Beer Review: Darwin’s Forehead Salted Brown Porter (Fonta Flora Brewery)

Decided to stop around 5PM and take a break and have a nice delicious brewski…. ah heck, who am I kidding, I did very little today, but did SOME, and after doing just a LITTLE, I decided to take a break, had a delicious brewski, and then only got a LITTLE more done afterwards.

I’d like to say today was a busy or eventful day, that I got a lot done, and was running around doing all kinds of errands and got lots of things done…. ….but that would all be a lie. For my Sunday; (Thursdays are my Saturdays and Fridays are my Sundays) I did basically zilch and nothing.

But thats still no excuse to NOT drink. So… here’s my new brew for the day. That makes it a consecutive 22 days so far where I’ve had a new beer (not just *A* beer but a brand *NEW* beer – new to me at least). And this blog posting I’m typing up right now marks 22 days for blog posts.

Regardless of not getting much, or enough done, I still have time and still have energy to write up this blog. No further procrastinating, no further pushing it back. Let’s drink a great beer and review it!

As you can see from this picture, I got the Darwin’s Forehead in the one beer mail package I received, and the faithful followers of the blog can see I’ve been working my way through reviewing most of the beers provided. (I’ve done the Nuttin’ Cam Pants, the Blueberry Edmund’s Oast, and the Irish Table before.)

So now, we move onto the next one: Darwin’s Forehead (Salted Brown Porter).

Beer: Darwin’s Forehead Salted Brown Porter
Brewery: Fonta Flora Brewery
Style: Porter – Other
ABV: 6.8%
IBU: 30
Untappd Write-Up: Caramalized and chocolate malts blended w/ caramel. Notes of smoked salt, roasted cocoa, arabica coffee beans

This will probably break the record for most times I use the word ‘forehead’ in a blog. Ever. Forehead. Forehead. Forehead. Forehead. Forehead. Probably also the most times I’ll ever use Darwin in a blog too. Darwin. Charles Darwin. Darwin. Charles Darwin. Darwin. I probably screwed up all kinds of SEO and algorithms with search engines and all kinds of things (probably also flagged myself), but at least its relevant…. sorta?

The appearance of this forehead… I mean beer…. is dark black. Stout black. It is black hole inducing black, sucking in the glass even. Razor Ramon’s hair has nothing on this. The head is a dark brown foamy pillow ontop of this black forehead….beer… The head has great retention, fine bubbles, and leaves a nice lacing.

The aroma for this forehead…. ugh…. beer…. is caramalized malts. You get typical brown ale and porter malt notes, kind of in a blend for this. Inhaling more of this, you start getting into the non-beer ingredients; you pick up the coffee notes, you pick up some cooking chocolate – cocoa notes, you get a fairly strong whiff of salted roasted pretzel.

And finally this forehead tastes wonderfully…. ok….. ok… I promise thats the last time I’ll do that! This beer tastes wonderfully! This isn’t smooth, nor is it intended to be quaffed down in an instant. There is a bitterness to this and a nice warming to the beer really helps bring out the flavors and aromas. You get big time flavoring notes of salted pretzel, roasted, toasted salted pretzel. The bitterness primarily comes from the cooking cocoa which gives it a sharp bite (I also suspect that there must be a decent amount of bittering hops to this to give it the 30 IBU). But as I said, as this warms up, it really brings the diverse flavors of coffee, cocoa, salted pretzel, roasted malts, caramel, all to the fore, and it tastes very, very, very nice.

My Untappd Rating: ****
Global Untappd Rating: 3.80 (as of 11.22.19)

November is speeding on pretty fast. Here its already the end of the 22nd and we’re speeding into the weekend which will soon lead into Thanksgiving. But have no fear, I’m still hitting my goals of 1) a brand new beer (to me) a day and 2) a new blog post every day. At the end of November, I’ll collect them all into one post for you to see and read and peruse.

Also, if you didn’t hear the latest news, The Beer Thrillers is expanding, and we’re getting a home brewing section now. AJ Brechbiel of Default Brewing will be doing home brewing articles and blog posts. Detailing different things, from brew day, to recipes, to technicalities, etc. All kinds of different things about the home brewing process. This will really expand the blog and bring so much more to the page that we can now offer you the readers. So please make sure you bookmark, follow, like, share, subscribe, do all that crazy jazz! We appreciate it! And we appreciate the support you guys give us!

Thanks for reading!

Cheers!

-B. Kline