It smells of coffee, chocolate, and roasted malt. It pours very dark brown, a tad more chocolaty than the black lager from last night, but, not much. The head is thin but persistent. The taste is good, surprisingly bitter, creamy, a bit of coffee, with a dry finish. It's very drinkable, the bitterness cleans up the richness nicely and leaves you thirsting for more, but it's a bit over the top for me. I like the carbonation, it adds quite a bit to the drink ability of this one. However, I really don't see how this is an "A" brew. Perhaps it's because I prefer a stout to a porter in my dark beers, or just because I'm not yet a fan of the extreme bitterness that we find in so many American micro brews, some times it works really well, sometimes it just seems unnecessary. None the less it's a very solid beer, It simply can't be rated any less than a 3/5 using the incredibly complex happy time magic hour system. We have another Great Lakes brew coming up, I'm curious to see how it is. _Merry Beercember gang_, oh and feel free to use the comments to tell me how insane I am. I get that a lot. ;-) ...