Featured Review – Beer for Breakfast from Dogfish Head

At the start of the month, I made a special trip to my local craft beer store, Craft Beer Cellar – Eagle Rock, to spend my gift card bounty from Christmas.

Here is the first review. A beer that I would not normally run out to buy (due to the ingredient list that includes Guatemalan Antigua cold press coffee, Maple syrup harvested from Western Massachusetts and for the quintessential Delaware breakfast touch – Rapa Scrapple and their secret blend of spices), but since it was technically free, I could take a flyer on this hearty stout from Dogfish Head, Beer for Breakfast.

Pours black with a quite foamy espresso/latte head to it. A bit scared of this due to the “scrapple” element. Aroma is pure smoke as in that friend who came in from a smoke break. Off putting to me for sure. Taste is quite strong rauchbier. No ham-iness to it for me. Just smoke. Some coffee grounds poking through but not really bitter. Desperately calls for a 10oz bottle. Quite a warming down the throat bite to it. In the end, I cannot recommend because the aroma is just so off-putting to me.

Table Scraps

Dogfish-Head-Beer-For-Breakfast-Stout
Either you want a balanced breakfast or an off-centered Beer For Breakfast. Dogfish Head Brewing has put a long list of breakfast ingredients into their coming fall seasonal
• Maple syrup
• Barley smoked over applewood
• Roasted Chicory
• Lactose (milk sugar)
• Guatemalan Antigua cold press coffee
• Scrapple (pork scraps with spices and corn meal)

All of these things may taste well enough separately but could be a trainwreck together. What I am interested in would be gathering a panel of tasters and seeing both the responses and what flavors they pick out as most dominant.