The Monk Bounty Coconut Stout

Aha, another twisted stout from this Fremantle crew.

And.. to be honest it looks a lot like the last one (better head though). So to avoid boredom have a go at the awesome paella they were putting on instead:

Nice work. To the beer though - this one generates a bit of lace and feels better carbonated from the beginning. The nose is enormous coconut, and for once the naming does the job beautifully when it comes to describing this beer: it really is a lot like drinking a liquid bounty bar. There's coconut milk, juice and flesh elements there and it's all pretty good stuff.

Not sure how portery this is on the whole - it really is a coconut festival - but it's good stuff, for one glass at least. I feel like there must be coconut fiends out there who would just camp on this stuff, putting it on their cereal and bathing with it .. for me, it's just good fun. Nice! 7.0

The Monk Sweet Potato Porter

Nothing if not an idiot, I was pretty keen to try my first sweet potato porter.

Hmm.. individual small bubbles in the head soon turn flat, not a great looking start, slight grey character to the brown edged body. Turns up far too cold off the taps to generate any flavour, mouthfeel pretty fizzy as well, bit artificial. Not the right sort of glass, and bloody big for a middie too.. so not great presentation overall.

The spices (allspice, nutmeg etc) don't turn up until the beer has warmed considerably and when they arrive, give a little sort of pepsi-like kick to things which isn't entirely astray. Apart from that .. it's just a bit hard going really, vague porter notes drowned out by vegetable tastes - obviously that's the point, but it just hasn't melded particularly well in this instance. A shame, because I like the idea.

Overall - I wanted this to be great, I really did. Good invention, middling execution, kind of disappointing presentation. 4.0