Jason MooreOasis Brewing, located on Lake Travis, Texas has been around for less than a year. Their inventory is fairly small keeping only three mainstays in their lineup, Slow Ride Pale Ale, Luchesa Lager and their Great American Beer Festival gold medal-winning London Homesick Ale. Its grand opening was just back in August and though they have only been around a short while, besides the three standard beers they brew there have been six others in their arsenal, Lake Monster being one those.
In November, Oasis released Lake Monster, a porter, in cans. The beer was released on Nov. 1 at a Dia de los Muertos party alongside The Bogue and Possum Porter. Lake Monster was barrel-aged with Solera Winery Montepulciano for two months.
Lake Monster is about as close to black as you can get without it being the color, a very dark brown with a khaki-like head that lingers for a long time. Even after the beer settled, a thin line of the brown head remained. No light comes through the beer, but you can see the brown hues when you see the beer under direct light.
The smell of Lake Monster is rather interesting to me. The beer sits at 8.2 percent and looks like it is going to be full of aroma, but after taking a deep breath it was very weak on the nose. What I picked up was roasted malts, faint coffee, some sweetness, chocolate and dark fruit. I expected it to be a lot heavier on the aroma, but it did have a lot going on.
There is more flavor on the palate than the nose of the beer would suggest. I tasted semi-sweet chocolate off of the bat, followed by an oak-like dryness. Other things I picked up were dark fruit and a sort of creamy dryness I get from a pecan. The mouth feel overall was medium bodied and the beer was carbonated well. I could detect the oak character from the barrel, the dryness a wine leaves my mouth feeling like and also the dark fruits you would expect from a red wine.1 With the higher ABV it hides a lot of the great character the beer could benefit from with more time in a barrel.
