Friday's here, so it's time for beer.
Every Friday, so long as the creek don't rise, this beer enthusiast will take a look at a Florida beer that, hopefully, should be readily available in a local shop or on tap at your favorite bar.
This week, it's time to head on up to Boynton Beach and fill a pint or growler (why not both) with Due South's amazing Cafe Ole Espresso Porter.
I hopped over to the brewery and filled up a growler to take home, while notching another stamp on our growler club card. Don't forget about that, as after you buy nine, you get your tenth for free. Not bad.
Pouring into an appropriate Due South glass, the porter shows its first signs of coffee-ness. It's cola opaque, with just a hint of a red breaking free from the dark, dark brown when you tip the glass. The second sign of coffee-ness is the aroma. Forget Starbucks, this is where you're going to find that sweet coffee scent. It's not astringent like ground coffee or even prepared coffee, but slightly sweet. Think grabbing a handful of fresh whole beans and breathing through them.
Owner of Due South, Mike Halker, says that they "use fresh local-roasted espresso beans" in every batch. Great, now I want to sample beer-soaked espresso beans...
Drinking it, there's a good roasted malt character that transitions to something akin to very bitter dark chocolate. The whole thing is a little dry, with no overpowering hop flavor. All of the bitterness seems to concentrate on accentuating the coffee aspects rather than anything hop-like.
The mouthfeel was a little thin, but the carbonation was spot on. It's coffee as a beer.
With an ABV of 5.7% and IBU's at 37, it's great for pairing with dessert, but it also goes well with a simple grilled steak.
Where can you drink this fine concoction? How about all over the place? As you can tell, we recommend this porter.
"We're not even a year old yet and we've made, I think, 24 different types of beer," Halker revealed.
People really enjoy their Due South.
"I think [beer drinkers] are realizing the quality of that," he says of drinking locally, "because it hasn't bounced around a truck going around the country."
So grab a fresh one, and make it local.
Take to Twitter and let us and everyone else know what you're drinking. #FloridaBeer or #FLBeer.
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