Coffee Beer Week: Péché Mortel

Coffee Beer WeekToday is a coffee beer out of Canada: Brasserie Dieu du Ciel‘s Péché Mortel—literally “Mortal Sin.” It’s a 9.5% Imperial Coffee Stout brewed with Fair Trade coffee and is bottled conditioned—that means don’t be surprised to find dregs of yeast (and possibly coffee) on the bottle of the bottle (or even floating in your glass). It’s good for you!

Their description:

Péché Mortel (French for “Mortal Sin”) is an intensely black and dense beer with very pronounced roasted flavours. Fair trade coffee is infused during the brewing process, intensifying the bitterness of the beer and giving it a powerful coffee taste. Péché mortel is brewed to be savored; we invite you to drink it in moderation.

Péché MortelAppearance: Black and opaque, with light brown mocha head. “Chunkies” at the bottom of the glass, floating around. [Likely from the bottle conditioning.]

Smell: Roasted malts and coffee—a bit like smelling a bag of fresh beans. Sweet notes of an Imperial Stout—caramel and chocolate aromas and some sweet alcohol.

Taste: Bitter and roasty and dry with a bit of alcohol heat at the back. Not really any astringency but the roasty, woody notes are fairly pronounced with a bite to it. Alcohol is well masked.

Mouthfeel: Full, with a dry body throughout and a smoky feel to it.

Overall: Good and surprisingly smoky; much drier than I’d expect for an Imperial Stout. Bitter coffee.

On BeerAdvocate, it scores an overall grade of A. On RateBeer, it scores 4.15 out of 5, and is in their 100th overall percentile.

One comment

  1. This is very coincidental. I visited a beir cafe this weekend in Portland ME and out of the 1000s of beers listed I went for this very coffee stout. A very good coffee stout, you can even smell the dark coffee and the taste is great!

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