Broadening Our Horizons XXX

Otherwise known as the triumph of hope over adversity... or sumthin' like that:

That would be a State Pen Porter which, unlike that moose piss in a bottle from the Santa Fe brewery that was labeled as "hefeweizen," is quite good and very enjoyable.  The folks at Beer Advocate agree with me, giving this beer a B+.  It's at least that, if not a solid "A."

State pen is a tasty porter, displaying a nose with bits of coffee, strong sweet roasted malts and slight fruit notes. The taste is textured with hops that bitter the sweeter roasted malts, and some nice black coffee/dark chocolate type bitterness. As I sip this it becomes evident that it is heavier on the hops than other examples of the style, which may be positive or negative depending on your opinions of hop levels in American Porters. To me, this is a plus as the hops meld in nicely with the chocolate and roasted barley notes. Mouthfeel is on the lighter side with high carbonation (in part due to the lower temperature at which I am drinking this).

Conclusion: This is a very nice porter, and in my experience it scores in the top 20% easily. Great work Santa Fe! I wish there was more beer of this quality coming from New Mexico.

Yeah... what he said!  I take it back, Santa Fe.  You may not know from hefeweizen but you brew an excellent porter.  And it only took me two years to figger that out.

―:☺:―

We're doin' an indoor Happy Hour today, seein' as how it's just two ticks below 100 degrees outside.  We're thanking our lucky stars, mainly coz we have power (and cool, cool AC) and we DON'T have 80-mph winds and lashing rain like some folks on the right coast are experiencing.  But Hey!  Ol' Irene didn't turn out to be half the nasty vindictive bitch everyone was fearing, and that's a great good thing.