Anchor Coffee Porter by Anchor Brewing Company

Anchor Coffee Porter

6.7% ABV

Our historic, art deco building on San Francisco’s Potrero Hill was a coffee roastery before it was our brewery. We’ve joked for years that it takes a lot of coffee to make beer. Now, in collaboration with local roaster Four Barrel Coffee, we are doing just that– literally.

We start in the brewhouse with our radically traditional recipe for Anchor Porter, which we’ve been brewing since 1972. We end up in the cellar, where we add Four Barrel Flash-Chilled Coffee– developed with Anchor especially for this beer– during secondary fermentation. The coffee used is brewed hot, then flash-chilled within 10 seconds. This proprietary method ensures the vital aromatics and key acids of a great cup of coffee are captured and preserved.

The result is a coffee porter of immense richness, intensity, boldness, and smoothness, with deep aromas and mouthfeel of fresh-roasted coffee melded with dark-roasted maltiness. Anchor Coffee Porter is a rich, smooth Porter with a roasty malt backbone, a bold coffee aroma and complex layers of chocolate, nuts and spices.

Taste opens with roasted malt, including a light charred aspect. This, combined with a more pine woody bitterness has me thinking classic American porter. The coffee isn’t too distinct to me in the taste, but I’m maybe noticing it a little later in the taste and as an aspect that might fill out the roasted profile more than altering it. It gets better and a tad smoother as it warms, as well, but the bitterness also starts to come out as well. 

This does fit in with other Anchor beers, solid, American, pretty much to style. I would like a little less bitterness, and a little more obvious coffee, personally (the former might help the latter, even).

Pours a dark brown body with a rich, fluffy, lasting tan head that leaves textured wisps of lace around the glass. The nose is marvelous- rich coffee supported by that signature Anchor porter malt profile: milk chocolate, warm caramel, a bit of char, a touch of cream. The flavor also delivers on the coffee, chocolate, dark fruits, roasted malt are the predominate flavors and smell.

I Really like this beer it’s as dark as an imperial stout with a nice cocoa head and smells of bitter chocolates and coffee roasts but the taste shines. Drank rather warmed up I got a ton of cocoa nibs and coffee bitterness with just a twinge of hop bitterness. Body is medium and kind of chewy. Overall a really great coffee stout that is fairly easy to find.