Laguinitas Brewing Co.: Cappuccino Stout

As all my good friends know, coffee and stouts are basically my two favorite beverages. The coffee stout is becoming a pretty common sub-genre at this point, which is just fine with me.

Lagunitas's take on this variety is pretty solid. It's pretty heavy on the malts and actually kind of light on the hops as stouts go, which means that this is actually a lot less bitter than you might expect for a coffee stout. The predominant flavor is a sort of sugar/vanilla malt, but the hop kicks in nicely at the end to give it a crisp finish. It rates remarkably high on the drinkability scale for a stout--I put away an entire bomber without really noticing, and I was even still craving a little bit more when the bottle ran dry.

This one doesn't quite manage to crack into my top 5 stouts, but it is certainly a cut above average and a stout that I'll be keeping an eye open for in the future.