Kyle Nabilcy
Dark roast. I’ll take mine black. Cup of mud. The language of coffee establishes an expectation of, if not opacity, then at least darkness. Ain’t nobody brewing a Crystal Americano.
With coffee beers, the expectation is the same. A brown ale — Surly’s Coffee Bender, say — is about as lightly colored as I think most drinkers are programmed to anticipate from a coffee beer. They don’t always have to be stouts; Furthermore’s Oscura is an example of a dark non-stout beer that’s very satisfying on the coffee tip.
I’m reading Bianca Bosker’s Cork Dork right now, and yes, it’s a book about wine, but it covers ground that beer aficionados should pay attention to. There’s a section that discusses context and expectation, and the effect those circumstances have on appreciation and enjoyment. If you’re told a wine (or a beer) is expensive, will you be unconsciously pre-disposed to approve of it?
The data says yeah, probably. So does that impact coffee beers and the shade of brown-to-black they display in the glass? If I grab a bottle of some kind of coffee beer off the shelf, or if I pour it into a glass at home, and I can see through it, is that beer automatically facing a steeper uphill climb toward appreciation?
If I’m being honest, the answer is yes. Southern Tier Brewing Company just released a new version of its annual pumpkin ale, Pumking, called Cold Press Coffee Pumking. It is what you think it is, Pumking plus cold press coffee. But despite the fact that Pumking is always always always a clear amber color, when I heard “cold press coffee,” I thought “black.”
And when I picked up the bottle, and I could see the bottle shop’s wine section through the neck of the Pumking bottle, I absolutely did feel deflated. My shoulders may actually have slumped.
It’s not that pale coffee beers are necessarily bad. Goose Island’s Cascara was a pleasant find at the Festival of Barrel Aged Beers back in 2015; Goose Island now makes a Cascara Grisette. Cascara is the flesh of the coffee cherry, which lends a very subtle coffee flavor to beers that utilize it, but without the dark color of roasted coffee beans. Colectivo serves a Cascara Farmhouse Ale at its downtown and Monroe Street locations, created in collaboration with brewers from 3 Sheeps.
Modist Brewing in Minneapolis makes a pale cold press coffee lager named First Call, and while it’s not distributed on this side of the Mississippi, it’s a year-round brew for the year-old Modist. Grab a four-pack, keep it in the cooler, and drink it fresh and cold when you get home. It’s worth it.
I’m not totally sure I can say the same about the Cold Press Coffee Pumking. I’m not, truth told, a big fan of regular Pumking, but I hoped that the addition of coffee would bring it into a smoother, slightly stoutier realm. (I like Warlock, Southern Tier’s pumpkin stout, much more than Pumking.) Despite cold press coffee being less bitter, typically, than hot-brewed coffee, there was more bitterness in this Pumking than I wanted.
The effect this bitterness had on the standard, very-sweet Pumking flavor was to turn it into a Yankee Candle Company-does-hazelnut kind of thing, not pumpkin pie at all. I have the rest of the four-pack to drink, so maybe playing with serving temperature will make a difference. It’s not really cold brew season anymore, so perhaps a slightly warmer pour will make me think of the way I drink coffee this time of year, hot and black.
