Einstok - Icelandic Toasted Porter

As if to remind you where they're from, it seems that they like putting the fact that they're Icelandic on the bottle... Which is probably a good thing if I'm completely honest because, before today, I'd never had an Icelandic beer before, and shame on me for never thinking of drinking an Icelandic beer before! It turns out that they're actually pretty good at this kind of thing, especially if the Icelandic Pale Ale is anything to go by... Which it is. It could just be a fluke but I don't think it will be because when I smelt this beer I made a face that was half shock, half awe and half awful maths. The roasty toasty aromas that come out of this beer remind me of camp fires at scouts and though I was awful at cooking things at scouts, I still made a delicious (somewhat burnt) mess that tasted of pain, suffering, bananas and chocolate buttons. The beer itself seems quite unassuming, what with its meagre head that, at best, can be described as "wispy," but I've made the mistake of judging a beer by its head before (not a commonly used phrase, I'm sure it'll catch on,) and I can vouch for that being a mighty error of judgement.

I always think that a good porter or stout should be as thick and/or as dark as crude oil and this definitely fits the bill because though it doesn't seem thick as such, it is certainly dark. I held it up to the light and it was the same colour and shade as it was when it was sitting on my desk, pitch black. I suspect these Icelandic brewers may have discovered a way to manufacture dark matter...

There's a BIG hit of dark chocolate and roasted coffee when you taste this, which is coupled with a medium mouth feel and light carbonation. I do enjoy a coffee porter and this is definitely a good example but they've gone a step further, they've given us a roasted coffee porter that's as smooth as silk, hits 6% and delivers like a postman with severe OCD.

It's hard not to feel classy with this beer, though that may be helped by my (frankly) stunning laziness when picking the glass, which went something along the lines of, "uh, I could just rinse the one I just used... Deal!" What I get, though, is the impression that I'm doing what only a small number of people on this planet have done and that's drink Icelandic roasted coffee flavour booze from a tiny brandy glass and then write about it at length.

I feel like some sort of yuppie Viking... I didn't say I didn't like it.

Food Suggestion: They probably won't thank me for this but all I can think about eating are Danish butter cookies. That smooth, roasted coffee flavour is just screaming for something sweet and buttery to go with it. It was a choice between that and sponge cake... And I'd never pair a porter with a sponge cake, I'm not mad!

Drink this if you like: Nils Oscar - Coffee Porter, another delicious and smooth coffee porter with big flavours. Einstok might have the edge by putting that roasted flavour in there but the 2 beers are comparable.