Brewery: Community Beer Company
Beer: Vanilla Ascension Coffee Porter (Vintage 2017)
Style: Baltic Porter
ABV: 6.9%
Character: Brewed with Arabica beans from Sigri Estate in Papua New Guinea from Ascension Coffee Roasters, and whole Madagascar vanilla beans
Ratings: BeerAdvocate: 4/5 | Untappd: 4.04/5
Metal Connection: ENSLAVED – Ascension
BeerMetal Rating: 4/5
I have had several beers from Community Beer Company and even visited the brewery once before. I am a big fan of their offerings. I am always looking out for new stuff from them, so when I saw this 4 pack of something new at Total Wine here in San Antonio I just had to grab it. Of course, in typical BeerMetalDude fashion, I fucking get home from the store and store the beer in my cellar, and just kind of forget about it until now. Yup, this is a vintage 2017. In fact, the bottled date is 02/16/17.
Poured from a 12 oz. bottle into an 8th Wonder Brewery Dream Shake snifter glass. This beer’s appearance was very dark brown, Cola colored. Topped with 1/2 of an inch dark khaki foamy head. Sticky lines of lacing were left down the glass as I drank this.
The aroma was full of cold brew coffee, vanilla, bitter sweet chocolate, raisins, figs, and rounded out with some toasted dark bread. The lingering aroma that stays in the nose is like vanilla creamed coffee with toasted dark bread.
In my opinion, the taste was exactly the same as the aroma. The same characters of cold brew coffee, vanilla, bitter sweet chocolate, raisins, figs, and toasted dark bread are all there in the flavor of this beer. Again, also just like the aroma, the lingering aftertaste is just like vanilla flavored cold brew coffee and toasted dark bread.
The body was thick with a smooth and slick mouthfeel that had a semi-dry finish.
Overall, I was very impressed with this beer even after holding on to it for well over a year. The coffee flavor was a bit muted as it may have fallen off just a bit. I imagine this beer fresh would have a tad bit stronger coffee flavor. Obviously it was still there and played a major part in this beers overall taste, so don’t get me wrong. My Untappd rating is a 4/5. I still have 3 more bottles of this stuff, and can’t wait to drink them.
Metal Connection: This one was a bit tough as there were many options to choose from with Metal songs featuring the word Ascension in the title. The meaning of the word is the act of rising to an important position or a higher level, so that gives this word a powerful meaning.
After narrowing it down, I ended up choosing the perfect song to listen to while drinking this amazing beer. Enslaved’s “Ascension” from their 2004 full length album, Isa. This song is such a huge departure from their original raw Black Metal sound that was on their 1993 debut EP, Hordanes Land, which was the first piece of music I ever heard from from Enslaved, when it was released as a split CD with Emperor through Century Black, a sub-label of Century Media Records that was releasing some Black Metal albums at that time.
Enslaved has always been a bit more technical than most bands, and throughout the years they have added a whole lot of new elements to their music, including clean vocals, and a lot of atmospheric parts. You can really hear what I am talking about on this song. Please click the video below and listen to this amazing song by one of the longest running Black/Viking Metal bands around.
Beer Metal Media 