Along with turkey and potatoes and a minor food coma and a 5+ hour return leg to Portland, I cut the wax on a bottle of Black Butte XXI. From my notes/impressions when it was green: bit of an alcohol burn, bourbon/sweet smell up front, malty flashes of dark chocolate and espresso. Pleasantly thick.
Now? Well, the alcohol has completely died off and, if it's still packing a north-of-10% abv, you cannot tell without letting it get close to room temperature. Even then, the alcohol is all at the back-end of the beer. Thinned-out a bit, but looking very dark with the occasional brown highlights and a moderate head that doesn't stick around for too long. The nose is predominantly sharp on the bourbon barrel character with some malt and a couple of wisps of coffee grounds. I passed the beer to a few others and they all agreed that the sweetness from the bourbon was the first thing to hit their nose. I figured that would be the first identifiable flavor with such a big headstart.
Could not have been more wrong. As far as the BB XXI is concerned, this is a convincing TKO in the year-long bottle-battle between these flavors: Coffee is your undisputed champ in this fight by a mile. This beer turned into a coffee porter, first and foremost, more than anything else. The front end is filthy with espresso flavors before giving way to some of the other ones like toffee and dark chocolate in the back half. Warming it up lets more of the bourbon out to play, but it's all secondary to the coffee. Hell, with this kind of bomb, the turkey was almost secondary to the coffee. Honestly never saw that one coming, but it was a more-than-pleasant surprise for someone who digs espresso-manipulated beer.
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