Brewing with coffee, this is a great idea. The ethanol calms you down and the caffeine revs you up. Or the roasted flavours of stout and coffee blend nicely, your pick. There are a few ways to incorporate the goodness of coffee into a beer. The first is to just add coffee grounds into the brewing mash. This is the easiest way, but can produce a quite bitter, astringent and roasty beer. Imagine brewing a coffee with warm water for about an hour, you are going to extract all the flavours. Including ones you might not want. I'm pretty sure this is how Black Jackal was made, tastes like it anyways.
Another way is to just add lots of espresso shots. This is quite time consuming but highlights the rich, sweet creaminess of fresh espresso. Swan's yearly Double Shot Porter is made this way.
The middle ground of effort and flavour extraction is the cold brew method. Most of us have tried, or made, cold brew coffee. Just place coffee grounds into cold water, wait 24-48 hours, then remove desired caffeinated liquid. How does the phrase go..." all the jitter but none of the bitter." Spinnakers makes a cold pressed coffee brew and Lighthouse has their Night Watch Coffee Lager. You can either use the cold pressed coffee as strike water, or just add the coffee before the boil.

Excitation = 8/10

The nose is unusually calm with roasted coffee beans and blackberries.  Only a but of roasted bitterness, and not coffee acrid, starts off this medium to full mouthfeel beer. Get your jitter on with flavours of espresso creme, coffee water, dark berries and creamy bittersweet chocolate. The finish is long and roasted with addition flavours of toasted pecans.

Taste +3
Aftertaste +2
Alcohol Content 6.4% +1
Value +1
Appearance +1 Great label with nice description of expected flaavours

Glassware: Snifter, or ceramic mug

Food Pairings:Definitely grilled, heavy meats. You could also pair this with a dessert of tiramisu.

Cellar: maybe, but nope

For those who read all the way to the bottom, there is more. I'm guessing that you are also the people who stay to the end of the credits of an animation movie. Just in case there are extra scenes. I shall be brief. This will be the last beer review. I have been doing these reviews for over 10 years and my heart is just not in it. As you can tell, due to the lack of reviews this year. Also there was no best beer of 2016 article either. It would have been the 2016 Sang, it case you were wondering. Either that or the Twa Dogs Saison. If you want beer reviews, check out Bring Your Porter to the Slaughter, Matter of Beer, or Beer Ye Beer Ye. I might do something in the future, I paid for the web domain for the year. But for now that is all.
Thank you for reading and commenting

I feel like such a failure; there were no notes taken about this beer. Sometimes you must do these sorts of things. Not think too much about a beer. Sit back, crack it open and savour the flavours without trying to pick it apart. SNORT, that was funny. Beer pricks never do that. It is true that no notes were taken about this beer. Luckily the little grey cells are still working.

Shatterbier (Moon Under Water) =8/10


Normally when brewers try to blend beer with coffee, they go the easy route. Stick those beans in with a stout or porter and you can't do wrong. Blending that roasted or brunt flavour with a delicate golden ale had me a little leery. But we must not forget that coffee can be roasted and brewed to be light and fruity; a perfect match for the golden ale. The nose was light and fruity with calm, toasted aromas from the coffee meshing well. An expected heavy handed roasted espresso smack never arrived. Perhaps the flavour was similar to a light roasted pour-over. This combined with the mild peaches, floral and effervescence of the golden ale perfectly. I forget what I paid for this beer, but it was under priced. It does look intimidating and the side writing is hard to read, so it will probably linger in the shelves. This is good news for local beer geeks that appreciated an experiment gone well.

Glassware: Chalice. The massive aroma and carbonation needs somewhere to spread. Other options would be a tulip or snifter.

Food Pairings. This is a tough one. Perhaps something light and mildly roasted. Lightly grilled sea bass with a lemon sauce. Welsh rarebit would be nice.

Taste +4
Aftertaste +1
Alcohol Content +1 9%
Value +1
Appearance +1 (perhaps the second most elegantly packaged beer in Victoria to date. Hoynes Gratitude is still #1)