On-tap at Taco Mac in Douglasville, GA, USA.
Pour is a good looking, dark brown color with some nice clarity. Carbonation is relatively low which seems appropriate. Small head with some spotty film on the surface and a little lace. A little thin.
I read a couple of reviews of this beer which described a coffee note to the beer which to be honest I took with a pinch of salt. “Coffee” taste is one of those default, fallback tastes that I think people sometimes imagine in Stouts and Porters and other “dark” beers, and in a Brown Ale it seemed a little unlikely; in reality it was spot on!
Quite a lot of coffee in the nose and also in the initial tastes. The coffee settles down a bit and the beer goes into “Brown Ale mode” with a little nuttiness and some deeper malts. All of that is fine and dandy and it’s quite nice, but the problem here is the alcohol. It seems to bump heads with the relatively subtle style, and with the mouthfeel being quite thin, it takes on a solvent aggression that grates on me very quickly.
I suppose that Imperial Brown Ales are OK, but to me it gets tedious and drinking is not easy. This beer lacks the depth to hold up so much alcohol and in the end it gets quite solvent-like.
A potentially tasty profile spoiled by too much alcohol.