Telegraph Unblended Barrel Reserve Porter

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

Sampled on tap at the First Annual Stone Sour Fest, July 2007
This beer has quite a funky nose to it; it is so funky it seems almost unintentional. The aroma is lightly tart, yet has caramel and toasted malt notes to it. It has a funky mustiness to it and almost a leather-like quality to it as well. The head has some good staying power and is light brown colored. The body of the beer is a hazy brown color.

The taste is dry, yet it still has quite the brown ale profile; notes of toasted malt, caramel, browned, biscuit like grain and a light burnt soda cracker flavor. This beer in some way is clean compared to other sour beers here today, yet it still has a light tartness and even an underlying funkiness that some of the other sour beers have not had. This has a phenolic note that is almost plastic like and is a bit hot. This is actually a bit unbalanced as the phenolics seem to dominate the flavor profile after a bit. The brown grain character seems to accentuate the phenolics at times too.

This definitely seems unintentionally funky to me; it doesn’t quite work, but was still worth a try. The flavors are interesting (especially the combination of dark malts and funk), though a bit harsh in the end.