16 Tons Coffee Stout Fest

Today's 16 Tons Coffee Stout Fest is one of the highlights of the beginning of the rainy season here in Eugene. 25 coffee-based stouts of varying provenance were available for dark beer lovers of all stripes to sample.

The great thing about most style-based mini-fests is that it gives insight into the reasoning behind these beers. What makes them tick? Why are they brewed? What flavor profiles are being used?

In the case of this particular fest, the taplist was almost entirely based out of the Pacific Northwest, with the outliers being from European breweries well-known for their experimental nature, so the sampling was deep but not especially broad.

Here's what I tried:

Stone Coffee Milk Stout: A mild, creamy, slightly roasty milk stout that nevertheless weighs in at over 8% ABV, this is a dangerously drinkable beer.

No-Li Rise and Grind: An about-face, this lighter, thinner stout focuses on the added coffee's acidity, to a nigh-spicy degree. The spicy, acidic coffee lingers.

Ballast Point Victory At Sea: A strong Baltic porter with coffee and vanilla, coming in far sweeter than the previous beers. The combination of higher alcohol, sweeter roasted coffee, and a sweeter base beer cause the flavors to constantly mutate. Even to the last sip I couldn't quite seem to get a handle on it. Interesting, for sure.

Midnight Sun Brewtality: Refreshingly, this was the first of the beers that actually tasted, first and foremost, like a beer - with heavy roasted malting and some balanced alcohol heat. Sure, there's some welcome latent coffee flavor, but it's mild and sweet.

Alesmith Speedway Stout: Very sweet, in the same vein as the Ballast Point, but with a far more balanced and pronounced coffee roastiness, along with a big alcohol kick.

Stone Stochasticity Project Master of Disguise: Mouthful of a name. This beer's interesting almost solely because it's very light in color - almost pilsner-esque. Flavor-wise, it's a callback to No-Li's strong acidity. Thankfully, it's got a much milder, cleaner finish.

Epic Big Bad Baptist: This is the beer I didn't know I needed. Bourbon-aged, with a mellow caramel/molasses sweetness that blends well with the added coffee and cocoa, this finishes with a bit of alcohol bite to let you know it's not messing around. At around 12%, it commands respect and slow sipping.

There were plenty of beers I wasn't able to sample - a lot of them were from local breweries, and I expect to see them around town over the next couple of weeks. Plank Town, Oakshire, Claim 52, and Agrarian all had entries that I hope to try very soon.

The fascinating aspect of this fest, to me, was coming to a deeper understanding of the various flavors that coffee can add to a beer. Sometimes it's sweet and mellow, sometimes acidic and harshly roasty. And the base beer can either complement it or simply act as a vehicle for the coffee. As a result, I'm now able to specify the type of coffee flavor I prefer in my stouts - milder, sweeter, and complimenting the base beer rather than vying for supremacy.