Anchor Porter

Tasted after a long, and productive day. We went to the Mad Farmers Garden and bought heritage chickens! the rest of the day was spent writing my paper, making garbage chili and attending a bartender meeting at great river. Thanks to Josh Schipp for donating this to the blog!

Appearance: Robust frothy foamed head that dryly stands on itself. Large bubbles hold it up while the top remains fine and very soft looking. Color is brown, but basically black. No clarity at all and carbonation is visbly nonexistant.
Aroma: Mellow roasted smell with a mild chocolate and oddly stale. Quite a bit of fruitiness. Licorice presents itself at the very end of the nose. Kind of baked and a little bit of rye.
Taste: At the start, the beer is sweet at the foretaste with subtle chocolate. Midtaste brings a bit of a fruitiness, perhaps reminiscent of plums, even some blueberries. I can draw some notes of brown sugar. The finish resides with a dry, but still sweet flavor. However, there is a stale coffee element to this beer too which I guess fits the style, but is a bit deterring. Similarly, there is also a very apparent licorice spicing, along with vanilla. A bit of oak presides within.
Mouthfeel: When tasting initially, the beers foam was soft and unusually warm. Medium body with a very fine carbonation, that is soft, but hardly makes any addition to the beer. Very sticky one the lips and overall it finishes quite dry.
Overall Impression: This is an unusual porter (from what I've had) but it does incorporate the stale flavor that porters originally maintained. It had a rich chocolate and subtle roasted flavor.