DuClaw Bad Moon Porter

Aroma: 9 | Appearance: 6 | Mouthfeel: 10 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

Duclaw has some great brews and it is a favorite place of mine to grab a brew and chow around Maryland. Tonight when I went to the Bowie location, they informed me they had Bad Moon Porter on Nitro. Yum yum, give me some!

The beer came out looking real good. It had a caramel colored monster head on it. You almost had to bite through it to get to the brew and when you did it was extremely thick and creamy. Nothing short of excellent.

Probably due to the nitro and the lack of carbonation, you really couldn't pull much out of the aroma. It was faintly there, but nothing special. When you drank it down though, it had a nice coffee/chocolate/malt flavor to it. It was extremely nice to the palate and left some amazing lacing behind on the pint glass as you drank it down. Very well done.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

A pitch black beer with a slight brown shine penetrating it under a thin brown head. The aroma is sweet with strong notes of roasted malt as well as light notes of chocolate. The flavor is sweet malty with light notes of roasted malt and chocolate, leading to a dry roasted bitter end - with notes of bitter desert chocolate.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

Pours pretty much black. There is a bit of burnt malt in the aroma. This really tastes more like a dry stout with not a lot of depth in the flavor. It's not bad though.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

Sampled a pint of this at the Arundel Mills mall location, on a quiet Tuesday night.

I was rather pleased with the Venom Pale Ale, but wanted to get a feel for what other beers this particualr outfit had in store, so gave this a spin around the block. While it went reasonably well my crab cakes, really can't give this all that much of an enthusiastic review, to be honest.

Basically, the backend aftertaste of this beer bugged me. Reminded me of that particular harsh acrid bitterness that you only find in really old (yet still hot) coffee. Kind of a burnt over-roasted feeling to this in those weird spots that I used to have wisdom teeth.

But all that doesn't completely detract from the positive aspects of this beer. I like the controlled hopping of this -- it's always easier for places to go balls-to-the-wall with the hops, especially if they need to mask any undesireable aspects. Nice to see an American Porter let it all hang out, warts and all. And it did look spot-on, as far as Porters go.

But as far Porters go, I've had worse, but this beer's faults really didn't convince me to want to go this way again. Better Porters out there for the asking, me'thinks.
//TB

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

On tap at Hanover brewpub. After a long day shopping at the arundel mills mall, this was a very welcome and appreciated respite from the pain in my legs. Black, with a silky smooth mouthfeel served to separate my mind from the extreme pain in my legs. Very chocolatey/not good with fish. But great on its own.