for a breakfast IPA, but this is my first breakfast porter. The history of “breakfast beers”* goes back to the Middle Ages when “small beer” was standard fare at the breakfast table in the UK. The historians tell us that these were low ABV brews at less than 2.8% and were full of calories and helped provide fuel for the hard-working day ahead.
Today this breakfast porter is a high ABV brew providing unneeded but much wanted fodder for a lazy evening of arm-chair quaterbacking. According to Dylan, the times they are a-changin’. Of course ol’ Bobby sang that in 1964, but I have assumed that even today the times they still are a-changin’. Come to think of it, the times are always a-changin’, aren’t they?
The Whole World?
According to Indie Alehouse “There was a time when the whole world drank porters. Those were good times.” I went into fact check mode and I couldn’t confirm either of those statements, but I did have a good time watching Dallas win last night while quaffing this Indie brew.
A quart wannabe** tall boy bottle dark porter pour, a tan head that disappeared as quickly as Farmer Steve does when it comes time to pay the bill. A nice mild roasted malt and coffee aroma with some sweet, caramel perhaps? A tasting will tell. Strong and cherry sweet (not caramel), not creamy but slick with a complex flavour mix of chocolate cherry and coffee in front of a roasted malt backdrop. Not smooth but not harsh, not mild but not boozy. Full flavoured, almost over the top but not quite. A strong and compelling porter, maybe too strong for some. Different, interesting and unpredictable, inscrutable but irrefutable.
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