The latest brew from St. Louis’ 4 Hands Brewing Company comes just in time. After getting my fill of bourbon barrel stouts the past few weeks, I’m ready for the palate switch to big coffee stouts. In the case of St. Louis beer lovers, we have two biggies coming out, both with a common link, St. Louis’ own Sump Coffee Company.
This week Perennial Artisan Ales, launches Sump Week, with their release of their annual Sump Coffee Stout, and 4 Hands is debuting their collaboration with Sump Coffee as well with Single Origin.
The Backstory The inspiration for Single Origin came from the brewery’s new supplier of single origin cacao nibs. Brewers had ordered a huge assortment of chocolate made with these single origin nibs, and they were really blown away by how completely different and distinct they were. Meanwhile, 4 Hands and Scott Carey of Sump Coffee had already been discussing a collaboration of some kind. This new special chocolate made perfect sense, so it was decided to try and create a project that focused on these distinct ingredients from different growing regions.
They selected Ethiopian natural process coffee from Sump, added Madagascar vanilla beans, the same incredible vanilla beans that they use in our Madagascar Imperial Milk Stout cacao from Tanzania and a touch of blueberry to accentuate the natural processed coffee.
The Beer The result is a big beer, with an ABV of 10.5%. This beer pours black in color with a tan head. On the nose, Single Origin is all coffee up front with some more subtle notes of vanilla and berry. On the draw you’ll get rich chocolate up front, followed by some silky vanilla in the middle, and the finish has just a hint of berry.
On The Label The original inspiration was a kind of pirate map showing the origins of the different ingredients and of course they wanted to be sure to feature the iconic Sump skull logo. Artist Josh Rowan created the label.
The Future Look for Single Origin to join the annual beer menu at 4 Hands, and look for the next collaboration with Sump to be released in December, for the next few years. The focus of the beer will continue to be to highlight very high quality, very unique ingredients and make it really show in the finished product.
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