Cooperstown Benchwarmer Porter

Brewery: Cooperstown Brewing Company, Milford, NY, USA

Benchwarmer Porter, 6.30% ABV, 12oz (bottle)

Cooperstown is another great American Microbrew Brendan managed to get me into. It is located in Milford, NY, an hour's drive from Binghamton, also home to the Basball Hall of Fame. Family-operated and producing on a small-scale, it is truly a microbrewerey, in contrast to the larger "craft breweries" such as Anchor or Sierra Nevada. Unsurprisingly, Cooperstown's ales are only available in New York state and various locations on the East Coast. However, being the country crazed about Baseball as they are, one select beer pub in Tokyo, Japan also holds their products. I will be writing about our trip to the brewery in later posts. Stay tuned.

Color: This bruiser pours a medium – thick head, with foamy bubbles. The color is extremely dark, with only faint traces of amber projected.

Tasting Notes: A surprisingly fruity nose emerges from the porter, contrary to my expectations of coffee and roasted malt. The fruitiness evokes dry prunes or ripe fresh plums, a little exotic (!) for a beer modeled around a down-home baseball theme. Underneath it all is some earthy malt tones. The roasted malt flavors (not coffee) becomes immediately evident on the tongue; the body is smooth and creamy and the higher carbonation differentiates it from a stout quite definitively. What about the hops? There’s a fine dose of hop bitterness addressed in this benchwarmer – some subdued citrus, musky bitterness and mineral flavor, adding to the nuance. The finish is a little too clean, however – as if the benchwarmer farted in the Fenway and a gust of wind cleaned it up in an instant.

Comment: A very exciting porter to say nonetheless, Cooperstown’s Benchwarmer is a fair reminder for me that modern porters do differ from stouts! This porter has the great features of some hoppy beers, and surely leans closer towards the beer-ish side of dark brews. Some reviewers on Beer Advocate seem dissatisfied with its hoppy and bitter flavor and are disappointed to find little coffee/chocolate notes in this bruiser; perhaps if they approached it less as a stout than a hoppy beer (in the vein of Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale), a different outcome may occur!

1/06/09