Cranky Reviews

On that hypnotic highway heading home and sometimes I need a jolt of java to keep me on the straight and narrow. My go to joe is a Timmies small and plain but when the lineup is longer than an academy awards show, time is money, so I might wander over to the no-line Starbucks for half the time at twice the price. My dealings with the Starbucks  baa-ristas usually leave me feeling a little sheepish, mainly because I can never remember the coffee sizes.*

Can I please just have a small?

I order a small and the graduate school server says “You mean a Tall?” which isn’t what I mean at all, so I ask “is a Tall a small?” and they say, “no, a Tall is a Tall but it is small”, so I say “as long as a Tall is small I’ll have a Tall”.  When my order comes up I hear them announce it “One tall regular for Dr. Suess”.  Needless to say, my dealings with barista’s are not the highlight of my day, usually.  Today is the exception.

This Bridgewater Coffee Stout is a Collab with Black Sheep Coffee Roasters, their baa-rista of choice. And an excellent choice it is, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here. Better do a brew review.

A coffee bean black pour, a slip of a super slim sliver of a head. Smells super stoutlike, roast malt, cocoa on the nose and a touch of caffeine. The first taste is a very faint fizz, roast malt cocoa sweet with a mild just right espresso shot that hits the spot for a perfect finish. Great balance. This is one smooth operator. The trick with a coffee stout is to get the coffee just right, and Bridgewater has done just that, delicious. This is exactly what a coffee stout should be.

I wish the Enroute had a Black Sheep instead of a Starbucks, that would be my baa-rista of choice. I guess that makes Bridgewater my beer-rista of choice.