12 oz bottle from Winter Classics 12 pack from Safeway Salinas. Nose is chocolate, light amounts of roasty coffee, and oatmeal. Black with a medium cinnamon head. Flavor is coffee up front with smaller amounts of chocolate and roast, and very light bitterness.

Pour is a black with a average tan head. Aroma is a minor coffee with some roasted malts. Flavor is about the same a little coffee with some dark malts and chocolate. Not and overpowering coffee stout but decent enough to pick up this years mixed winter pack.

From the Winter Seasonal 12 pack. Seem coffee stouts are even more the buzz these days, ha! But except for Surly, not a lot of national packaging brewers seem to jumped on it until lately. This pours a deep black coffee body with a cappuccino type head. Smell is redolent of coffee, and in a nice way. A bit of sweetness hits the nose along with it. Foamy head is a pretty long-lasting cuss. Finally I’m tipping my glass to get to the beer beneath. And I find it is pretty generous with the coffee flavor. Just a note of sweetness, enough to nudge it out of a dry stout category and not overwhelm the coffee. Neither coffee nor malt are acidic or "burnt," another step in its favor. Then, maybe a little astringent malt hangs on my tongue. The standard 5-6% alcohol of a mass produced beer is covered by the taste, I may be praising this too highly, but it can show that yer Dark Lord and such can go unnecessarily over the top. It’s the right beer at the right moment for me.

Bottle from a sampler. Pours dark brown with a thin tan head. Average head retention. Aroma of coffee, milk, toasted malts and a bit of roast. The taste is coffee, chocolate, roasted malts and bitter hops in the finish. A faint banana-like fruitiness. Medium bodied.