Ok, its been a few days since I have reviewed a new beer so it is time. Have a new porter, vanilla infused by an Oregon brewery, should be interesting, lets get to it, shall we?

Hop Valley Brewing - V.I.P.=Vanilla Infused Porter

Stats

• Brewery: Hop Valley Brewing - Eugene, Oregon
• Alcohol Content: 5.9% by Volume
• IBUs: 50
• Company Description: Vanilla beans are added to the conditioning tank in this dark brown robust porter. Bittersweet chocolate notes atop a mellow undertone of vanilla for a well rounded finish.

Presentation
This beer came in a 22 oz dark brown bottle with a single label on the main body. This is common for Hop Valley, but they also sell in 12 oz bottles. The labeling is relatively standard in style but the art work varies considerably from beer to beer. This one has a handsome silver and brown label, with the beer name prominently displayed. Hop Valley has a pretty good distribution but in my area, I mainly see their IPAs, so it was nice to find a porter.

The Beer

• Appearance: A very dark brown beer, it had a nice khaki head of foam on the pour, which hung around a bit and left some nice lacing.
• Aroma: I detected a faint vanilla aroma on the pour.
• Taste: Since this was a 22 oz beer, I was able to start picking up the cocoa hints later in the beer but early on I was struck by the hoppiness, more than usual for a porter, at least porters I have tried in the past. The bitterness was there with the 50 IBUs but it didn't deter from the taste, which was overall a bitter chocolate.
• Mouthfeel: In the mouth, was pretty carbonated but had a medium heavy body and a smoother than expected finish.
• Drinkability: The bitterness and hoppiness would limit this to one a night kind of beer, I'm not sure if this is offered in 12 oz bottles but if so, maybe a couple would be ok.

Rating and Final Thoughts

I rated this a 4.0 on Untappd where it had an overall rating of 3.68 on 9000 plus ratings. Clearly I liked it better than the masses but I am a dark beer guy and that skews things for dark beers. A 4 is actually slightly low for me on a porter but I was a bit off-put by the bitterness and hoppiness. The hoppiness is the larger factor but it wasn't overwhelmingly hoppy either. A good beer for a try, some will like it more than others. If you are an IPA person, you will like it more I think. Hop Valley but the very nature of their name, is more of an IPA producing brewery so for them to use more hops in a porter shouldn't be a big surprise. To be honest, I likely won't buy this again.

4.0/5

This post will make it to #BeerSaturday so if you do enjoy my review, go check the Week 39 contest out and give it a vote over there also. Please feel free to comment and give me a follow. I will be adding a lot more beer reviews in the future. Thanks and Cheers!