Escanaba Black Beer from Upper Hand is not quite a stout, but had to put up some info about it just to maybe ease my mind. But let’s dive in any way. Keep in mind this will be longer than normal, as you will see why.
These are canned beers. Which I like. We all know the benefiet of packing cans for road trips.
Opening the first can I was greeted with no hiss or normal opening sound you would get from a can. But it did pour decent enough. Ended up with a very thin light tan head that did not stick around very long at all. A few seconds at most. Still no signs of life. No carbonation bubbles, no cascading show. Just a very dark brown mass.
(I would have thought if you put black ale in the name, the beer would be black)
In the aroma though there is some nice roast coming thru, and a bit of the dank hop. I think I was expecting the opposite. More hop less roast, but it does work. Some grainy notes along with some sweet sugary notes finish it out. So far so good I’m thinking.
Here is where I’m looking for easing my mind on this beer. The taste. What in the hell happened? I can only describe it as an old minnow bucket. I mean it was really bad. There is no way a pro brewer would (or should) let this out into the wild.
But.. in this cans favor,, there was quite a bit of that dank hop action and roast notes to play against the minnows. But also as I expected,, it was nearly dead flat.
I thought to my self that this must be a single can issue because..damn. But couldn’t force my self to try another right away.
The next day I had enough guts to try again. This time we got a nice pour with that tannish head that stuck around this time. Not a thick creamy head.. but decent.
Same roasty danky grainy aromas as the first can, but very much livelier looking. But as we get to tasting, still get a twang of that minnow.
Now is that stuck in my head from the first? I dont think so as it started getting more pronounced as it wamed up. But again hoppy and roasty.. but almost a chocolate thing. Almost. Like that plastic taste you get if you were to mix a pack of hot chocolate with 4x the amount of water.
While yes I would say this is better than the first can,, I still would not call it good.
Day 3. So I opened another can of this today.
From past experience I figured I would not waste a glass on this, and just drink from the can.
Opens with decent carbonation and smells the same as the other three. Same minnow taste. But everything else about it seems like a different beer. Its thin.. its sweeter. Like a faint sugary koolaid (Sweeter is getting further away from what most would call a black ale.) The hops taste far less than the last 2. Could this be from not opening up from a pour? I dunno.
So what I’m left with is 1- 6 pack. 3 beers drank. 3 completely different beers. That is some poor quality control. I think the best out of the 3 was the second one I had,, but thats not saying a whole lot.
Would I call this a Black Ale? Maybe the second one. Would I call this a stout? No. Porter? You could convince me that the 3rd one was porterish I guess.
I’m not sure this is happening with this companies other beers or even other 6 packs of this brand… but I am pretty sure I will be skipping over these guys from now on.
Due to a generally bad taste and crazy bad consistancy I really have no choice but to give the lowest score I can for this beer.
If you have tried this beer and have a better review of it please let me know as I want to believe this was just a one off problem 6er. (I have not yet tried the other 3 cans. I will be bringing these to our next beer meeting to get a grip on what’s going on with them)
Stoutmaker.beer 